Palm Inc. on Wednesday launched a Treo smartphone traffic application that provides road maps and incident information to help commuters navigate jammed freeways.

The Traffice for Treo Smartphone software is for the 600 and 650 models and debuts in 10 of the most traffic-congested markets in the United States, Atlanta, Baltimore/Washington D.C., Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company said. The application provides visual and textual information that's updated every five minutes.

The traffic data is provided by Metrocommute, which gathers information from local Departments of Transportation and its own operations staff. Data is provided for primary, secondary and tertiary roads.

Traffic for Treo Smartphones is available immediately for download through the Palm website. Plans start at $4.99 a month for one city.