Uber to Supply Urban Planners with Data to Build Better Cities
Uber wants to help urban planners make more informed decisions about their cities by lending them data.
“Uber trips occur all over cities, so by analyzing a lot of trips over time, we can reliably estimate how long it takes to get from one area to another,” the company says. “Since Uber is available 24/7, we can compare travel conditions across different times of day, days of the week, or months of the year—and how travel times are impacted by big events, road closures or other things happening in a city.”
To tap into this data, Uber has launched Movement, a website of data that is anonymized and aggregated into the same types of geographic zones that transportation planners use to evaluate which parts of cities need expanded infrastructure, like Census Tracts and Traffic Analysis Zones.
Eventually, says Uber, the website will become freely available to the public.
“City planners face a myriad of challenges, and we hope to help tackle more of them over time,” says Uber. “We’re excited to partner with city officials, urban planners and research organizations to continue building features that today’s transportation planners need.”
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