Uber, CMU launch traffic data-sharing tool

As part of its commitment to cities and communities around the world, Uber is teaming up with Carnegie Mellon University’s Traffic21 Institute to announce the launch of Uber Movement in Pittsburgh. Beginning today, anonymized traffic data derived from Uber trips in the Greater Pittsburgh area will be freely accessible through Uber’s open data-sharing tool, now available in more than 20 cities across the globe.

“Launching Uber Movement in Pittsburgh is our next step in giving back to the Steel City and reflects our broader mission to make cities more livable and sustainable,” said Andrew Salzberg, Uber’s Head of Transportation Policy and Research. “With our technology and the anonymized datasets we’ve made available, we can help urban planners and researchers, like those at Traffic21, reach more informed conclusions around transportation and infrastructure development.”

“The collaboration between Carnegie Mellon and Uber underscores the importance of universities and companies working together to address community challenges. Our current grant from the US DOT University Transportation Center (UTC) program supports and encourages research like this that is focused on real-world problems,” says Stan Caldwell, executive director of Traffic21 and the Mobility21 National UTC.

By working together with Uber and Carnegie Mellon we can make our streets safer.

William Peduto, Mayor, Pittsburgh

“By working together with Uber and Carnegie Mellon we can make our streets safer. We can utilize this data to continue the partnership we have with Carnegie Mellon on data analytics to identify potential problems before they become reality,” said Mayor William Peduto. “We look forward to working with Uber and Carnegie Mellon to share even more data in the future as our Department of Mobility and Infrastructure builds city roads for the 21st century.”

Uber Movement is a web-based platform that displays historical zone-to-zone travel times using data from the billions of trips that riders have taken with Uber, and the tool will support the efforts of researchers like Traffic21’s Sean Qian, assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon.

“Uber Movement provides us with a new dataset that broadens our understanding of Pittsburgh’s traffic, system reliability, and vulnerability,” said Qian, who directs the Mobility Data Analytics Center (MAC). MAC integrates and analyzes massive amounts of mobility data from different sources to develop smarter multi-modal, multi-jurisdictional transportation systems.

Uber Movement provides us with a new dataset that broadens our understanding of Pittsburgh’s traffic, system reliability, and vulnerability.

Sean Qian, Assistant Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University

“Using Uber Movement data, we can quantify traffic accessibility and vulnerabilities that vehicles encounter between origin and destination locations. We can discern what causes bottlenecks and when they are likely to happen, so the city can allocate their resources to where they are most needed. Then in real time, we can predict travel time for up to 60 minutes for the large-scale network, and we intend to use the Pittsburgh Regional network to demonstrate this,” said Qian.

Uber has undertaken significant efforts to protect the privacy of riders and drivers, which is why Uber Movement uses only aggregated, anonymized data and cannot be used to access any personally identifiable information. Over time, Uber will be adding more functionalities, datasets and cities to the tool. Uber will also continue engaging with officials, urban planners and citizens on ways to improve Movement, with the aim of providing more relevant data that improves our cities.

The launch of Uber Movement in Pittsburgh was also announced today by Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi at an event in Washington, DC, alongside an expansion to a dozen global cities including Toronto, Amsterdam, and Mumbai.