Sharing our data, Improving our cities
“Code is the new concrete for 21st century cities and we need a digital infrastructure to share data and create safer and more sustainable streets.”
-Janette Sadik-Khan, former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation and an advisor on transportation and urban issues.
Ever since the advent of rideshare services, I’ve felt that it’s improved my life. I don’t have to feel awkward getting wave-rejected as an occupied taxi whizzes past me and I can avoid shady taxi drivers from taking me on the longest route possible. Ridesharing services have done me a great service and I think it’s fair to say that they’re doing very well for themselves too. But are companies doing any good for the world? Just last year, Uber, Ford and Lyft have partnered up with a company called SharedStreets to give city mayors across the world “unparalleled access to their road traffic data” in order to help cities rethink transportation.
Cities are trying to improve urban mobility but are unable to because their street maps are inadequate to deal with the super surge of cars taking up limited space. One very valuable space is the curb. People get dropped off there, bicyclists use it, cars park on it, and trucks unload there. It’s a crucial pain point not only for pedestrians and drivers who deal with constant delays from people blocking traffic but also for many businesses because freight and logistics companies are using the curb more and more and they have no way to collaborate well with the city. Many cities don’t have their infrastructures mapped out well and even more of a problem is that they don’t have enough data to make any actionable changes.
Ridesharing companies have a huge amount of data that cities could use to make traffic efficient and safer. For this cities-companies collaboration, Uber and Lyft provided a substantial amount of trip information including fare amount, vehicle speed data, pick up, and drop off data. However, even if these companies provided data to the cities, their street level data sets are still not compatible. Not only are city mapping systems different each other (the city of Detroit has cities within that all have their own way of managing their infrastructure), they’re also different from ridesharing companies.
SharedStreets makes it possible by creating an open-source, universal map language in a simple machine readable format that everyone — the city, companies and citizens — all have access to. And because SharedStreets is a third party, non-political, and non profit, Uber and Lyft do not need to fear risking proprietary secrets such as routing algorithms and SharedStreets removes thecompany name from the trips. Regarding our privacy, SharedStreets uses data in a way that is completely unrelated to the privacy of people. This allows all data to work in everyone’s favor without jeopardizing anyone’s interest.
Both cities and companies have been using a Geometric Information System(GIS) to map street level data. However, when data is merged together, the sets do not match. SharedStreets is able to link the two sets of data together by breaking down a street into short form IDs that can be referred back to in a database.
This is important because when it links up different maps’ data sets, the SharedStreets IDs provide a common reference. The grey lines represent different data sets of the same spot and the blue line represents the SharedStreet ID reference that allow a common ground.
The millions of GPS points are clustered together and allows analysis of traffic congestion, curb usage, how long cars stay in a spot, how often vehicles are picking up and dropping. With a common map and a huge amount of data, cities now have the resources to create a roadmap for urban mobility.
My thoughts
This has been one of the largest collaborations with private companies and the government in what seems very much like an active attempt from all sides to do good. I hope that these companies involved have set an example as a way of providing social good with data, especially for the ones that have been emerging as abusers of our trust and privacy.
Sources:
https://nacto.org/2018/02/22/nacto-and-otp-launch-sharedstreets/
