Crowd-sourced traffic information smartphone application, Waze, has announced that several new state and city partners have joined its Connected Citizens Program, which allows mutual data-sharing to benefit the motoring public.
The Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) has confirmed that it has formed a data-sharing partnership with Waze, joining 69 other organizations around the world. Designed as a free, two-way data share of publicly available traffic information, the Connected Citizens Program promotes greater efficiency, deeper insights and safer roads for its users and partners. The program will give ALDOT transportation officials an unprecedented look at real-time road activity, empowering decisions to improve the efficiency of the state’s highway infrastructure. Waze will provide real time, anonymous traffic data that will be transparently integrated into the ‘ALGO’ website launched earlier this year by the agency. In exchange, ALDOT provides real-time government-reported construction, crash and road closure data to Waze.
“We are pleased to partner with Waze to gain a deeper understanding of real-time road conditions,” said Allison Green, ALDOT spokesperson. “By integrating the Waze data with our ALGO Traffic website, we can help motorists get to where they are going safely and on time. Having the context of why traffic congestion has occurred, in addition to specific incident reports, is invaluable for our traffic incident management team.”
Waze has also formed recent partnerships with the City of Sacramento in California, and the City of Providence in Rhode Island, as well as Miami-Dade County in Florida. Currently, more than 116,000 Sacramento drivers use the app monthly, joining other Californian cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco in the program, along with the state’s transportation department, Caltrans.
“As Sacramento continues its emergence as a leader in innovation, entrepreneurship and technology, we have to be creative about how we continue to keep the city safe, friendly, and easy to get around” said Mayor Kevin Johnson. “New technology, be it to support public transportation or reduce traffic, is essential to getting the job done. This Waze partnership is an innovative effort to use our data as an asset to build a better Sacramento.”
Providence’s Mayor, Jorge Elorza, is equally enthusiastic about the program, which also includes the neighboring New England state transportation agencies of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. “I am thrilled to have the city partner with Waze to gain a deeper understanding of real-time conditions,” Elorza noted. “With this program, we will be able to use data to help better address traffic throughout the city. There’s no financial cost to the deal, and sharing data will help us address neighborhood traffic concerns, with better real-time information about road conditions.”
In Florida, Miami-Dade County’s Mayor, Carlos Gimenez, commented, “This is part of the solutions that we have to alleviate our traffic congestion. The great thing about it too is that we’re going to get this data so that we can make smarter decisions in the future about where we’ll put traffic lights, how long they will be there for, and also where we need to make improvements on our roadways.”
