Innovative Two-Way Data Share to Ease Congestion and Improve Public Safety…
City of Sacramento announces a new innovative data sharing partnership with Waze, the world’s leading mobile navigation app, to help improve traffic management in Sacramento.
The Waze app is used by more than 116,000 monthly active users in Sacramento who drive nearly 22.7 million miles with the app each month, avoiding traffic and reporting nearly 150,000 alerts per month to inform other drivers of conditions ahead. Through the Waze Connected Citizens Program, the City will publish data from several City departments that Waze can integrate — including road closures, construction, and special events —so drivers can find alternative routes thereby easing congestion. Additionally, the City will be able to leverage Waze anonymized data to optimize city operations — making the city even more responsive to residents’ needs.
Established as a free, two-way data share of publicly available traffic information, Waze will provide the City of Sacramento with real-time, anonymous, Waze-generated incident and slow-down information directly from the source: drivers themselves.
This new data stream — provided in a form that ensures no personally identified material is shared — can be aggregated, analyzed, and eventually used to evaluate the City’s traffic management for events and road closures, and further refine traffic strategies for the most congested areas. In exchange, Sacramento provides real-time government-reported construction, incident and road closure data to Waze to return one of the most succinct, thorough overviews of current road conditions today — all directly delivered to residents’ devices in the app.
The City anticipates fully launching the program by Fall of 2016. The City of Sacramento reminds drivers to use the app in a safe and responsible manner, by docking the phone and leveraging hands-free functionality during their entire route.
Find out more about Connected Citizens or download the free Waze app for iOS or Android.