Emily Badger reports on the growing importance of the cellular phone, and particularly their location tracking capabilities, as the next most essential transportation planning tool.
While the concept of having your every movement tracked and analyzed by transportation experts may seem like a profound privacy intrusion to many, cellular providers are functionally able to acquire such data right now without explicit permission, and without requiring you to have GPS enabled. As Badger reports, network signaling data can be used to triangulate locations to within 50 meters in dense urban areas. And the only thing keeping cell carriers from exploiting this information is that they hadn't yet figured out they could monetize it for use by transportation planners.
But that is changing. In North Carolina, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is working with AirSage, a company that contracts with cell phone carriers to produce analytical data of use to transportation planners, to conduct an origin-destination study of travel patterns and to measure traffic speeds in their region.
According to Kyle Ward, a transportation engineer with the MPO, "'I personally am still struggling with ‘how do I get this all implemented in transportation?'...So I've only done some thinking in the shower about 'wow, I wonder what else we could do with this.' But I think the more people who realize what's happening, you'll get tons of people thinking about it, and lots of ideas will come out.'"
FULL STORY: You Already Own the Next Most Important Transportation Planning Tool
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Pennsylvania Mall Conversion Bill Passes House
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California Exodus: Population Drops Below 39 Million
Never mind the 40 million that demographers predicted the Golden State would reach by 2018. The state's population dipped below 39 million to 38.965 million last July, according to Census data released in March, the lowest since 2015.
Google Maps Introduces New Transit, EV Features
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Ohio Lawmakers Propose Incentivizing Housing Production
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Chicago Awarded $2M Reconnecting Communities Grant
Community advocates say the city’s plan may not do enough to reverse the negative impacts of a major expressway.
City of Costa Mesa
Licking County
Barrett Planning Group LLC
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact Transit + Community
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
City of Universal City TX
ULI Northwest Arkansas
Town of Zionsville
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