Cities Passing Up Opportunity to Amass Uber's Valuable Data

Last week Washington D.C. passed legislation legalizing services such as Uber and Lyft. However, according to Emily Badger of the Washington Post, the city missed a huge opportunity to better understand the movement of its residents and hold these private companies accountable by not demanding access to privatized passenger trips taken (and canceled).

As Badger writes, the vast amounts of anonymized data collected by Uber protecting both drivers and riders, "would help cities verify that Uber drivers aren't discriminating against certain neighborhoods or disabled passengers, that Uber is actually weeding out drivers who do, that the company is truly serving the public in exchange for the public's confidence in it."

In addition to greater amounts of accountability, the data would be particularly useful for "transportation planners, who spend a lot of time (and money) trying to understand the travel patterns of residents that are already passively captured by transportation apps. Uber is building a sophisticated picture of how people move around many cities — where the demand is, where people want to go, when those trips take place down to the minute... it could also help cities plan infrastructure, manage traffic flow, and understand commuters better."