A survey of the quickly broadening reach of data about the movement of traffic reveals the next step necessary to achieve congestion nirvana: unfettered access to private cell phone data.
"The proliferation of granular data on automobile movement, drawn from smartphones, cab companies, sensors and cameras, is sharpening our sense of how cars travel through cities," according to a new post by Henry Grabar for Next City.
The article proceeds to whiz through a survey of the groundbreaking troves of data that have emerged in recent years, citing specific examples and explaining in common sense terms how the new data is changing the thinking of researchers, businesses, and government.
But even that data is only a percentage of the benefits available if individual cellphones are fully enabled to share data about traffic and mobility, according to Grabar. Grabar compares cellphones to taxi or municipal bus data in making this point: "Using individual cellphones would have a far greater impact. AirSage, which has exclusive rights to location data from two major U.S. wireless carriers, offers real-time, geographic information on one-third of Americans."
The catch, according to Grabar, is for Americans to willingly give up private data on their whereabouts.
Read the full story: Would You Share Private Data for the Good of City Planning?
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