Uber Makes Travel Time Data Available to Cities

Ride-hailing service Uber is looking to give back in some of the cities it operates in by providing policymakers and planning officials with helpful travel time data.

Uber Movement will comprise data showcasing anonymized travel times between various points in a given city, with the goal being to benefit city officials and urban planners as well as inform the public. Since users are able to adjust the maps based on the day of the week and the time of day, they'll be getting invaluable data that's also inexpensive. 

The new offering will be made free to the public down the road and is currently only available to researchers and planning agencies, according to USA Today.

Washington, D.C., Manila, Philippines and Sydney, Australia will be the first cities to participate. However, the San Francisco-based company aims to add more cities to Uber Movement in time.

Uber Movement doesn't track individual rides and only maps segments of rides. Only areas with relatively high trip volume will be included to protect drivers' and riders' privacy. Areas with low volume will be blocked out entirely.

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"The travel time data Uber has made available provides a tangible and unique measure of how our cities move at different times of the day, and gives us insights into how the road network is performing," Greater Sydney Commission executive director Michael Comninos said in a statement on Uber Movement's website.

"Uber’s new public travel time tool, Movement, will be accessible through our Greater Sydney Dashboard and will play a valuable role in helping city, infrastructure and transport planners better understand how Sydney’s moves at any one time of the day."

The rollout comes on the heels of news that Massachusetts will conduct background checks on drivers working for Uber and its rival Lyft and comes just days after the company won a patent for a light-up sign that drivers could install on their car to alert passengers when their ride has arrived.

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