Uber launches ‘Movement’ website to offer access to traffic data

The ride-hailing company Uber has unveiled a new website “Movement” which provides access to data from over 2 billion trips to help improve urban planning around the world.

With its operations in more than 450 cities around the world, Uber has a lot of insight on how the traffic mobility works in those cities and so it decided to put the data to an efficient use by investing in new infrastructure. It states,

“Over the past six and a half years, we’ve learned a lot about the future of urban mobility— and what it means for cities and the people who live in them. We’ve seen how more access to transportation and the use of private cars for the public good can change both where and how we live for the better. We hope Uber Movement can play a role in helping our cities grow in a way that works for everyone.”

Uber Movement provides data about how cities move. Uber collected the data on the basis of estimated time of trips, how long it takes to reach a place in different travel conditions across different times of days and how travel times are affected by some events like road blocks, rush hours etc.

With the help of Movement, users can set things like time of day, the day of week and zones to access Uber’s data for that specific point or range, and can download the data.

Uber claims to take users’ privacy very seriously and so the data collected is totally anonymized and it is ensured that no personally identifiable information or user behavior can be surfaced through the Movement tool.

The data will be accessible to city officials, planners and policy makers in a few weeks and to the general public in a few months. It will help the officials and planners to make informed decisions about the traffic and roads infrastructure.

Uber is a US-based transportation service that operates in more than 450 cities worldwide. It started its operations in Pakistan in 2016 and currently its services are available in Lahore and Karachi.

Uber, in the weeks ahead, will be inviting planning companies and researchers to access the data and explore information.