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What Social Good and Smart City projects could you produce with a dump of all of Uber's trip data in a given city? I think it's fair to say we (Uber) didn't in

by dotBen 11y ago

What Social Good and Smart City projects could you produce with a dump of all of Uber's trip data in a given city? I think it's fair to say we (Uber) didn't intend for this data to be made public, but it was produced under a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) Request, and now it is out. So I'm curious how we at Uber could help improve cities and society with anonymized dumps of this kind of data - if this was a formalized thing. Let me know your thoughts here or directly (benm at the domain of uber)

vessenes 11y ago
fivethirtyeight mentions one obvious usage: providing it to city planners for say bus routing. The other thing I think you could do that would be very useful for drivers is show them areas that there are typical long waits / longer rides right now. I know a lot of drivers do some planning, but they seem to be in the dark. I'm sure a 'where to uber' app on android / ios for drivers telling them when to get where to take advantage of surge pricing for customers that will want to get taken to a desirable spot would be VERY popular among drivers.
- applecore 11y ago
  City planners already know the bus routes that would best serve the city. Unfortunately, there's no incentive to improve service or increase ridership since it already doesn't scale: for every 30 cents that bus riders contribute in fares, taxpayers put in one dollar collectively.
  - dotBen 11y ago
    I just want to shout out to Remix (FKA Transitmix) from the YC W15 batch - http://getremix.com/ http://getremix.com/ Some wicked-smart former Code-For-America Fellows working on this YC-backed project.
  - manicdee 11y ago
    City planners do not neccessarily know the best bus routes. They know which busses are used more frequently, and if they have unified fare systems using tap on/tap off cards, they know which trips are most often taken by bus. What they do not know is where new bus services might be useful. If Uber was able to show that there is a demand for transport between X and Y not currently served by busses (e.g.: late night riders are there but the busses aren't, or there isn't even a bus that services route between A and B). Services like taxis and Uber would be invaluable for planning mass transit systems.
dfc 11y ago
What would the dump provide that is not already found in the dataset from NYC?
- dotBen 11y ago
  I'm suggesting, hypothetically, such a dump would be an on-going release of data rather than a one-time and ad-hoc dump. Hypothetically there may be more facets of data not provided to cities, etc.
TheWiseOne 11y ago
It doesn't apply so much to the big cities but in smaller cities and towns, it could be helpful for infrastructure planning/improvements - street lights, drinking fountains, bus stops around common pickup and drop off locations. Parking spaces around common UberPool locations, etc.
technofiend 11y ago
To expand on the bus route thing: City of Houston just completed a complete revamp of their routes. It would be interesting to see how much, if any, that impacted uber's use in areas that should in fact have better (more direct) service. Second item is DUI rates before and after Uber comes to town. For that matter how much surge pricing happens during major events such as concerts, football games, etc where people may perceive they must drive. Combine that with congestion data and perhaps uber can propose a partnership with the local metro to pick people up outside of the deepest traffic area by doing a bus/rail hop first. For instance Houston has light rail from our sporting venues to park and ride lots. If you can group people going to the same neighborhood it's possible to shift congestion and make the last mile cheaper for riders and more environmentally friendly to boot. You also have major events where really no one should be driving but they are so data is gathered: hurricanes, ice storms, blizzards and so on. In Houston we have regular flooding and it would be interesting to see where reroutes happen due to deep water and it would be very useful to have drivers marking flooded spots so it can be shared back to other drivers via Waze/Google Maps and maybe even CoH fire and police. I could easily see an autonomous car on the side of the road with an led bar in its back window or on its roof warning that water is 12" past this point. Many of the worst spots have machine vision readable flood gauges but even for those that don't it may be possible to gather surface elevation from the Google maps car since they have such accurate GPS, and that data doesn't change often. In fact one could see Uber / Google subleasing a few of those cars to HPD just for the purpose of sending them out to gather data (including video) on flooded intersections so police could spend their attention elsewhere. And of course so they'll know if someone does flood themselves out anyway by driving past the car and then stalling. Autonomous cars already track object distance and speed of vehicles in their view.
silverlake 11y ago
One cause of traffic is TLC cars roaming the streets slowly looking for pickups. If Uber can show that their cars don't wander as much, that may show that Uber is helping traffic. But the current data set doesn't have that info, only your internal data would have it.

by dotBen 11y ago

vessenes 11y ago

fivethirtyeight mentions one obvious usage: providing it to city planners for say bus routing. The other thing I think you could do that would be very useful for drivers is show them areas that there are typical long waits / longer rides right now. I know a lot of drivers do some planning, but they seem to be in the dark. I'm sure a 'where to uber' app on android / ios for drivers telling them when to get where to take advantage of surge pricing for customers that will want to get taken to a desirable spot would be VERY popular among drivers.

applecore 11y ago
City planners already know the bus routes that would best serve the city. Unfortunately, there's no incentive to improve service or increase ridership since it already doesn't scale: for every 30 cents that bus riders contribute in fares, taxpayers put in one dollar collectively.
- dotBen 11y ago
  I just want to shout out to Remix (FKA Transitmix) from the YC W15 batch - http://getremix.com/ http://getremix.com/ Some wicked-smart former Code-For-America Fellows working on this YC-backed project.
- manicdee 11y ago
  City planners do not neccessarily know the best bus routes. They know which busses are used more frequently, and if they have unified fare systems using tap on/tap off cards, they know which trips are most often taken by bus. What they do not know is where new bus services might be useful. If Uber was able to show that there is a demand for transport between X and Y not currently served by busses (e.g.: late night riders are there but the busses aren't, or there isn't even a bus that services route between A and B). Services like taxis and Uber would be invaluable for planning mass transit systems.

dfc 11y ago

What would the dump provide that is not already found in the dataset from NYC?

dotBen 11y ago
I'm suggesting, hypothetically, such a dump would be an on-going release of data rather than a one-time and ad-hoc dump. Hypothetically there may be more facets of data not provided to cities, etc.

TheWiseOne 11y ago

It doesn't apply so much to the big cities but in smaller cities and towns, it could be helpful for infrastructure planning/improvements - street lights, drinking fountains, bus stops around common pickup and drop off locations. Parking spaces around common UberPool locations, etc.

technofiend 11y ago

To expand on the bus route thing: City of Houston just completed a complete revamp of their routes. It would be interesting to see how much, if any, that impacted uber's use in areas that should in fact have better (more direct) service. Second item is DUI rates before and after Uber comes to town. For that matter how much surge pricing happens during major events such as concerts, football games, etc where people may perceive they must drive. Combine that with congestion data and perhaps uber can propose a partnership with the local metro to pick people up outside of the deepest traffic area by doing a bus/rail hop first. For instance Houston has light rail from our sporting venues to park and ride lots. If you can group people going to the same neighborhood it's possible to shift congestion and make the last mile cheaper for riders and more environmentally friendly to boot. You also have major events where really no one should be driving but they are so data is gathered: hurricanes, ice storms, blizzards and so on. In Houston we have regular flooding and it would be interesting to see where reroutes happen due to deep water and it would be very useful to have drivers marking flooded spots so it can be shared back to other drivers via Waze/Google Maps and maybe even CoH fire and police. I could easily see an autonomous car on the side of the road with an led bar in its back window or on its roof warning that water is 12" past this point. Many of the worst spots have machine vision readable flood gauges but even for those that don't it may be possible to gather surface elevation from the Google maps car since they have such accurate GPS, and that data doesn't change often. In fact one could see Uber / Google subleasing a few of those cars to HPD just for the purpose of sending them out to gather data (including video) on flooded intersections so police could spend their attention elsewhere. And of course so they'll know if someone does flood themselves out anyway by driving past the car and then stalling. Autonomous cars already track object distance and speed of vehicles in their view.

silverlake 11y ago

One cause of traffic is TLC cars roaming the streets slowly looking for pickups. If Uber can show that their cars don't wander as much, that may show that Uber is helping traffic. But the current data set doesn't have that info, only your internal data would have it.