Dive Brief:

• Traffic analytics company StreetLight Data is increasing the granularity of the vehicle, bicycle and pedestrian data it offers through its cloud-based software platform, StreetLight InSight.
• The platform will offer Monthly Annual Daily Traffic (MADT) counts and Annual Average Hourly Traffic (AAHT) counts in addition to the Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) metrics it has offered. Hourly data could identify major congestion points during peak travel times.
• The additional information will allow traffic planners, engineers and other industry participants to better evaluate traffic analytics at different points in time, such as winter vs. summer or rush hour vs. off-peak times.

Dive Insight:

StreetLight Data gathers its data from more than 100 billion location data points per month, for a total of more than a trillion annually. The data is collected from a number of digital sources including cell phone signals, car navigation systems and commercial truck fleet navigation systems.

"What makes the data so usable and so relevant [is] the fact that it's on demand, particularly in a world where counting traffic and doing surveys can take months to gather and interpret," Martin Morzynski, VP of marketing and product management at StreetLight Data, told Smart Cities Dive. 

Cell phone data, in particular, is viewed across the industry as a tool to make transportation planning easier. That eliminates, or at least reduces, the need for traditional data collection methods such as field studies, driver surveys, cameras and road tube sensors placed in the street.

"What I find amazing is how much of the world still uses traditional methods of collecting volume data for vehicles — the notion that it would take a whole year or several months to collect traffic data," Morzynski said.  "You can now forego the effort of deploying manual measurements and extrapolating... and you can now do it from your desktop."

The data offered on StreetLight InSight can help transportation planners in a variety of ways from fighting traffic congestion to applying for federal funding. 

Other companies offer advanced transportation planning platforms as well, including Uber Movement. Morzynski says a main thing that sets StreetLight InSight apart is its on-demand, self-serve platform that delivers information in near real time. The platform's capabilities are "a game changer for our many [customers]... who can move faster and get better insights," he said.