Uber Shares Treasure Trove Of Driving Data

Ride-sharing giant Uber has granted city planners across the country access to its transportation data, something local officials could use to help cut down commute times and improve traffic flow. The data, now hosted on a public website called “Uber Movement,” shows the time it takes to travel between neighborhoods in various cities, and was built from the company’s extensive logs of millions of Uber trips each day. For Uber, which is involved in many legal battles in cities across the globe, sharing such information may serve to build goodwill. “It’s definitely a step in the right direction,” Linda Bailey, executive director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials, told the Washington Post. “[B]ut there’s still a ways to go for cities to feel like they’re getting more than basic information.”