There many new inroads for Waze, working with more cities and states in America, now, including Sacramento, Alabama, Providence, Miami/Dade and Massachusetts. Here are the latest announcements of partnerships. When announcing partnerships, the entities also revealed very high numbers.
CA State Capital
Waze was already working with CalTrans and now the city of Sacramento announced a data sharing partnership with Waze, to help improve traffic management in Sacramento.
The Waze app is used by more than 116,000 monthly active users in Sacramento who drive nearly 22.7 million miles with the app each month, avoiding traffic and reporting nearly 150,000 alerts per month to inform other drivers of conditions ahead. Through the Waze Connected Citizens Program, Sacramento will publish data from several City departments that Waze can integrate — including road closures, construction, and special events —so drivers can find alternative routes thereby easing congestion. Additionally, the City will be able to leverage Waze anonymized data to optimize city operations — making the city even more responsive to residents’ needs.
Established as a free, two-way data share of publicly available traffic information, Waze will provide the City of Sacramento with real-time, anonymous, Waze-generated incident and slow-down information directly from the source: drivers themselves. This new data stream — provided in a form that ensures no personally identified material is shared — can be aggregated, analyzed, and eventually used to evaluate the City’s traffic management for events and road closures, and further refine traffic strategies for the most congested areas. In exchange, Sacramento provides real-time government-reported construction, incident and road closure data to Waze to return one of the most succinct, thorough overviews of current road conditions today — all directly delivered to residents’ devices in the app.
Sacramento anticipates fully launching the program by Fall of 2016. The City of Sacramento reminds drivers to use the app in a safe and responsible manner, by docking the phone and leveraging hands-free functionality during their entire route.
Alabama DOT
The Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) has joined the Connected Citizens Program of crowdsourced navigation app Waze to provide real-time traffic details from across the state.ALDOT joins multiple state DOTs in sharing data with Waze, including Massachusetts, Louisiana,California, Nebraska, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. ALDOT is the first entity in the state to join the program.
“We are pleased to partner with Waze to gain a deeper understanding of real-time road conditions,” said Allison Green, Alabama Department of Transportation spokesperson. “By integrating the Waze data with our ALGO Traffic website, we can help motorists get to where they are going safely and on time. Having the context of why traffic congestion has occurred, in addition to specific incident reports, is invaluable for our traffic incident management team.”
According to Waze:
● Birmingham has more than 42,600 monthly active users (called Wazers) who use the app to collectively drive nearly 9 million miles per month.
● Mobile has more than 16,000 monthly active Wazers who use the app to collectively drive more than 4 million miles per month.
● Montgomery has nearly 12,900 monthly active Wazers who use the app to collectively drive more than 3 million miles per month.
Providence RI
The city of Providence Rhode Isaland is partnering with smartphone traffic-navigation service Waze to share traffic updates such as car crashes and construction work. Mayor Jorge Elorza announced the two-way data partnership.
“I am thrilled to have the city partner with Waze to gain a deeper understanding of real-time conditions,” said Mayor Elorza. “With this program, we will be able to use data to help better address traffic concerns in neighborhoods throughout the city.”
Providence is the latest of dozens of governments around the world to agree to share public traffic data with the Google-owned mapping application that helps motorists find shortcuts.
Miami Dade County
Miami-Dade County announced its partnership with the Waze Connected Citizens Program (CCP).
“We are thrilled to partner with Waze in order to provide our 2.7 million residents with the most accurate, up-to-date information for their daily commute,” says Miami-Dade County Mayor, Carlos A. Gimenez. “Many of our residents rely on mobile GPS to navigate them safely around the County, and now we can be a part of their ride.”
The departments of Transportation and Public Works (DTPW), Information Technology (ITD), and Water and Sewer (WASD) have come together with the shared goal of making mobility a priority. In the near future, the Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD) will join the collaboration and provide real-time information that will improve traffic conditions. In exchange for the anonymous, user-generated information provided by Waze to Miami-Dade County, the County in turn submits real-time government-reported construction, crash and road closure data to Waze. The end result: a thorough overview of current road conditions today.
“This helps drivers be aware of everything on the road that can affect their trip in real time,” says Alice N. Bravo, P.E., Director of Miami-Dade County Department of Transportation and Public Works. “It’s certainly a convenient tool that will help improve mobility. It is our hope that everyone will use this kind of information for all of their trips in order to ease congestion.”
Waze Mass Growing in Mass.
MassDOT announced a data-sharing partnership with Waze. Under the program, Waze provides MassDOT with real-time, anonymous, Waze-generated incident and motorist slow-down information. In exchange, MassDOT provides real-time government-reported construction, crash and road closure data to Waze.
“Through the use of traffic data, the MassDOT-Waze partnership will assist in making future investments in highway infrastructure projects that will improve driver safety and promote economic development,” said MassDOT Secretary & CEO Stephanie Pollack.
According to Waze, Boston has more than 709,000 monthly active users who drive a collective 277 million kilometers with Waze each month. These users actively report more than 1 million alerts like potholes, traffic and crashes each month.
Boston was one of the first partners in Waze’s Connected Citizens program.