MONTGOMERY – The Alabama Department of Transportation Thursday announced a data-sharing partnership with Waze (http://www.waze.com), the free, real-time crowdsourced navigation app powered by the world’s largest community of drivers. Designed as a free, two-way data share of publicly available traffic information, the Connected Citizens Program promotes greater efficiency, deeper insights and safer roads for citizens of Alabama along with 69 other partners around the world.
ALDOT is the first in Alabama to join the Waze Connected Citizens Program. The program gives transportation officials an unprecedented look at real-time road activity, empowering decisions to improve the efficiency of highway infrastructure. Waze will provide real-time, anonymous traffic data that will be transparently integrated into the ALGOTraffic.com website launched earlier this year by ALDOT. Waze-generated incident and slow-down information comes directly from the source: drivers themselves. In exchange, ALDOT provides real-time government-reported construction, crash and road closure data to Waze to return one of the most succinct, thorough overviews of current road conditions today.
“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.”
The Waze map evolves with every driver and data point it receives, promoting safer roads and sharing more knowledge with Wazers about potential delays to their commutes. The Connected Citizens program yields even more data, giving local citizens a greater ability to circumvent road closures and traffic jams within the app. ALDOT can also provide Wazers with advanced notice of major traffic events such as parades and other special events that will affect their daily routes.
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.
“Waze welcomes ALDOT, our first Alabama partner, to the Connected Citizens Program,” said Paige Fitzgerald, Connected Citizens Program Manager at Waze. “No one knows more about what is happening on the roads than Wazers, and ALDOT will be able to use these anonymous insights to further promote safer roads. In exchange, ALDOT is providing critical road closure and incident data to Waze, helping Wazers better circumvent major traffic events and real-time traffic blocks. This exchange empowers our users, ALDOT and the broader community to work together to improve mobility on Alabama roads.”
It is critical that prospective Connected Citizens Program partners prove their dedication to citizen engagement and commit to use Waze data to improve traffic efficiency. Partners are also expected to measure and share their findings with other traffic stakeholders, developing case studies that serve as keys to a global set of improvements which can be made for collective mobility.
To find out more about Connected Citizens, visit http://www.waze.com/ccp. To download the free Waze app for iOS or Android, visit https://www.waze.com/get.
