ANCHORAGE – Today, the Municipality of Anchorage announced a data-sharing partnership with Waze (http://www.waze.com/), the free, real-time crowdsourced traffic and 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 the Municipality of Anchorage along with more than 250 other partners around the world.
The Waze Connected Citizens Program gives an unprecedented look at real-time road activity, empowering partners to harness real-time driver insights to improve congestion and make better informed planning decisions. Established as a two-way data share, Waze provides partners with real-time, anonymous, Waze-generated incident and slow-down information directly from the source: drivers themselves. In exchange, The Municipality of Anchorage provides real-time government-reported construction and road closure data to Waze to return one of the most succinct, thorough overviews of current road conditions today.
“Anchorage has a short and very active construction season and letting drivers know what roads are closed helps them plan better routes during the day. And the Muni can learn how to improve roads and increase safety from analyzing real time traffic data. We are thrilled to partner with Waze to gain a deeper understanding of real-time conditions,” said Chief Innovation Officer, Brendan Babb, of the Municipality of Anchorage.
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. The Municipality of Anchorage in the future can also provide Wazers with advanced notice of major traffic events such as parades and dignitary visits that will affect their daily routes.
“By joining the Waze Connected Citizens Program, the Municipality of Anchorage can leverage user insights to improve congestion during construction season, and make better informed planning decisions for residents and visitors,” said Adam Fried, Head of Global Partnerships at Waze. “We’re excited to have them join as our latest data-sharing partner.”
It is critical that prospective partners show their dedication to citizen engagement and commit to use Waze data to improve city efficiency. Waze Partners are also expected to measure and share their findings with other municipal organizations, 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://waze.com/ccp. To download the free Waze app for iOS or Android, visit http://www.waze.com/get.
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