Pittsburgh Teaming With Waze, Others To Fight Traffic Congestion

PITTSBURGH, PA — The city is teaming with the app Waze in a traffic-data sharing agreement. The information will be used in an effort to improve traffic flow around the city.

Waze will provide anonymized traffic data to city employees to manage congestion surrounding construction projects. Drivers' personal information will not be shared, city officials said.

The Waze data comes via the company's Connected Citizens Program, through which hundreds of cities and public agencies are granted access in real time to reports from Waze users on things like accidents, potholes, and traffic slowdowns. The Waze data can also be used to visualize traffic patterns and estimate travel time, helping the city identify roadways that are consistently congested or accident-prone and address such issues more quickly.

The city also is pairing with the I-95 Corridor Coalition Traffic Flow Data Program, a regional alliance of transportation agencies, toll collection agencies, and related organizations.

The city will be given access to a feed with real time and historical information on PennDOT road
incidents, traffic congestion on highways, travel time estimates, lane closures, and weather alerts. This will allow the City to better understand regional mobility issues and place local data in that
context.