Police, Uber tie up to study average speed of Mumbai traffic

Uber Movements, a website launched on Thursday, analyses traffic patterns and analyes their impact.

THE MUMBAI Police’s traffic department has tied up with cab aggregator Uber to trace traffic patterns and employ suitable measures to ease congestion in the city. Uber Movements, a website launched on Thursday, analyses traffic patterns and analyes their impact.

Speaking at the launch, Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Amitesh Kumar said the data will help analyse the average speed movement of vehicles on arterial roads. “The sole objective of the traffic police is to reduce commuting time. At a time when major mega infrastructure projects are going on, resulting in increased congestion, we would be able to acquire the average speed of vehicles between two points in the city.”

The traffic police currently studies traffic movement on arterial roads through sensors and the CCTV network. Uber Movements will prove to be an added tool, Kumar said. “We will avail useful information on congestion trends from the data, which will measure the impact of flyovers, road closures, etc on traffic. We would employ suitable measures to ease congestion using the data.” The website tracks data through the presence of Uber vehicles on a particular road.

Kumar said the development of multiple metro rail corridors will help ease congestion in the city. “We have taken significant measures to ensure that commuting time of people reduces. We could get historical data from the website on how much time was taken for a commute from a site during pre-Metro construction times and what was the commuting time five years ago as compared to now. After the metros are commissioned, we will study the reduction in commuting time.”

Prabhjeet Singh, Regional General Manager, Uber India & South Asia, said: “Through Movement, we aim to harness the power of technology towards data driven policy making. We aim to contribute towards making more informed decisions on urban planning and traffic management in Mumbai.”