In light of Uber's historically unsuccessful attempts at collaborating with local governments, Uber's creation of Movement, a new data-focused product, comes as a surprise. Movement is a "stand-alone website" that seeks to "persuade city planners to consider Uber as part of urban development and transit systems in the future" (1). Movement aims to "allow outsiders to study traffic patterns and speeds across cities using data collected by tens of thousands of Uber vehicles" and allowing users to "compare average trip time across certain points in cities" (1). This means they can use Movement to inform them of the effects that spontaneous events (like baseball games) have on city traffic.
Uber's creation of Movement marks a departure from the company's past tactics of aggression and antagonism towards city leaders. It potentially marks an era of collaboration with municipal governments (2). Uber's precedent is to pay "little heed to regulation while city officials scramble to keep up with the company's rapid deployment and surging popularity" (1). Crucially, previous debates have revolved around whether Uber should be held to the same service rules as taxis (2). Now, Andrew Salzberg (Uber's head of transportation policy) emphasizes how Uber shares common goals with the cities it operates in despite the "typically...uneven" relationship that the company has had with cities. Movement hopes to further consolidate Uber's relationship with cities by grounding user experiences in data, which is, according to Salzberg, the same force that grounds policy.
In attempt to "assuage user privacy concerns," Uber has maintained that Movement's data will be "anonymous and aggregated" (1). Uber hopes that the data produced by these methods will be "more reliable than what is typically used by urban planners," as most urban planners "hire third party agencies to study traffic patterns over time" (1). The standard method is expensive, and it also produces less up-to-date data than Uber's methods (involving drivers inputting data, with "smartphones equipped with accelerometers and global positioning technology") promise to produce (1).
According to the chief information officer of the city of Boston's Department of Innovation and Technology, Jascha Franklin-Hodge, the collective impact of Boston's Uber and Lyft drivers is so substantial that it "effectively [constitutes] the addition of another transit line" (1). The burgeoning importance of alternative transportation services on city infrastructure underscores the significance of possessing data on the transportation activities driven by Uber and competitors.
Movement's prospective release date is mid-February (2). It is not yet available to the general public, though it eventually plans to be publically accessible. Uber hopes to use Movement to gradually integrate its own standing and increase its authority in the eyes of urban developers. While Movement will be open to all users, Uber predicts its primary audience will consist of "city officials dealing with congestion in their streets, and transit systems" (2). After introducing Movement to the public, Uber will transition it to provide "travel-time data on maps" that cover most of the "hundreds of cities where its service operates" (2). Movement will utilize Uber's data on "average travel times on specific routes at any day or time," data that Uber believes will help city officials "make better planning decisions about road closures and transportation improvements" (2). Movement's site will not be comprehensive because "Uber acknowledges its service hasn't provided enough rides on some routes to give reliable estimates on typical travel times" (2). However, Uber is still confident that Movement will provide a useful service for "city planners who currently have to pay for similar data from a variety of vendors" (2).
In the past, city officials have stated a desire to see more useful information from Uber. However, they also acknowledge the existence of user data privacy concerns (1). Uber has stated that it plans to "release more data to cities over time" as Movement becomes more widely used among both researchers and members of the public. However, Uber is concerned about the potential risks for its own privacy that this might entail, namely, the question of both user privacy and Uber's company privacy in face of its market competitors (e.g. Lyft, Hailo and Grab) (1). With Movement, Uber has demonstrated its willingness to render its traffic data available to city government officials, and eventually everyone (3). Uber possesses data for approximately "more than 2 billion trips," which will be shared after it is screened for anonymity (3). The benefit to city officials is increased prevention of the "periodic delays and crowding" that result from repairs to transportation infrastructure (3). Such inconveniences typically cause "commuters to resort to cars instead of public transportation" (3). Because Movement allows travel times to be compared with respect to route and time of day, commuters can potentially help "mitigate traffic congestion" and "improve infrastructure," which will ultimately make streets safer (3).
The privacy complications that may result from Movement are evidenced in the case of Washington, D.C.'s Metrorail SafeTrack program. In D.C., infrastructure repairs led to widespread traffic congestion and complications, causing the Federal government to pay for employees to "use ride-hailing services like Uber to get to and from work" (3). Hence, Uber possesses access to the "travel patterns of potentially high-ranking officials" (3). Uber has promised to "not provide information about drivers and riders using its service" (3). Instead, it will provide "travel times between specific points" (3).
To ensure anonymity, Uber will also "gray out" map regions that are more sparsely populated, so that individuals assigned data points in those regions will not be easily identified (3). On its Uber Movement website, Uber has also stated that "preserving rider and driver privacy is our #1 priority" (4). Uber swears to keep all of its data anonymous and "aggregated to ensure no personally identifiable information or user behavior can be surfaced through the Movement tool" (4). Movement's ability to track aggregate movement of commuters, by collecting the information of individuals as data points contains the potential of endangering individual privacy.
Bibliography:
1) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/08/technology/uber-movement-traffic-data.html?ref=business&_r=1
2) http://www.inc.com/associated-press/uber-movement-data-website-cities-traffic.html
3) https://www.21centurystate.com/articles/uber-releases-travel-data-to-local-governments/
4) https://movement.uber.com/cities
