Traffic data -- also paid for with public dollars

[Robin Chase]

I've been newly conversing with "Jerry Werner" <jer...@attglobal.net>, about requiring that government data purchased with tax dollars should be made open. He produced a study last year that shows how one company seeded the contract, won it, and then managed to lock up that data generated and more surrounding it. His executive summary is below and report attached. I thought this group would be interested:

Traffic.com has engineered a scheme designed to control the traveler information market in our
nation's most congested cities through legislative connections that led to earmarks in the last two large
transportation bills (TEA-21 and SAFETEA-LU) as well as support from the top of the U.S. Dept. of
Transportation.
This scheme involved creating a significant ($2 million/city) outlay of what they could market to state
governments as “free” federal money to pay for traffic data resulting from the installation of new pole-
mounted traffic detectors in our most congested cities – ostensibly to improve the ability of local
agencies to detect and inform the public about traffic conditions, to provide the FHWA with valuable
data about historical changes in traffic congestion patterns, and to energize the commercial traveler
information business in these cities......

In effect, there are two different types of “data lock schemes” at work in the TTID program:

1. Traffic.com’s control (“lock”) on the new real-time traffic data that comes from the new
sensors (typically 100 per city) deployed by Traffic.com in the publicly-subsidized TTID
program, and

2. Traffic.com’s effective control (“lock”) in many of the ITIP/TTID cities on the combined data
that includes data from the new TTID sensors as well as the partner-agency’s own data from
loop, video, and other detectors.

Robin Chase