How Uber Movement Helps Inform Decisions About Our Cities

Every hour of every day, people use Uber to get around cities across Metro Atlanta and cities across the world. We’ve been working hard to get to know these cities, with the goal of making them cleaner, more efficient and more livable. Along the way, we’ve found that local leaders, urban planners, and civic communities are all working to crack their city’s commute and figure out how best to invest in new infrastructure.

That’s why we introduced Movement: a website that uses Uber’s data to help urban planners make informed decisions about our cities. That data for Metro Atlanta is freely available to the public on our website.

Uber trips occur all over Metro Atlanta, so by analyzing a number of trips over time, we can reliably estimate how long it takes to get from one area to another. Since Uber is available 24/7, we can compare travel conditions across different times of day, days of the week, or months of the year—and how travel times are impacted by big events, road closures or other things happening in a city.

This data is anonymized and aggregated into the same types of geographic zones that transportation planners use to evaluate which parts of cities need expanded infrastructure, like Census Tracts and Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs).

This is only the first step. City planners face a myriad of challenges, and we hope to help tackle more of them over time. We heard from transportation experts an additional need for reliable and easily-accessible speed data, which is why we recently added Uber Movement Speeds in a handful of cities and plan to launch this feature in Atlanta soon.

If you would like to explore our Metro Atlanta data, simply log-in to the Movement website with your Uber account. If you’re interested in working with us on a partnership or research opportunity using Movement data, please contact research@uber.com.

Over the years, we’ve learned a lot about the future of urban mobility— and what it means for cities and the people who live in them. We’ve seen how more access to transportation and the use of private cars for public good can change both where and how we live for the better. We hope Uber Movement can play a role in helping Metro Atlanta grow in a way that works for everyone.