Big Data for

Transportation
2 Big Data for Transportation

Table of Contents
Click Headings Below to Navigate

Introduction....................................................................................3

Part I: Measuring Travel Behavior with Big Data...................................4

Origins and Destinations..........................................................................5

Corridors...............................................................................................6

Part II: Real-World Examples.............................................................7

Travel Demand Models.............................................................................8

Transportation Demand Management.........................................................9

Internal/External Studies.........................................................................10

Congestion Studies.................................................................................11

Project Performance Evaluations...............................................................12

Performance Measures............................................................................13

Detour Planning.....................................................................................14

Public Transit Design and Expansion..........................................................15

Conclusion.....................................................................................16

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3 Big Data for Transportation

Introduction

For Transportation and Urban Planning, the phrase “Big Data” can mean a variety of things. In this eBook,
we’re talking about a specific type of Big Data: the location records that are created by hundreds of
millions of mobile devices, such as smart phones, connected cars, connected trucks, and wearables. With
the right algorithmic processing techniques, the anonymous, archival, and messy data from these devices
can be turned into useful information that unlocks great value for transportation engineers and planners.

The most fundamental improvement is that Big Data allows you to empirically measure behavior
that was previously unmeasurable, whether the reason is that:

1 It was actually impossible to measure, or

2 Measuring it was so difficult or expensive that it was effectively impossible.

Now is the right time to begin considering this new data source. Transportation behavior is changing
rapidly, from ride-hailing apps to movements back to urban areas, electric and autonomous vehicles,
and even volatile gas prices. That means the old pattern of creating new core analytics every five to ten
years to feed demand models is simply not adequate. To properly plan for and manage our evolving
transportation system, engineers and planners need updated, clean data regularly. Only Big Data derived
solutions can deliver high quality of data at a frequent update cadence at a reasonable price.

StreetLight Data has worked hard to fill in the missing data gaps for transportation planners with Big
Data resources that accurately describe patterns today, measure changes over time, and help experts
diagnose mobility problems. We’ve gathered a series of use cases to introduce planners, modelers, and
engineers to real-world examples of Big Data’s value for transportation.

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4 Big Data for Transportation

Part 1

Measuring Travel
Behavior with Big Data

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5 Big Data for Transportation

Origins and Destinations

Origin-destination (O-D) matrices are a fundamental building block of many transportation models,
studies, and projects — and transportation experts can now use Big Data to create comprehensive,
precise, and accurate O-D matrices quickly. This is possible through algorithmic techniques that link
together mobile device’s “pings” by location and time stamp. Trips and series of activities are created by
identifying the pings that occur when devices begin moving (the origins), following the series of pings that
occur on the devices’ journeys (the route), and finally identifying the last pings when devices are still (the
destinations).

When transportation experts have analytics about trips from millions of devices, they can create
traditional O-D matrices that represent a far greater percentage of the population and longer span of
time than surveys or license plate studies can capture. Using time stamps to identify devices’ home and
work locations and combining that trip data with contextual data sets — think parcel boundaries and
demographic information — enable assignment of trip purposes, too.

However, it’s important to recognize that these data points are messy at the outset. No one person
can manage trillions of data points using Microsoft Excel! That means using sophisticated processing
techniques that make these data sets manageable is critical for transportation projects.

Location-Based Services Data Point

Circle radii vary: they accurately reflect
the spatial precision of each unique
data point

Navigation-GPS Data Point

Circle enlargd for visibility

Note: This image shows a filtered subset of data to

improve visibility

Key Benefits of Big Data

Accurate: Reflects current behavior
Precise: High spatial precision
Comprehensive: Large sample size
Archival: Measure changes over time

This is an example of a real-world location data created by mobile devices. This is just a small slice of the data
created over one month in Fremont, CA.

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6 Big Data for Transportation

Travel Patterns Through Corridors

Understanding travel behavior along specific corridors is also fundamental to many transportation
projects. However, it is not always practical or cost-effective to measure the travel patterns along every
road in a community using traditional data collection methods.

So, instead of sending an engineer to drive along a corridor at specific times of day or setting up
expensive Bluetooth sensors or counters, these analytics can be derived readily and easily from
Big Data. The sample size from months of Big Data is usually superior to sending out a probe
vehicle for a few hours, or counting license plates and Bluetooth pass-bys for a few days. Big Data
therefore makes it much easier to measure corridor reliability and performance in a variety of
conditions.

For corridor studies using Big Data, transportation experts can zero in on the routes that devices take on
their trips. They can quickly find out about the types trips that take these routes at different times of day,
types of day, and days of the year. Characteristics include:

1 Average travel time 3 Average speed

2 Distributions of travel times 4 Distributions of speeds

This means that with Big Data, transportation experts can develop a clear, comprehensive description of
behavior along specific corridors that is valuable for a broad range of real-world projects. This corridor
data is even more valuable when combined with O-D matrices.

An Example Big Data Corridor Analysis: Measuring the Impact of a Road Diet

200 25
196 20
Average Travel Time

22.5
(in Miles per Hour)

150
162
Average Speed
(in Seconds)

15 19.5
100
10
50
5
0 0
Before After Before After
This is an example of the type of travel time reliability analysis that can be completed with Big Data. It shows the
average travel time and average speed for trips along a segment of Seattle’s Ranier Avenue before and after the
completion of a road diet.

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7 Big Data for Transportation

Part 2

Using Big Data in

Transportation Projects:
Real-World Examples

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8 Big Data for Transportation

Travel Demand Models

Travel demand models are only as accurate as their input data. If your data is out-of-date or not
comprehensive, your model will not be accurate. By plugging origin-destination, routing, and
corridor analytics derived from Big Data into micro, meso, and macro models, you can improve the
accuracy of forecasts.

A great example of this is Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA). It is better at modeling user response to
issues such as peak spreading, freight analysis, and congestion at fine resolutions. But DTA is a detailed
modeling technique, so it requires detailed, rigorous data to be done right. The old approach requires
collection from at least 6 different sources, and many of them are very cumbersome and expensive. It
also requires a huge effort to integrate, calibrate, and check that data integration. The result is not only
expensive and time consuming, but also has a lot of assumptions. It’s simply clunky and messy.

Working with Big Data, you can attack DTA with a direct, data-driven approach. Using fine-tuned origin-
destination studies based on Big Data, modelers can uncover precise analytics such as how left-hand
turns are affected by by time of day and type of trip.

Route choice can vary dramatically by time of day, so understanding the ways that behavior changes
during specific conditions is critical to building accurate models.

Share of Personal Vehicles on a Major Maryland Highway that Go

to Each Destination Link by Day Part
100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

0%
1: Early AM 2: Peak AM 2: Mid-Day 4: Peak PM 5: Late PM
(12am-7am) (7am-9am) (9am-3pm) (3pm-7pm) (7pm-12am)

Bayview Blvd SB E Lombard Continuing Ponca SB

Ramp to 895 NB Ramp to 895SB Other

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9 Big Data for Transportation

Transportation Demand Management

Transportation Demand Management (TDM) is a powerful tool to address congestion because it converts
vehicle trips to other modes, effectively removing them from highways permanently. However, for TDM
to be effective, planners must understand the full transportation system in detail, not just a few key
intersections. Additionally, if planners do not have data that shows the how many vehicle trips can be
displaced by TDM projects, it is challenging to obtain financing for them. Instead, budgets are typically
allocated to highway expansions or other projects that improve vehicle travel instead.

Big Data helps transportation professionals overcome these obstacles. First, the sheer volume of data
available from mobile devices over very large swaths of territory allows planners to readily identify the
specific locations with:

1 Variable travel times (a sign of bad congestion)

2 Very short trips

3 Highly circuitous trips.

People who choose to drive very short distances (i.e.: under 2 miles) or that take very complex, circuitous
routes are typically reacting to an underlying multimodal mobility inconvenience, and it can be a major
one. Fixing that inconvenience can therefore make multimodal travel more convenient. Targeting such
fixes in the right locations; that is, the ones with the most low hanging fruit in terms of trips, is more
likely to reduce driving than focusing on neighborhoods where car trips are always long. One example is
installing a pedestrian bridge because drivers cannot walk to the train station without crossing a major
highway.

Scanning regions with Big Data reveals these “low hanging fruit” TDM locations much more
effectively than traditional data collection methodologies. Big Data also allows transportation
planners to quantify the relative volume of travel in each target situation, and thereby determine
the impact of TDM projects on Level-of-Service and other key Metrics.

Big Data analysis of hundreds of road segments in Northern Virginia helped identify major problems with
pedestrian access to the Van Dorn Metro station, which residents less than one mile away generally drove
to. With improved sidewalks and a pedestrian bridge, those trips are likely to be diverted, especially given
Metro station’s high parking costs.

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10 Big Data for Transportation

Internal/External Studies

Pass-through trips are defined as trips with origins and destinations outside of a given region. These
travelers pass through areas without stopping because they don’t have a reason to stop along the way.
While these trips can be difficult to quantify using traditional data collection techniques, analyzing pass-
through trip data is important.

Transportation planners can use origin-destination studies derived from Big Data to measure the volume
of internal and external trips in their jurisdictions. By combining these origin-destination matrices with
corridor and routing studies, they can also understand the roads that external trips are most likely to
take.

Once transportation experts understand how many pass-through trips are occurring in their
locality and where they drive, they are better able to determine the impact of these trips,
including road wear and tear and vehicle emissions. When community leaders have this data, they
can work to either minimize the impact, attract more drivers to stop in their locality or look at
ways to potentially recoup costs from the pass-through drivers.

Percent of Trips
that Pass Through
the County

< 12%
12% - 25%
25% - 42%
42% - 60%
> 60%

This heat map shows how counties in the US compare in terms of fully external trips. It was created from over
700 million trips derived from Big Data. Download our full county-by-county analysis here.

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11 Big Data for Transportation

Congestion Studies

Congestion is a drag on the economy, on the roads, and on quality of life. However, it is not always easy
to figure out why congestion happens, especially in downtown districts. Sometimes, there is tendency to
blame pass-through trips, commercial attractions, or employers. But the reality does not always match
these expectations. Big Data can reveal origins of congestion to help planners make more informed
decisions, and Big Data-derived conclusions can be more persuasive than survey data to stakeholders,
too.

With Big Data, transportation experts can quickly and easily evaluate:

The top origins and destinations of The times of day, types of day, and times of year
1 3
drivers that use congested routes, that have the most and least congestion,

2 Levels of congestion and viability of 4 The purpose of the trips that generate
alternative routes, congestion.

It is difficult to gather this data at a truly comprehensive level from traditional data sources. For
example, if you are unsure of the cause of congestion, how do you know whom to survey? With
the right data in hand, planners and engineers can even avoid the expense and disruption of a
road project by working to identify and redirecting traffic flows into other routes that still deliver
drivers to their destination efficiently.

Blaming traffic on wine-tasting tourists is common in Napa County, CA. But when planners used Big Data to
map out travel behavior, they found that commuting employees actually contributed more to congestion than
tourists. This is likely a result of high housing costs in Napa.

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12 Big Data for Transportation

Project Performance Evaluations

Due to the expense and statistical challenges of traditional data collection, transportation planners,
engineers, and modelers do not always have the resources required to evaluate projects once completed.
If data was not collected before a project began, then experts have no baseline to compare performance
against - and no way to get the data empirically, either. As our transportation challenges grow in tandem
with our population, communities want to maximize the impact of future spending. That means it is
becoming critical to determine whether or not policies and infrastructure actually improve conditions as
predicted.

With Big Data, you can easily and cost-effectively evaluate the impact of decisions, and you
can even “go back in time” to collect data from before a decision was implemented to evaluate
performance. Evaluating performance is useful for transportation experts for both determining a
specific project’s results as well as for developing pilot projects. By accessing and comparing archival
data from different time periods, transportation planners can clearly show the results of their work in
terms of:

1 Travel time 3 Vehicle-Miles Travelled

2 Trip speed 4 Impact by Demographic Group, Neighborhood

and Trip Purpose

-2%
+87 %
Loca

-10 %
New

l Ro

-55%
ad
Loca

-3%
Roa
Loca

d
l Ro

Destination Gate Origin Gate

Loca

l Ro

ad

-4%
ad
l Ro
ad
Loca
l Ro
ad

Engineers in Ontario, Canada wanted to find out if a new road helped divert traffic from local roads. Even
though data was not collected prior to the road’s construction, they were able to evaluate the project’s
performance using Big Data. The labels show the amount that traffic volume changed after the new road
opened.

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13 Big Data for Transportation

Performance Measures

Historically, level-of-service has been the standard performance measure for transportation projects.
However, as our transportation priorities evolve to emphasize travel time, accessibility, multimodal
options, environmental impact, and liveable streets, level-of-service becomes less useful as a
performance measure. The new metrics that are gaining traction today include:

Vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) per capita

1 Diverted VMT 4 Transit options

2 Greenhouse gas emissions 5 Benefits by income group

3 Accessibility

Level-of-service is still the metric that most transportation professionals tend to be most
experienced at measuring, though. Today, however, Big Data can be deployed to estimate
alternative performance measures, primarily because it provides such rich answers at a
comprehensive scale to questions like: “Who goes where? How do they go there? When do they go
there? Why?”

By combining Big Data from mobile devices with other contextual resources, such as census and parcel
data sets, transportation planners can more easily and efficiently use alternative performance measures
to evaluate projects.
Percentage Increase in VMT Following Lane Addition
Sum of Trip Miles for Behicles Passing Through Freeway Select Link
Average Travel Time (in Seconds)

10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
1 month after lane add 3 months after lane add 6 months after lane add
Personal Vehicles Heavy-Duty Trucks

This chart shows a VMT analysis based on Big Data that shows the impact of adding a new lane to a highway.
It compares VMT for trips on that part of the highway to the same period in the prior year. VMT from personal
vehicles increased due both additional traffic volume and longer trips. Heavy-Duty commercial traffic, with more
fixed demand, did not react as strongly.

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14 Big Data for Transportation

Detour Planning

Origin-destination matrices and corridor analytics derived from Big Data can also simplify detour planning
for transportation engineers. With the right real-world data, communities can deploy targeted
transportation demand management incentives in key areas and optimize detour design. Because
these expenditures are based on actual, measured behaviors, they are more likely to deliver good
ROI in terms of both congestion avoided and dollars spent.

When planning major transportation projects, such as bridge and lane closures, using accurate
measurements of travel volume, peak travel times and peak traffic flow can help transportation planners
identify the best alternate routes and reduce disruption to travelers. This approach can also help prevent
bottlenecks and other unintended safety issues by optimizing detour designs.

Tracking transportation can ensure that the alternate routes can handle the overflow traffic and help
prevent issues that the detoured traffic may cause. It also can help identify the routes that drivers may
prefer as alternatives, improving driver satisfaction and lessening potential disruptions.

Big Data allows engineers to quickly and easily estimate the impact of construction on travel patterns, and
identify the most efficient alternative routes.

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15 Big Data for Transportation

Public Transit Design and Expansion

Traditionally, the expansion and design of public transit systems has been informed by the behavior of
existing transit users, and potential transit users are identified as those that live or work near transit
stations. But what about the people who are currently driving? Their travel patterns can be equally
valuable to planners when it comes to expanding and improving public transit systems.With accurate,
comprehensive data on the mobility behavior of non-transit users, planners are better positioned to
develop public transit systems that increase ridership and convert vehicle trips to other modes. With Big
Data, planners can easily:

Determine the volume of car trips that could take public transit today, but are not, and begin to
1
investigate why

2 Identify the locations where vehicle trips to public transit originate, and thus, where transit
should expand or look to provide first-mile and last-mile solutions

3 Evaluate the routes with the longest bike and pedestrian trips

The growing popularity of Mobility-as-a-Service, ride, bike and car sharing services are changing
the number and types of vehicles on the roads. These changing trends also affect the design and
capacity of roadways. Transportation planners need to access current transportation data to
ensure they are creating the public transit routes that will best serve their residents.

By using Big Data to measure short vehicle trips, planners can identify the ideal locations for bike share stations.
The heat map above shows the relative volume of trips under 2 miles that originated in 1km by 1km square. The
more trips under 2 miles, the more likely that neighborhood is a good candidate for a bike share.

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16 Big Data for Transportation

Conclusion

With the use of Big Data and new technology, transportation experts have a huge opportunity
to use empirical data for every project — regardless of scale. Traditionally, expansive measurement
would be very difficult and extremely costly. Big Data provides an affordable, easy resource for
understanding travel behavior. In this eBook, we highlighted the top use cases from our experience as a
Big Data provider — and we think this is just the beginning. As Big Data evolves and the transportation
industry gains experience with this new data source, we expect the use cases to expand, too.

See How StreetLight Simplifies

Big Data with Our Easy-to-Use
Web Application

WATCH DEMO VIDEOS

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