SAN FRANCISCO—StreetLight Data, Inc., and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) today announced their strategic partnership to empower the transportation industry to make faster decisions, based on empirical data, amid the unprecedented volatility of travel patterns and preferences resulting from COVID-19. The companies’ strategic partnership agreement builds on their respective track records serving clients in the public and private sectors, solving a variety of urban mobility challenges.
In one of the first joint efforts of the partnership, StreetLight and BCG used advanced data analytics to study vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on US roadways since the beginning of March 2020, before states began imposing stay-at-home orders, and created a Trip Reduction Index to measure adherence to lockdown policies in each state, county, and metropolitan statistical area (MSA). Key index findings include:
Since Easter Sunday, all US counties have seen a steady recovery of VMT, with the ones experiencing a lower drop in March also recovering more quickly since the low point. The counties that experienced a smaller drop in March also recovered more quickly from the low point. These numbers vary substantially by county, illustrating the importance of empirical VMT data to allow cities, departments of transportation, and private mobility providers to manage transportation system supplies in a way that responds to travel demand.
“Sound mobility decisions begin with sound data. We’re excited about fusing our data with BCG’s vast strategic resources to solve the world’s biggest mobility problems, impacting everything from our daily commutes to our climate,” said Laura Schewel, CEO and cofounder of StreetLight Data.
“COVID-19 has dramatically increased the need for mobility data analysis to understand travel patterns and modal choices during the different stages of lockdown and reopening,” said Augustin K. Wegscheider, a partner at BCG and leader of the firm’s Center for Mobility Innovation in North America. “We’re proud to partner with StreetLight to help the public and private sectors navigate the transportation challenges and opportunities of the post-COVID-19 world.”
Additionally, the Streetlight–BCG partnership will focus on helping cities prepare to adopt micromobility and autonomous vehicles using StreetLight’s big data resources to move beyond the limitations of traditional mobility measurement, inform strategy for the scale deployment of these new offerings, and design services around them. Urban logistics, a key contributor to congestion in city centers, is another area of focus; BCG and StreetLight will work with municipalities, as well as logistics and transportation providers and their large customers, to optimize the flow of goods through dense urban areas.
For media requests, please contact:
BCG:
Eric Gregoire
Global Media Relations Senior Manager
Tel +1 617 850 3783
gregoire.eric@bcg.com
Streetlight:
Natron Communications
Michael Ingalls
Tel +1 917 494 4909
michael@natroncomm.com
StreetLight Data, Inc. pioneered the use of Big Data analytics to help transportation professionals solve their biggest problems. Applying proprietary machine-learning algorithms to over 100 billion location data points every month, StreetLight measures multimodal travel patterns and makes them available on-demand via the world’s first SaaS platform for mobility, StreetLight InSight®. From identifying sources of congestion to optimizing new infrastructure to planning for autonomous vehicles, StreetLight powers more than 3,000 projects every month.
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