Central Ohio, Startup Plan Huge Transportation Data Project

Source: GovTech Published: December 11th, 2020

What would happen if every piece of the transportation and transit system in a major metropolitan area worked together, instead of on their own?

Columbus, Ohio, is going to try to find out.

The Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) is embarking on a grant-funded project — along with the state Department of Transportation, 12 surrounding counties and others — to set up what could very well be a data fusion effort unprecedented in scope. It will run on a platform set up by the startup Waycare, which made a name for itself in the Las Vegas area helping transportation officials predict when and where traffic collisions were likely to occur.

But the COTA project is about more than predicting crashes and congestion. It’s about rerouting buses, it’s about making data available in real time where it’s usually only available post-fact, it’s about setting the stage for different transit agencies to work together to make things easier for riders.

The pilot project, funded by a federal grant and slated to last about a year, will clean up and centralize data from many different places in order to support work ranging from emergency response to bus routing to urban planning.

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Photo by Jason Mowry on Unsplash