[kosei]

Hope this is as fantastic as this sounds. Many cities are starting to make this data publicly available, and the potential impact to urban planning, traffic reduction, parking and more is enormous. That said, what's Uber's commercial angle? Licensing fees?

"Movement makes all insights available under the Creative Commons, Attribution Non-Commercial license."

[cowsandmilk]

> Hope this is as fantastic as this sounds

The experience in Boston was that Uber anonymized the data too much for it to be useful[1]. I would be very skeptical of this as it seems to be a program publicly touted as useful, but the e-mails obtained via FOIA requests show it to not be. I'm not sure what the solution is since privacy should be a concern.

[1] https://www.boston.com/news/business/2016/06/16/bostons-uber...

[username223]

An unsurprising quote from the article:

> [Boston chief information officer Jascha Franklin-Hodge] said the data has been useful to show the volume of Uber rides in Boston and users’ typical wait times, but it has not done much to aid in city planning.

In other words, that was just a PR offensive. Maybe this new iteration will be something else, but I would be skeptical.

[peatmoss]

Making friends. Uber is quite aware that their reputation within cities hasn't been the best. Internally, there is a loose federation of people who genuinely want to improve cities, and people who recognize the business value in not continuing to piss cities off.

[WillEngler]

Yep. Conversely, it's interesting to see some urban planning folks warm up to ride sharing as a way to extend the reach of existing transit networks. But still a lot of hostility, to be sure.

[peatmoss]

I think urban planning folks have been, in principle, favorable to new mobility options that don't involve private vehicle ownership. I think some folks in the cities have been conflicted about some of Uber's lawlessness / relationship to labor.