Austin Transportation Department is now working with Waze, the crowdsourced traffic and navigation app, to provide traffic updates directly to residents and to better understand real-time road conditions in Austin. The Waze Connected Citizens Program, with over 500 partners worldwide, provides municipal organizations the opportunity to promote two-way data sharing to gain quicker and deeper insights into road safety.
 
Currently Austin Transportation provides Waze with information on scheduled road closures related to special events. With this information, Waze sends push notifications to its users and reroutes trips close to the closures. In turn, Austin Transportation’s Transportation Management Center receives up-to-date, anonymous information from Waze about major traffic delays, allowing staff to make targeted signal timing adjustments.
 
“Because the Waze Connected Citizens Program is powered by residents, this data-sharing partnership is an exciting opportunity for us to connect with residents directly and to gain a deeper understanding of current conditions on a greater scale than with more cost-prohibitive approaches, such as build-in-place detection devices,” said Robert Spillar, Director of Austin Transportation.
 
Waze is available for download on Apple and Android devices.