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Uber Will Provide Transit Data To Cities
mpicpp notes that transportation company Uber will be sharing the transit data it collects with city governments in order to "provide new insights to help manage urban growth, relieve traffic congestion, expand public transportation, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions." The company's first partnership will be with Boston, where Uber and other ridesharing services have been formally recognized by the state. Mayor Walsh said, "[D]ata is driving our conversations, our policy making and how we envision the future of our city. We are using data to change the way we deliver services and we welcome the opportunity to add to our resources. This will help us reach our transportation goals, improve the quality of our neighborhoods and allow us to think smarter, finding more innovative and creative solutions to some of our most pressing challenges."
Because they will use it as a trade off to become legal in cities around the world, where they are (often rightfully, at least in Europe) illegal.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Exactly. It's a bribe. It's not hugely valuable data (the city could get almost as much useful data from taxi firms really) but because the city officials don't really understand magical mystical computers, it seem like some kind of golden egg.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Back when Uber announced that they were 'limiting' "God View" in order to improve customer privacy, I advanced the not-especially-insightful hypothesis that this was more or less entirely about looking less like a bunch of egregious assholes, and would be at best irrelevant, and at worst actively damaging, to customer privacy.
Sure looks to me like this is one of those exciting new uses that they've found for the data, and likely not the last one, nor the most unpleasant.