Cambridge Systematics launched Locus, a suite of customizable products that combines Location-based Services (LBS) data with information gathered through traditional data sources to provide flexible, current and accurate travel demand solutions for transportation agencies.
Cambridge Systematics partnered with PlaceIQ, a recognized location intelligence services provider, to obtain a nationwide set of anonymized LBS data. These data are generated by smartphone applications with user consent and have been validated and tested rigorously against national sources of travel behavior data.
Locus pairs the demographic and transportation data that an agency collects through traffic counts, household and transit surveys, and farecard and toll data with LBS data to capture trends and changes in travel behavior from a representative sample of a community.
“It can be challenging for transportation agencies to get a robust sample of its community from using traditional data collection methods alone. LBS data are passive data that help tell the travel story of an area while maintaining the complete anonymization of individual travelers,” says Anurag Komanduri, Cambridge Systematics Principal and Data Expert. "Locus enables agencies to combine these disparate data so that they have a statistically significant sample of information from which to make decisions.”
Locus offers four customizable products to help agencies answer challenging transportation questions and inform decision-making:
· Origin-Destination Trip Tables – Expands and validates travel matrices that are segmented by travel purpose, time of day, day of the week and traveler type.
· Transit Competitiveness – Identifies gaps in transit systems using farecard and survey data in conjunction with customized routing processes.
· Geofence – Measures the activity around landmarks, such as: rail stations, malls, stadiums and airports.
· Survey Assist – Validates trip and activity-based models while supplementing data gathered from household surveys.
Locus promotes using data for social good and is being used to support transportation agencies in planning more efficient bus routes, studying the impacts of climate events on transportation, measuring visitor movements and researching the impacts of mileage-based user fees on equity communities.
About PlaceIQ
PlaceIQ is a leading data and technology provider that powers critical business and marketing decisions with location data, analytics and insights. An early industry pioneer, PlaceIQ has become the standard for fueling better decisions by marketers, analysts and publishers through powerful, location-based consumer insights, real-world measurement and attribution