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Using Waze Data to Measure Traffic Congestion

We used anonymous, aggregated Waze travel data to measure the impacts of the Centre Street road safety redesign on traffic and speeding in the fall of 2023.

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Centre Street in West Roxbury has a history of speeding and car crashes that have led to death and injury in recent years. Residents have stressed the importance of having safe Main Streets districts in Boston where they can walk, bike, shop, and socialize. To make Centre Street safer, BTD created a traffic calming plan, and the Analytics Team measured average driving speeds and congestion levels along the corridor before and after the redesign.

Names of Contributors: Julia Vasta, Hope Ruse

Year(s): 2023-2024

Why We Did This

For BTD, street safety is a top priority.

This analysis helped shed light on what happens to traffic speeds after road safety interventions are put in place. It was also important to residents to get data-driven updates on the impacts of reducing the lanes of traffic, adjusting signal timing, and implementing new parking regulations on this main commercial street.

What We Did

Map showing the reconfigured section of Centre St and potential alternate routes that were identified as part of the analysis

  • We leveraged our partnership with Waze for Cities and collected travel time data along Centre Street and its side streets over the course of the redesign project.
  • We analyzed this data to measure how travel time (and driver speed) patterns changed before, during, and after construction.
  • We also examined how often Waze app users would have been rerouted off of Centre Street due to traffic and compared those stats to conditions before construction started.

Results and Next Steps

Chart showing travel time estimates from Waze data for pre-construction and post-construction time periods

We found that overall, illegal speeding decreased by more than 75%, while travel times only increased by about 1 minute during the daytime and less than 2 minutes during peak travel hours.

  • There was a slight increase in Waze users being routed off of Centre Street due to congestion, but the main Centre Street corridor was still the fastest route to take through this part of West Roxbury 96% of the time.
  • We are continuing to collect Waze data on this corridor for further long-term monitoring. BTD next plans to install speed humps in the areas surrounding Centre Street.

Who's Involved

Who's Involved
Analytics Team
Transportation
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