Geotab ITS fuels transportation insights in 2022

Over the past year, we saw the rise of the Metaverse while our world grew more connected with IoT. Experts are hopeful advancements in AI and automation will make our new digital world more secure. This year also brought improvements to predictive analytics. Here at Geotab ITS, we saw firsthand the impact that deeper contextual transportation analytics can have for future modeling and infrastructure planning. 

Geotab ITS launched in September of 2021. In our short time operating, we’ve seen partners and customers take incredible strides using Geotab ITS data to solve complex traffic problems and strategically plan for the future of transportation.

Safety First

Data-driven road safety strategies are popping up across the U.S. as many cities work towards Vision Zero goals in eliminating traffic fatalities. Geotab ITS worked with the New York City Department of Transportation and their Office of Research, Implementation & Safety (RIS) to tap into speed and travel-time metrics across their roads in order to identify problem areas and prioritize traffic-calming interventions. The NYC DOT team was thrilled to be able to filter the data by vehicle type so they could drill-down into passenger vehicles that typically travel faster than heavy-duty vehicles. 

Rob Viola, Director of Safety Policy & Research at RIS commented that Geotab ITS data was “much more reliable, both because of the high degree of accuracy and the large sample size.” Partnering with Geotab ITS allowed them to significantly reduce manual radar speed monitoring and save time and money spent on lower priority locations for traffic-calming measures.

Planning for the future of freight 

Our work with the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) showed how it’s now possible to dig into commercial vehicle freight activity to make policy recommendations with confidence. SCAG was able to improve their modeling activities with access to granular data from Geotab ITS that provides insight into freight and goods movement between their borders. Diving into how vehicle trips get chained together and determining the types of commercial vehicles on their roads, SCAG was able to break down the percentage of light-, medium-, and heavy-duty trucks using their roads at certain times.

Origin & Destination in the Geotab ITS’ Altitude platform helped SCAG investigate months of data in minutes with the ability to filter to the exact metrics they needed for identifying freight traffic bottlenecks, trends in last-mile delivery and inter-county and intra-county trip distribution.

Helping build electric highways 

Contextual transportation data is also proving very useful on the road to electrification. Partnering with the National Grid, we were able to help Massachusetts and New York plan for fast charging requirements along their highways. Carbon-free transportation remains a high priority for states, but readying their road networks for electric vehicles and their charging requirements has proven tricky.

Highway corridor charging will be a key component of a successful EV rollout and armed with contextual insights into vehicle stops and popular route data, planners will be able to identify where priority charging infrastructure should be placed based on specific location demand.

Strength in numbers

Easier access to our transportation insights is a priority. By joining forces with the Eastern Transportation Coalition (ETC), Geotab ITS became a vendor for its Traffic Data Marketplace servicing 18 states and Washington, D.C. Our aggregate insights are of particular value in offering deeper context into origin-destination (OD) data along with the categorization of freight and vocation data, which are of particular interest when executing the ETC’s main goals for safe and efficient management of roadway systems.

Members now have access to on-demand data to perform analyses for months of data, within minutes. This allows for faster, more accurate planning for safety measures and congestion initiatives.

Exciting times ahead

Innovation is a key cornerstone of Geotab ITS. We’re eager to provide our partners and customers with an unmatched data analytics experience. We’ve had incredible conversations and discussions with industry leaders on where the future of transportation analytics is headed and are keeping pace with enhancements to the Altitude platform. In 2022, we added route analytics capabilities as well as trip chaining for custom analysis in our Origin & Destination data set. 

In the new year, stop analytics will be a new feature data set available to characterize vehicle stops and identify parking patterns across road networks. This will be especially useful for building out EV charging infrastructure and electric highway networks.

The next year will bring an increased focus into trucking and freight as logistics organizations and transportation planners look to improve the supply chain and allow for smoother movement of goods along highway corridors. Hand in hand with this heightened attention to trucking will be an emphasis on safety. Officials are looking to build sufficient truck parking at rest areas to keep drivers safe – another key initiative where stop analytics will prove useful. The Altitude platform will continue to innovate and improve as we help to tackle the biggest transportation issues facing planners into 2023 and beyond. 

For more information on how Altitude can play a key role in your projects or to book a demo, contact us at its@geotab.com or use this form to connect with one of our data experts.