Skip to main content

StreetLight Data provides free VMT metrics

StreetLight Data is offering vehicle miles travelled (VMT) data for US transit agencies to monitor transport networks and understand travel patterns during the Covid-19 pandemic.
By Adam Hill April 17, 2020 Read time: 2 mins
StreetLight Data maps VMT across the US

There has been massive disruption to travel patterns since February and Streetlight’s information covers more than 3,100 counties across the US, updated three times a week.

Designed to measure the transportation impact on communities, it is free to planners, researchers and engineers, as well as federal, state and local governments.

"Transportation professionals make critical budget and planning projections based on gas tax revenue and other factors derived from VMT,” explains CEO Laura Schewel.

“The recent massive drop in travel is throwing off all those plans. This data-driven map gets the key metrics out quickly, with local granularity, to those who need them. Planners, like everyone else, are adjusting to a new reality and we’re here to help navigate it. We hope this, in some way, can help our transportation community in this difficult and unprecedented time."

Location intelligence provider Cuebiq is working with StreetLight, and has developed what it calls a ‘near-real time’ mobility index to improve the outbreak forecast and response.

“StreetLight fused Cuebiq’s index with its own algorithms that transform GPS data into contextualised, aggregated and normalised travel patterns, as well as its deep repositories of data depicting historical VMT,” the company said in a statement.

The data is available here.

Related Content

  • June 26, 2018
    Fasten your seatbelts: it’s going to be a bumpy ride
    A spat has broken out between two major US transportation organisations over how best to pay for road use: the ATA says tolls are ‘fake funding’ while IBTTA has scorned ‘scare tactics and falsehoods’… Much has been made of the state of US roads: everyone agrees that funding is needed – but who should pay? And how? Chris Spear, president and CEO of American Trucking Associationsm(ATA), believes finance is facing a cliff edge: the Highway Trust Fund (HTF), historically the primary source of federal revenue
  • May 6, 2015
    Countering congestion’s cost
    A new report on the economic costs of traffic congestion predicts the problem will worsen significantly in future. Jon Masters reviews the figures and some suggested solutions. New figures on the rising economic and environmental costs of congestion have been published by the US traffic data specialist Inrix and the UK’s Centre for Economics & Business Research (Cebr). Their report finds the problem much bigger than previously thought.
  • August 15, 2019
    IBTTA: tolling embraces future of mobility
    The future of mobility is a complex and changing topic. The IBTTA’s Bill Cramer finds the tolling industry is asking new questions – and finding some surprising new answers
  • June 15, 2023
    Traffic management: risky business
    Adding a real-time accident risk layer to the profile of a road network ticks all the crucial boxes: it saves time, fuel, money and, ultimately, lives. Harriet King of Valerann explains the brain power of Lanternn by Valerann’s Core Fusion Engine...