The transport data and analytics company INRIX is supplying the City of Philadelphia announced with a solution to manage kerb and right-of-way management using NEW products.

The new cloud-based product, INRIX IQ Road Rules, will hold digital twin information about the City’s streets, pavements, and kerbs, to allow staff to communicate temporary and permanent rule changes across internal departments and externally to stakeholders such as digital mapping companies (such as Apple, Google, HERE, Mapbox, TomTom) and fleet operators (including autonomous vehicles, delivery companies, rideshare).

INRIX is an American company with significant European presence, and products that are launched in the US often follow to be used in the UK.

“Road Rules gives the City more capacity to improve ROW management through data and technology,” said Akshay Malik, Smart Cities Director, City of Philadelphia. “We can leverage existing data standards from the Open Mobility Foundation to map the ROW in more detail and test new ways to digitally manage it through our pilot in Center City, improving safety for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians.”

INRIX explains it enables agency staff to take a data-driven approach to kerb and ROW management to improve safety, reduce congestion, and improve access to local businesses. Road Rules provides the City of Philadelphia several key capabilities:

• Creation of a building-face-to-building-face digital twin of the ROW in the pilot zone
• Pre-loaded inventory of curb rules in the entire city centre
• Deep insights into use of the kerb, including real-time and historic information on occupancy
• Advanced tools for digital editing and coordination of ROW regulations
• Standardized communication of digital ROW rules through state of the practice versions of the Kerb Data Specification (CDS) and Mobility Data Specification (MDS) APIs

“The building-face-to-building-face ROW is utilised by a myriad of stakeholders, including people walking, biking, waiting for and riding public transportation, driving, and freight deliveries,” said Ahmed Darrat, Chief Product Officer at INRIX. “In recent years, the public ROW has become a laboratory for new uses such as shared scooters, ride hail drop-offs and pick-ups, parklets, play streets, food delivery, autonomous vehicles, and sidewalk robots. This experimentation will only increase in upcoming years and cities need tools to steer these initiatives towards their long-held goals.

“Urban areas are complex ecosystems that require meticulous planning and management. INRIX IQ’s robust insights across traffic, incident, parking, and safety management provide a comprehensive digital view while our Road Rules products allow staff to it intuitively and seamlessly act on emerging initiatives and digitally communicate rules to the wide array of stakeholders as they happen.”

“The open-source standards stewarded by the Open Mobility Foundation (OMF) give local government more effective tools to address policy priorities. We’re excited to see member organisations INRIX and the City of Philadelphia further the state of the practice by using the Mobility Data Specification and Curb Data Specification to digitally manage the full public right of way,” said Andrew Glass Hastings, Executive Director, Open Mobility Foundation. “This SMART grant – and the partnerships and learnings it will produce – represents the next step in OMF’s mission of transforming how cities manage public space using well-designed, open-source technology.”

Philadelphia joins innovative cities like Portland, San Francisco, and Minneapolis in deploying INRIX digital infrastructure management solutions as part of their SMART grant projects. Other cities like Nashville are leveraging the same tools and pre-loaded parking data for day-to-day kerb management. Through its data-as-a service and software-as-a-service applications, INRIX collects and maintains information about the full ROW, including APIs consumed by private sector stakeholders through the INRIX ecosystem of enterprise customers, all while minimiaing the need for large up-front costs and efforts and eliminating the need for ongoing contractor services.

(Picture – INRIX)