WSP sees increased interest in Telia’s data for more sustainable cities: “Real data is vital”
Using Telia’s data, WSP, one of the world’s leading urban and transport planning consultancy firms, can get insights that enable a more sustainable public transport system and, in turn, a better society. Municipalities and other authorities are increasingly requesting such data and are discovering what it can do for planning and operations.
Andreas Lundqvist, Transport Analyst at WSP, says: “We have helped public transport authorities and operators to understand travel patterns and to identify routes and situations where there is potential to improve operations – based on customer and traveler perspectives. Of course, that’s extremely valuable in efforts to build smart, sustainable cities.”
WSP is on a mission to continuously develop sustainable engineering solutions for cities and transport, with more than 66,000 employees in over 40 countries. And with digitalization, the right data insights based on reliable data sources are now vital. Today, traditional sources, such as surveys and measurements, quickly become expensive, have lower response rates and can be affected by margins of error stemming from measuring equipment or survey respondents’ own views. Also, respondents often tend to forget and hence don’t include shorter, sometimes irregular trips such as going to a store.
Movement patterns changed radically after the pandemic
But times have changed in other ways too. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, people tended to travel to work between 07:00 and 09:00 and leave at around 16:00 or 17:00, and Andreas Lundqvist explains that 20 percent of all road traffic, for example, occurred at a certain time in the day.
In post-pandemic times, these patterns are no longer typical.
“The data we use from Telia is of high data transparency, quantified and reliable,” Andreas Lundqvist says.
He says municipalities, as well as many other organizations, reach out to WSP for support with data-based planning. For example, one Swedish municipality needed a complete overview of people’s travel patterns to make public transport more accessible and efficient in the region. While a survey could capture travel habits to a certain extent, mobile network data made it possible to demonstrate all types of movement in the municipality, showing the full travel demand and enabling a report to the municipality consisting of real and complete travel patterns. WSP is also able to offer traffic simulations, potential market analyses and outdoor visitor patterns.
Andreas Lundqvist says: “We can capture all types of journeys with this data. Another benefit that stands out is that we can see not only public transport patterns, but also walking and cycling journeys. We can also look at ‘through traffic’ that was previously usually missed, and more clearly demonstrate how holiday traffic varies in different visitor areas.”
He explains this means WSP can create an overall picture of all traffic flows – with well-founded data as the foundation. Municipalities and regions therefore better understand the travel patterns of their residents and visitors and can develop the traffic system appropriately.
“Today, to carry out these projects and produce the right insights, reliable data is essential.”
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