How your phone data saves London’s transport from chaos

John Anstey wasn’t on duty the night of June 3, 2017, when terrorists drove a van along the pavement of London Bridge, before embarking on a stabbing rampage throughout neighbouring Borough Market, killing eight people.

Anstey saw the news breaking and immediately went to his computer — not to trawl through breaking-news live blogs or Twitter, but to update the map for Waze, a Google-owned navigation app. He’s one of hundreds of editors who volunteer to keep the crowdsourced map up-to-date, pulling in data not only from official sources such as local authorities and Transport for London (TfL), but from police news feeds when major incidents happen, such as the terror attack that Saturday night.

Anstey was the second map editor to get to work that evening, and together they turned to TfL’s Twitter feed and other traffic status sources. “He worked out what needed to be closed and had it done almost immediately,” Astey says of his colleague. As information started to be revealed about the police cordon around the incident, the two editors started to close more roads within the app. “If only the main roads have been closed, Waze would have used the backstreets to route you into the area that the police had closed, and we didn’t want that,” Anstey says.

Waze says one million drivers in London use its navigation app, enough that pushing out a notification to drivers to steer clear of Borough Market and London Bridge helps keep congestion down. “Because it happens instantly, you’re diverting lots of people away even if they haven’t heard it on the radio,” Anstey adds.

His efforts are part of Waze’s Connected Citizens Programme (CCP), which manages and supports such volunteer efforts around the world, though his work is normally less dramatic, focused on road works and junction tweaks in London. But both areas of his job — the sudden, newsworthy road closures, as well as the slow grind of maintenance — reveal how one pot of carefully managed data can sprawl out in different directions, with the crowdsourced but curated navigation map not only helping commuters on the road but feeding back into TfL’s control room, emergency service, researchers and more, sometimes at a financial cost but more often not, as part of data-sharing deals.

As sprawling cities become more connected, data is proving fundamental to their efficient operation. Letting data flow between sources can not only keep roads clear, but pinpoint accidents for emergency services, find shelter for people in the path of a hurricane and also discourage people from driving in the first place.

Waze started life in 2006 as FreeMap Israel, was commercialised in 2008, and bought by Google in 2013 for just shy of $1 billion. The crowdsourced map is designed for commuters, those drivers who already know where they’re going but hope to shave a few minutes off their daily journey by avoiding congestion or road blockages. Avichai Bakst, director of business development at Waze, says the company’s aim is save drivers five minutes per journey. “Time is the biggest asset we all have… if we can shave a few minutes off your daily commute, then that’s a big thing.”

Commuters drive with the app open, feeding data back to Waze, which automatically warns others that a particular road has delays and suggesting routes for drivers to avoid the traffic. “All you have to do is drive with the app open and you’re contributing to the community in a positive way,” explains Bakst. If a road is closed for works, or there’s an accident, drivers can mark that on the map. About 15 per cent of users take the time to do that, Bakst says.

Anstey’s work is a step beyond that: he actively edits the map for as many as four hours a day, adding in the latest information about roadworks, changes to junctions, or planned events such as the London marathon, as well as unexpected closures, such as gas leaks or broken pipes that flood roads. Retired, Antsey’s work is unpaid.