The Smart Traffic Optimization Project(STOP) is supposed to improve the lives of the citizens. According to their own data, it has reduced traffic congestion by 30%, it has improved emergency vehicle response times by 50%, it will save the community 2 million dollars a year and it is 95% efficient. They suggest that before the smart traffic optimization system, the commute was 40 minutes to work, but after it was only 28 minutes.

I support decreasing emergency response by half, and I love that statistic because it helps me feel safe. I love the idea of having the fire department respond in 5 minutes rather than 10 minutes. Going from 10 minutes to 5 minutes is a 50% decrease in time. (10 – 5)/10 = .50 or 50%. That 50% reduction got me excited so I wanted to blog on the city’s latest project. A 5 minute decrease in response time could save lives, but it sounds much more dramatic when presented as a 50% reduction.

The STOP project has decreased my best friend’s commute from downtown 30%, but for me this is not the case. I live in the Lake View neighborhood in the suburbs of town and I feel like my commute is still about the same. This caused me to look into the data a bit closer.

When I looked a little deeper at the numbers the committee provided, I noticed something interesting. Let’s start with the graph, I feel like this is visually deceiving. It looks like the y-axis shortened to appear like this impact is bigger than it really is. Most of the people in the city live in the suburbs like Lake View. I believe Lake View has nearly 60% of the people in the county. If you look closely, the commutes only went down 10%, from 50 minutes to 45 minutes. While I love decreasing traffic as much as anyone, this blogger thinks these taxpayers deserve to get more than a 5 minute decrease in their commute, especially since they are paying for the lion’s share of this project.

Another interesting conflict that causes me to doubt the validity of the project’s claim is that it will save 30% on the average commute, if it is only improving the largest group of the community’s citizens with only a 10% decrease in commute. It is very unlikely that they could get this number unless they surveyed only the people living downtown. Based on the 30% improvements in commute time, I am guessing the committee only talked to people living downtown, which is a bias in the study. Something I wonder as I look at the data is that the project data does not list a sample size or if they tried to survey people that is representative of the city. Perhaps they talked to a few people in the downtown area and generated the data that way.

All of this has me curious, who put this report together? Where they live? How many people were surveyed? Was the sample random across the community? I doubt it because there is no way they would be able to get a 30% reduction in commute time claim if it was.

According to the STOP program, the project is 95% efficient since 190 out of 200 recordings were accurate; 190 / 200 = .95 or 95%. Where were these sensors, were they equally spaced throughout the city, when did they test? Was it in the middle of the night or commute time? I guess what I am saying is that the city is leaving a lot of information out of the report that I would like them to address.

While it costs 8 million to install and I feel like I understand that price, I am not sure how this project will save 2 million each year? They would love us to believe that they will break even in 4 years, but I would love to see HOW the STOP program will save money. I feel like the STOP program, needs to stop deceiving members of the community. They are eroding trust and they need to provide equity across all neighborhoods in the city, not just the downtown neighborhood. Misrepresentation in data will certainly affect how members of Lake View vote or fund projects like this in the future. I doubt that Lake View residents and other people in the suburbs would have voted for the STOP project if they knew they would not get to benefit from all the money they paid into it.

A more responsible version of the city’s claim might be something like this:

The STOP project has reduced average commute times across the city, with downtown residents seeing the biggest improvement at around 33%, while suburban communities like Lake View saw closer to a 10% decrease in commute time. Results vary by neighborhood, and we are continuing to work on improving traffic flow for all residents across the city.

See, that wasn’t so hard was it? I just wish the city would have been upfront with us from the beginning. Don’t tell me 30% when that only applies to one part of town. Tell me the whole story.