US FHWA to use Inrix for national traffic datasets

The US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and state and regional agencies are to use traffic datasets from Inrix to assess travel reliability, congestion, and emissions. 

Inrix is a global company that offers connected car services and transportation analytics. 

In order to monitor systems performance, the US states use FHWA’s National Performance Management Research Data Set (NPMRDS), which provides consistent information for passenger and commercial freight roadway performance across the National Highway System.

NPMRDS also offers comprehensive data from 25 key Canadian and Mexican border crossings. 

From July this year, all state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organisations will have access to the Inrix travel time data to establish performance targets and report on progress. 

Inrix global public sector vice-president and general manager Scott Sedlik said: "We are proud to supply the underlying traffic data that will be used to monitor, measure and improve many of our nation’s key roadways.

"This federal win is further proof of the breadth and quality of our world-class traffic services."

In order to support NPMRDS till 2022, Inrix has partnered with various organisations, which includes Center for Advanced Transportation Technology Laboratory (CATT Lab) at the University of Maryland (UMD), US. 

CATT Lab will serve as the prime contractor for this project and will be responsible for operating the portal used by the transportation planners to analyse, visualise and understand road performance.

CATT Lab director Michael Pack said: "Inrix real-time traffic services will help public agencies actively measure, report and manage traffic.

"The quality of the data plays a fundamental and necessary role in NPMRDS to accurately assess our nation’s roadways." 

Prior to this partnership, Inrix has partnered with UMD for I-95 Corridor Coalition’s Vehicle Probe Project. 

For this project, Inrix has also collaborated with Texas A&M Transportation Institute, which will support the company in establishing and maintaining NPMRDS GIS location referencing network files based on FHWA’s Highway Performance Monitoring System’s NHS network. 

KMJ Consulting is also part of the I-95 project, and will triage customer support and aid in project management.