Shoot the Narrative, Not the Messenger

Ok - for best Things I Saw this Week (#19) the INRIX 2018 Global Traffic Scorecard is certainly it. Tons of data made publicly available to the world that just 10 years ago no one had a clue about. What many will hear every year this scorecard arrives is how it is unfairly measures travel in their city, it exaggerates the value of congestion,.... First - about my title - don't shoot anyone....it's a play on the 100's of year old metaphoric phrase regarding the bearer of bad news. In today's world, communication and information is much more open and fast (thankfully, so we should not shoot anyone). Decisions are made with a dizzying array of data that is so deep that the real enemy is the lack of deep dives that seek the truth (which is hard) and can result in environment where narratives can drive decisions not the data. Data-free decision making is dangerous, it's unkind to people.

Now to the message - Inrix does a masterful job of weeding through vast archives of data to produce the global traffic scorecard. We should be grateful for the energy and innovation brought to this sector. I spoke with Ted Trepanier of Inrix on Wednesday at the Bellevue Vision Zero Summit and he voiced the two most valuable aspects of this report is the quantification of an issue and ability to use it in prioritization...."if you are not keeping score how do you know where you are going?" The cries to shoot the messenger about the data are ill-founded. The desire for better data are well founded. Inrix has evolved over the years to produce better information and in ways that are easy to understand. They are advancing to take speed trajectories and utilized them to analysis speed profiles in much greater depth than every before to advance safety quantification and prioritization.

Oh, and one point about congestion. That's a you thing. Safety, that's an us thing. People in Astoria, Oregon really do not care about congestion in Los Angeles (other than they should use electric cars so they do not pollute the earth and gets goods on trains to get them out of there faster). If folks in LA want less congestion - they can pay for it. That's a you thing. Killing 38,000 people a year - that's an us thing that if we are prioritizing funding we might want to pay more attention to in the USA.

Finally who to "shoot"....hmmmmm... maybe I should rephrase that to what to "question" here. Quantification of an issue many times exposes light on things that folks, who thrive in narrative without research and data don't like. This should be the call for greater learning as to the why you may feel that way, not to ignore or proceed data-free. While some narratives without data can be great ideas and lead us to research, findings and quantification (like congestion is today). It evolves better decision making. However, narrative without the work to quantify and expose values, benefits and impacts are just that - data-free narratives. I have seen it with ITE Trip Generation and Parking Generation where the data exposes issues. Some people use the data, learn from it and advance decision making. Other mis-use or place over reliance on partial data leading to poor decisions and a response that the data source is flawed. Correction - the people using the data source are the issue. I have seen people take statistical measures such as the 85th percentile speed and want it erased from our history books - frankly this sound scarily like a kristallnacht-mentality.....with data. We should never fear data - we should fear folks that place over emphasis on partial data, do not use data at all or ignore what can be learned from data that might not align with our intuitions or expectations.

People that utilize congestion as the only measure to assess transportation are using partial data. People that do not want you to look at data because it does not align with their thoughts or narratives scare me. Diversity of thought thrives in data and the inclusion of various points of view - it is the genesis of great decision making and better communities. It is hard, because of the volume of data, to see the signal through the noise (a great book by Nate Silver by the way). That is our calling. We can have 85th percentile speeds, congestion score cards, livable, safety and economical vibrant communities - that is not the messenger job to make that happen - that is our job. To go beyond narrative to the depth of discussion about community values (be they safety, access, mobility, travel options, environment, economic, goods movement, livability, health or equity). To not get lost in the data and be able to dive into detail and rise up to the big picture - repetitively. To Shape your Community.