Uber hopes to appease cities with tool showing traffic patterns

San Francisco

UBER Technologies Inc is hoping to win brownie points with some cities by opening up a small sample of its ridership data. The San Francisco ride-hailing company introduced a traffic dashboard called Uber Movement, saying the tool is designed to help city leaders, urban planners and civic communities.

The project is rolling out with traffic information curated by Uber's data whizzes for three cities: Manila, Sydney and Washington. The company hopes it will cover dozens of cities by mid-February. "By delivering these insights to cities, we can give back to the community," said Andrew Salzberg, head of transportation policy at Uber.