The City of Arlington today announced a data-sharing partnership with Waze (http://www.waze.com), the free, real-time crowd-sourced traffic and navigation app powered by the world's largest community of drivers. Designed as a free, two-way data share of publicly available traffic information, the Connected Citizens Program promotes greater efficiency, deeper insights and safer roads for citizens of Arlington along with more than 100 other partners around the world.

The Waze Connected Citizens Program gives municipal leaders an unprecedented look at real-time road activity, empowering partners to harness real-time driver insights to improve congestion and make better informed planning decisions. Established as a two-way data share, Waze provides partners with real-time, anonymous, Waze-generated incident and slow-down information directly from the source: drivers themselves. In exchange, Arlington provides real-time government-reported construction, crash and road closure data to Waze to return one of the most succinct, thorough overviews of current road conditions today.

"By partnering with Waze, Arlington is positioned to gain a deeper understanding of real-time conditions," said Mindy Carmichael, Director of Public Works and Transportation. "The context of why traffic has occurred, in addition to specific incident reports, is invaluable to optimize the operation of our roadways."

The Waze map evolves with every driver and data point it receives, promoting safer roads and sharing more knowledge with Wazers about potential delays to their commutes. The Connected Citizens program yields even more data, giving local citizens a greater ability to circumvent road closures and traffic jams within the app. Arlington can also provide Wazers with advanced notice of major traffic events such as parades and dignitary visits that will affect their daily routes.

"Waze welcomes the city of Arlington into our Connected Citizens Program. No one knows more about what is happening on the roads than Wazers and the city of Arlington can now harness the power of these insights to improve congestion and make better informed planning decisions.," said Adam Fried, Waze's new business development manager. "For Wazers, the City of Arlington will provide critical road closure and construction information, helping citizens drive safely and save time on their daily commute."

It is critical that prospective partners show their dedication to citizen engagement and commit to use Waze data to improve city efficiency. Waze Partners are also expected to measure and share their findings with other municipal organizations, developing case studies that serve as keys to a global set of improvements which can be made for collective mobility.

To find out more about Connected Citizens visit http://waze.com/ccp. To download the free Waze app for iOS or Android, visit http://www.waze.com/get.

This data-sharing partnership with Waze aligns with both the Arlington City Council's priority to Put Technology to Work and the priority to Enhance Regional Mobility.