TD NEREUS 05-2020
Renato Schwambach Vieira and Eduardo Amaral Haddad
In this paper, we combine data from Uber Movement and from a representative household travel survey to constructs a weighted travel time index for the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo. The index is calculated based on the average travel time of Uber trips taken between each pair of traffic zone and in each hour between January 1st, 2016 to December 31, 2018. The index is weighted based on the travel patterns reported in a representative household travel survey, thus the results reflect average congestion levels faced by individuals in the city. We show that the index has a strong correlation with traditional measures of congestion, however, it has a broader coverage of the road network. Finally, we run two analyses using the index: 1) we evaluate the trends of traffic congestion between 2016 and 2018, showing a significant decline in average time spent in traffic; 2) We analyze the effect of different events on traffic congestion in the city, including holidays, public transit strikes, road shutdowns, rain and Major sport events.