Montevideo, Uruguay
Proving That Smooth Data Practices Translate to Smooth Traffic
Project Type:
Community Engagement, Infrastructure, Public Safety, Transportation
2024 Gold Certification
Montevideo, Uruguay marshaled data to keep residents safe during a recent drought and water crisis. As salinity levels in tap water spiked, city leaders publicly shared water-test data daily, enabling pregnant women, people with hypertension, and others to know when water was safe to drink. They also used data to identify vulnerable populations who would benefit most from fresh water deliveries. This work built on a major push to build a culture of data-driven decision making in City Hall; staff were offered a financial incentive for scaling data and evidence practices which moved the city to Gold Certification.
2023 Silver Certification
10 transit intervention plans created for hotspot traffic areas.
Reduced annual traffic fatality rate to 6.2 per 100,000 residents—half the country’s overall rate.
Used strong Data Management practices to develop impactful traffic interventions with real-time data.
In recent decades, the leaders of Montevideo, Uruguay, have become familiar with a simple fact with far-reaching consequences: more people means more vehicles. As Uruguay’s commercial, political and cultural hub, Montevideo is no stranger to traffic. In 2015, its leaders set out to address the City’s massive traffic problem in a data-driven way. The City installed dozens of real-time sensors along major routes, created a new Center for Mobility Management to monitor and manage traffic data collection, and implemented a new mobility plan to cool off hotspots.
After building a data visualization platform that displays real-time traffic levels across Montevideo’s road network, and holding neighborhood meetings to understand residents’ traffic concerns, the City focused transit interventions on 10 particularly congested hot zones. Leaning heavily on sensor data analyses, they simulated the impact of different traffic engineering solutions—such as changing the timing and duration of traffic signals, or making a street one-way—and then settled on the most impactful options for each site. This access to high-quality, real-time data, combined with strong data governance practices, allowed the City to better understand the problem and then to develop and test tailored solutions for the hotspot zones.
“We don’t want to collect information just to verify the reality, we want to collect information to change the reality.”
In addition to real quality-of-life improvements for Montevideo drivers, the City also realized environmental benefits, including reduced CO2 emissions, due to less idling, and better fuel economy. Moreover, the City’s commitment to improving traffic flow is helping to save lives. Montevideo’s annual traffic fatality rate is now 6.2 per 100,000 residents—half the country’s overall rate. City leaders believe that the installation of speed radars across the City, along with efforts to lower congestion in hotspots, has helped change driver behavior and prevent traffic-related deaths.
When you can measure a problem, you can manage it—and that’s exactly what Montevideo officials are doing, street by street.
“For us, What Works Cities Certification is a way to measure our performance. The goal isn’t to be happy with where we are now—although we’re proud of our progress—but rather to evolve and provide better services to residents.”