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ODI Fridays: How ODI Leeds discovered that bad transport is impacting the Birmingham economy

Location: Open Innovations - 3rd Floor - Munro House - Duke Street - LS9 8AG Leeds

Date: -


For the past year ODI Leeds used Transport for The West Midlands' open API to track over 50 million bus departures in and around Birmingham, and have made a surprising discovery Tom Forth, Head of Data at ODI Leeds will describe how they built a Real Journey Time tool, and how TfWM, National Express, and The West Midlands Bus Alliance are using it to invest in bus lanes, speed up journeys, and plan new investments. Tom will also share how, by working in the open and releasing data, ODI Leeds was able to work with partners such as the ONS and The Productivity Insights Network (PIN). Their work with PIN has let us estimate that sacrificed agglomeration benefits due to congestion cost the Birmingham economy 7% of GVA (£1.8bn/year), a significantly bigger impact than that arrived at by traditional methods. Finally, Tom will talk about the wide variety of investors and supporters that enabled this work, and ODI Leeds' ambitions for bringing Real Journey Time tool to more cities, and the current barriers to doing so.