Laura Schewel, CEO and co-founder of Streetlight Capital, speaks here. The San Francisco startup ... [+]
StreetLight Data, a startup that analyzes traffic patterns to help cities improve transportation efficiency, has raised $15 million from four venture capital firms.
The new funders are Macquarie Capital and Activate Capital, who have joined existing funders Osage University Partners and Ajax Investment Strategies.
StreetLight, based in San Francisco, uses data from commuters’ cell phones to look at traffic data and patterns that can enable transportation officials to reduce congestion. The data also helps transit officials and business executives understand how “new mobility” options are affecting commuting habits, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We started raising capital before pandemic, but now the industry knows who we are,” StreetLight CEO and co-founder Laura Schewel. “We want to expand the types of services we offer customers and bring new data to them. Those are natural next steps.
“We also wanted to explore new markets. There’s a lot more industries that should be caring about transportation.”
The company’s clients include government agencies, engineering firms and new mobility companies. StreetLight employs about 100 people today, Schewel said, up from about 35 two years ago.
Last month StreetLight announced a partnership with Boston Consulting Group to communicate some of their research since the mitigation measures taken by some states and cities in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Among the findings:
- From the beginning of March through April 7, the national average of vehicle miles traveled dropped by 72%.
- Since then rural counties have fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels while urban counties are still in recovery at about 90%.
- That sharpest declines came in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut tristate area and Washington, D.C., where initial traffic flows declined between 80% and 90%, while southern states, including Texas and Alabama, saw drops of only of 50% to 60%.
- Population density is a big driver—urban counties saw a VMT reduction that was about 20 to 30 percentage points higher on average than that of rural counties.
- The top three correlating factors to the VMT reduction profile are household income, population density, and prevalence of professional service jobs, all of which are higher in urban areas than rural.
Schewel said that use of the company’s data doubled in the first month of the pandemic.
“Covid-19 has dramatically increased the need for mobility data analysis to understand travel patterns and modal choice during different stages of lockdown and reopening,” said Augustin Wegscheider, a BCG partner who leads the firm’s Center for Mobility Innovation.
StreetLight and BCG will also work with cities, logistic and transportation providers to develop micro-mobility (scooters, bicycles, ride sharing, etc.) and autonomous vehicle options with the goal of reducing congestion.
“The first thing we’re doing is for people who have to make decisions now, to provide them with the best available information,” Schewel said. “Then we’re trying to help customers figure out how to come back differently based on what we are learning.”
