Google Street View can estimate travel patterns in cities: Study
Google Street View is the service provided within Google Maps through which users can navigate through the panoramic imagery of the streets. The researchers selected a random sample of 34 British cities. They accessed 2,000 images in each city from 1,000 randomly sampled locations, and counted the number of pedestrians, parked cycles, cyclists, motorcycles, cars, buses and vans/trucks in each image.
The Google Street View data was compared with levels of walking, cycling and other travel modes as reported in the 2011 Census. Image source: Reuters