Johns Creek Expands Waze Partnership To Include Business Locations

JOHNS CREEK, GA -- Finding a business – and driving to it – in Johns Creek is now easier when using Waze thanks to a groundbreaking expansion of the city's partnership with the company.

As the first municipal partner in Georgia, Johns Creek has been sharing real-time road closure and construction information with Waze since August 2015 to help drivers improve their commute and “outsmart traffic.”

This partnership expansion involves sharing business locations derived from Johns Creek license applications and renewals in a map-friendly format that Waze can easily consume.

“If you search for a place to eat or shop in an app on your phone, you’re most likely searching by the name of the business and not a specific address,” says Nick O’Day, Johns Creek’s senior GIS manager and architect of the city’s Open Data Portal. “By sharing business information to Waze with the business name tied to a latitude and longitude, it makes the experience faster and easier.”

Waze pulls information from the city’s Open Data Portal automatically and, as a result, the process doesn’t cost the city anything.

“We are proud to be the first municipality in the world to use this technology to better serve our city,” said Mayor Mike Bodker. “Using this technology, our citizens are better equipped to travel our roads and get to local businesses – faster and easier.”

Waze, the world’s largest crowd-sourced traffic navigation app, likes getting data from partner cities because it can immediately use it. Prior to the initial import of data from Johns Creek, the app recorded around 500 unique businesses in Johns Creek that were manually added over time by Waze users (called “Wazers”).

The first import brought in the remaining 1,000-plus Johns Creek businesses in one massive update. As new businesses move into Johns Creek, these locations will be added to the city’s Open Data Portal and therefore will be pulled into Waze according to their update schedule.

“Today, Johns Creek is leading the Waze Connected Citizens Partner Network in innovation as the first municipality to share real-time business location data with Waze,” said Paige Fitzgerald, Waze’s Connected Citizens program manager. “This allows Waze users to navigate easily to any Johns Creek business and stay up to date on changing business locations. With the addition of this new data set, users will be better able to patronize local businesses.”

Image via Waze