NVTA unveils interactive travel-trends dashboard to let localities explore traffic and transit data

Matt Bewley, a regional transportation planner at the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, demonstrated a new interactive travel-trends dashboard at the authority's Feb. 12 meeting, saying the Power BI product makes previously quarterly metrics easier to explore.

"I'm Matt Bewley. I'm a regional transportation planner here at NVTA," Bewley told members as he walked through the landing page, traffic-volume charts, a travel-time-reliability index and transit ridership by mode. He said the traffic measures use data from VDOT's 58 permanent counters and that the dashboard reports indices with quarter‑one 2020 set as the baseline so users can see relative changes since the pandemic.

The dashboard includes interactive filters for day of week and time of day, and riders can break ridership down by transit agency. Bewley noted the tool is public on the authority website and that staff plans to add tabs and measures over time.

Why it matters: the dashboard centralizes multiple data streams (VDOT traffic counts, reliability indices and transit boardings) in one interactive view, giving localities and agencies a shared resource for monitoring travel patterns and informing project priorities.

Staff said the dashboard is intended to supplement, not replace, existing reports and that members can request additions as needs arise. The demonstration followed a brief question period; the authority recorded no formal action on the item and directed staff to make the dashboard available to member jurisdictions.