Fiscal Note
The proposed resolution authorizes a non-competitive sole source contract for transportation analytics software to support Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) planning activities. The one-year contract has a cost of $131,456 and includes two additional one-year terms. Funding for the contract is included in MPO’s 2026 adopted budget (Munis project #65526) and will be included in MPO's future budget requests. Approximately 84% of the MPO’s 2026 budget is supported by federal resources. No additional appropriation is required.
Title
Authorizing the Mayor and City Clerk, on behalf of the Greater Madison MPO, to enter into a sole source contract for an initial one-year subscription renewal (with automatic renewal for two additional one-year terms unless notice is provided otherwise) to an online transportation data analytics software platform from StreetLight Data Inc, to support MPO and City of Madison Planning activities.
Body
WHEREAS, the City of Madison is responsible for providing Software as Service (SAS) for various transportation data and analyses to the Greater Madison MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization), the designated metropolitan planning organization for the Madison area, as provided for in the 2007 MPO designation agreement; and
WHEREAS, the City of Madison is the administrative and fiscal agent for the MPO and is a legally constituted entity under the laws of the State of Wisconsin and able to receive federal and state funding, which covers approximately 84% of the MPO’s budget and is part of the Planning Division’s budget; and
WHEREAS, as the designated MPO for the Madison area, the MPO has responsibilities to perform metropolitan transportation planning and programming activities, including development of a long-range multi-modal regional transportation plan and conducting or supporting special studies to assist in implementing the long-range plan; and
WHEREAS, at its November 5th, 2025 meeting the MPO Policy Board adopted the 2026 Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP) in which the StreetLight subscription was included; and
WHEREAS, due to limitations in scale, cost and time, traditional travel data collection methods alone are not sufficient to support effective transportation planning and project design given the rapidly changing transportation landscape as evidenced by the impact of COVID-19 on travel, and transportation professionals are therefore turning to “big data” sources from mobile devices and connected vehicles to support planning for the future in our dynamic transportation world; and
WHEREAS, the MPO has had a subscription to StreetLight Inc. on-demand transportation analytics software platform for over three years to support MPO planning activities, including development of its travel forecast model, completion of one, and soon another update to the long-range regional transportation plan, and special studies including those related to traffic safety; and
WHEREAS, the original subscription was purchased through a MPO consultant hired to develop a new and improved regional travel forecast model to support that project and the city subsequently renewed the subscription and recently extended the contract to allow time to secure an agreement for a multi-year renewal; and
WHEREAS, the MPO and other City of Madison staff have also used the transportation analytics platform to provide data to support city of Madison projects and planning studies including those for Bus Rapid Transit, Metro Transit Network Redesign, Vision Zero Initiative, the Complete & Green Streets Study, and most recently the City Parks staff used it for analysis of use of City parks; and
WHEREAS, MPO staff have created a StreetLight Data users group of City staff to share information on uses of the platform and provide peer-to-peer learning opportunities, leveraging the expertise on the platform by staff that has been developed over the past several years; and
WHEREAS, Streetlight Data’s StreetLight InSight® transportation analysis tool offers many unique capabilities that differentiate it from competing vendors, including:
• Ability to run and interactively visualize unique customized projects for areas in a cloud-based web platform to understand travel patterns, traffic behavior, and demographic information about the composite group of travelers being analyzed,
• Use of data derived from two location-based services (LBS) data sources and navigation-GPS data sources, as well as many contextual data sets to enrich the metric output,
• Use of an analytic data processing engine, Route Science, that algorithmically integrates spatial data points from multiple types of devices (cellphones, connected cars, fleet management systems, smart phone applications, etc.) into trips and activities, and also contextualizes this Big Data with conventional data, including Census data and traffic counters,
• Availability of data on multiple modes of travel in the platform, including motor vehicle, medium and heavy-duty trucks, public transit buses, bicycles, and pedestrians,
• Availability of estimated average annual, monthly, and hourly travel volume (AADT) counts for almost all roadways in the UPSP by algorithmically combining five data sources (GPS, two sets of LBS data, Census data, and continuous traffic count stations),
• Ability to estimate daily vehicle miles of travel (VMT) for different areas or roadway networks,
• Ability to customize parameters in the platform to get data on unique analysis zones customizable by time of day, day-part, specific dates, circuity, trip length, speed, duration, demographics, and general trip purpose, and
• Provision of additional, regular enhancements to the platform, including new features and functionality at no additional cost to the subscriber); and
WHEREAS, MPO staff has or is using the StreetLight platform to support numerous MPO planning work, including safety studies, updates to the electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure plan, priority-area analysis, active transportation planning and in supporting Madison and other regional community planning initiatives; and
WHEREAS, MPO staff has found StreetLight data metrics to be highly accurate overall, the platform easy to use, customer service excellent, and the experience gained with the platform over the past years will result in efficiencies from continued use rather than switching to a different platform which does not offer the same capabilities of the StreetLight platform; and
WHEREAS, the cost of the annual subscription is $456 more than this past year, for a total of $131,456, and 84% of that ($110,423) is covered by federal and state grant funds; and
WHEREAS, the cost of the subscription renewal is included in the MPO approved 2026 operating budget which is part of the Planning Division budget; and
WHEREAS, under MGO 4.26(4)(b) annual software contracts of more than $75,000 per year that are not competitively selected must be approved by the Common Council and must meet one of the exceptions to competitive bidding in MGO 4.26(4)(a); and
WHEREAS, the reasons for the above and also spelled out in the attached non-competitive selection request form, the StreetLight InSight transportation analytics platform provides unique capabilities not offered by other vendors thus meeting the exception of 4.26(4)(a)2., and continuing the subscription with the existing vendor is more economical on the basis of time and money, meeting the exception of 4.26(4)(a)7.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Common Council authorizes the Mayor and City Clerk to sign a one-year renewal contract with automatic renewal for two additional one-year terms unless notice is provided otherwise on behalf of the Greater Madison MPO for $131,456 with StreetLight Data, Inc. for the purposes described above to support the MPO and City of Madison’s planning and project design activities and other local community transportation planning efforts.