Can an Alphabet spinoff Replica use phone location data to transform urban planning?

Replica's technology is so new, urban planners don't know what to do with it. To understand its biggest selling point to communities across the country, consider the laborious transportation studies Kansas City has done for the last 50 years or so. About once a decade, planners ask residents to fill out a travel diary in a low-tech effort to assess how people move about the metro area. Participants jot down details about the mundane trips they take in a given week — commuting to work, dropping the kids off at school, and that jaunt to the grocery store that's never quite as short as planned — helping decision-makers identify choke points and which public infrastructure is most in need of attention. The last survey was completed in 2019. It covered nearly 4,000 households in the metro area and cost taxpayers $800,000. Replica thinks it can do better with the help of millions of smartphone location data pings.