No urbanite is spared the nightmare of traffic. We might lament how much worse traffic has gotten, but only professional planners with expensive software know for sure. To enable more information collection, Brooklyn urban planner and activist Aurash Khawarzad and product designer Ted Ullrich developed TrafficCOM, a portable, inexpensive traffic counting device that can be deployed by citizens anywhere. The data collected by the battery-operated device is uploaded and published via open-source mapping software, equipping the public with timely, accurate data that may be used to influence the planning of anything from bike lanes to street closures to parks to mass transit. TrafficCom has been counting cars New York, San Francisco, Moscow, among other cities. The designers hope to improve and democratize traffic data, emphasizing that good information is crucial to good networks.