From what I understand of real time traffic data, most of it is generated from mobile users themselves. That means for the most part it'll be Google, and to a lesser extent Apple.
If Google thinks it's in its advantage to keep that data closed to benefit their business model, then no one else has access to it.
I doubt that traffic data was their main issue ... but anyway ... yes, traffic data is a difficult topic. And yes, the state of open traffic data is bad:
But no, although Google and Apple (and also Mapbox!) do not give a away their traffic data, there are still three sources for world wide traffic data:
TomTom, HERE and inrix. All acquire their data via external software companies or automotive companies (or whatever) including their measurement units into their products.
Mapzen was starting their open traffic data project and so we at Graphhopper were hoping they would solve this issue in the next years, but now, obviously they won't:
>Robust, high quality data
INRIX gathers real-time, predictive and historical data from more than 300 million sources, including commercial fleets, GPS, cell towers, mobile devices and cameras.
>Calculating traffic at a 100m granularity, we use advanced algorithms and heuristics to ensure data is intelligently fused to true traffic conditions for 8 million kilometers of roads in more than 47 countries, making every trip safer and more efficient.
Kinda like it says, they get it from fleets, app makers, etc. For example, you might put an OBD2 device like Automatic in your car to lower your insurance - the company making the OBD2 device might be selling location data of that OBD2 device. Commercial fleets have those as well, and that data is also sold. Same for mobile apps - a lot of them collect user location data, especially anything related to motion/navigation.
One example - http://www.coyotesystems.eu/ but there are dozens, if not hundreds, more companies selling this kind of data on their users, and companies like Inrix aggregate it.
As said Waze, Google, etc. can generate their own. There are also lots of companies that have paid to put sensors on public roads but retain all the rights for the traffic data. I think anything older than 1 day should be released into open data.
