What’s the context?
Newcastle City Council has in a place a Cycling Strategy that aims to make Newcastle ‘Fit for Cycling’. The intention is to enable everyone in the city, including young and old, to feel safe and empowered to consider cycling as a realistic choice. We have targets to significantly increase cycling for everyday trips recognising that providing space for people on bikes is key to both achieving our ambition, and supporting the local and national campaigns calling for this.
With our Re-newcastle programme investing in public space, we are beginning to see the delivery of a more cycle-friendly city. We are working to deliver ambitious new routes and places for people cycling with the £16m Cycle City Ambition Grant from the Department for Transport. For example, the major improvements will see John Dobson Street transformed into a new boulevard-style layout featuring widened pavements, new road crossings for people walking, a two-way protected bike lane, seating areas and improved public transport links. .
Safe, accommodating public space is crucial. We are committed to expanding and enhancing places and ways for people to ride bikes and walk, particularly between the city centre and surrounding residential areas, wherever possible linking to neighbouring authorities. By focusing on people’s door-to-door journeys we are increasing connectivity, critical to enabling people of all ages and abilities to get out more on their bikes.
We also recognise the importance of ensuring people have the skills and confidence to ride, through training, organised and guided rides or big, promotional events. This is why we’re promoting Cycling in the City, offering bike loans, bike servicing sessions and other activities, all aimed at getting people in the saddle.
What is the challenge?
The city council collects data from cycle counters along major cycle ways. Data is captured in near real-time. However, sensors solely show activity levels and therefore its use for encouraging cycling and city planning is limited, as no detail is apparent on purpose, start, duration of trips.
The City Council are seeking ways of making better use of the Cycle Counter network and also to consider alternatives to help find out about popular local transport routes, why journeys are made, concerns experienced on these journeys, and by whom. This may be in the forms of surveys, but also potentially using technology such as mobile phone apps.
We are likely to be able to access Strava data and through a European Project, we are working to develop a track and track type app. We are interested in considering further he we recruit and engage people with the project and to encourage people to provide us with data as well as in ways to make better use of this data to help design better neighbourhoods. For example, could local residents share route information with themselves and the city council in a direct way to help involve cyclists and local commuters in infrastructure planning?
What are the deliverables?
The challenge for this project is to come up with a proposition for cycle data be better used, displayed, perhaps over time. A key problem will be to think through which, how, and why citizens may partake in your intervention. The city council asks how they could see the ‘bigger picture’ to cycling trips undertaken.
The ideal outcome would be something that planners can use to understand cyclists needs.
- Potential solutions could include, for example, an app to share one’s cycle activity along with some comments to Sustrans;
- You could find inspirations from other mapping service where cyclists log their routes and expand this with the ability to share and annotate the daily trips they make for a set time period.