By Michelle Ramsay
Our world is being re-shaped by apps. Amazon, Airbnb, and Uber have disrupted commerce, while apps such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn have given the word “social” a whole new meaning. Now we have welcome news that a “social fitness” app called Strava is poised to re-shape our city’s biking network.
Strava—which is the Swedish word for strive—enables its “community of athletes” to track their bike rides, runs and walks via their iPhone, Android or dedicated GPS device. It also helps them analyze and quantify their performance. They can strive to improve their personal best (PB) or work their way up the Strava Leaderboard whilst competing against other Strava users on designated routes.
The app also brings camaraderie and motivation, incorporating fun features such as clubs, badges and crownings. King or Queen of the Mountain is a highly coveted title across the Strava world. Over 50 GPS devices are compatible with the app, including Fitbit, Garmin and Suunto. Although the company does not publish its user numbers, it does say that some five million rides are logged into its database every week. It’s no wonder PC Magazine listed Strava as one of ‘The 25 Best Fitness Apps for 2016’.
The combination of the Strava app and GPS technology also unlocks an opportunity to use the collected data—stripped of personal identifiers to protect user privacy—in city planning. Happily for cyclists, the two municipalities in the National Capital Region are collaborating to take advantage of this opportunity.
The cities of Ottawa and Gatineau recently announced that they have entered into an agreement with Strava Inc. to obtain cycling data for the region. The agreement gives the two cities access to two years’ worth of cycling trip data, such as where and when people are riding, how far and what measures they take to deal with unsafe roadways. The data is then aggregated to provide a pattern of cycling trips across the region.
The first year’s data is historical, comprising over 160,000 bike trips logged by the 7,065 local riders who are already registered users of the Strava app. The second year’s data is real time data, tracking bike rides point-to-point 24/7 while being continually updated with the addition of new users, changes to the bike path network, and even accident locations.
The Strava mapping will also shape changes to the cycling network because the data will highlight sections of routes and roadways where people are detouring or using sidewalks, which indicates they don’t feel safe riding on those stretches. City staff can then decide what would make them feel safer, painting sharrows (road-sharing markings showing a bicycle with two chevrons), designating a bike lane, or installing a multi-use pathway.
Numerous other municipalities have decided to use Strava Metro data in their planning process. The company formed Strava Metro and struck its first deal with the Oregon Department of Transportation in fall 2013. Since then, cities around the world have signed up at a fast pace. In Ontario, they include Simcoe County, Halton County, City of Oakville, City of London, York Region and now, Ottawa.
Soon after the announcement, local bike blogger Kathryn Hunt of The Incidental Cyclist cautioned, “It is certainly the best data collection option the city’s come up with yet, but whoever looks at the results should remember that ‘If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen’ shouldn’t be the rule.”
To address concerns that Strava data is marketed to bike ‘warriors’ and cycling competitors, Hunt and a few other local bike commuters formed a club called #ottbike on the Strava website. She explains, “…after the City’s announcement, quite a few cyclists signed up, specifically in order to track the kind of riding we do and make sure it shows up against the sea of spandex. There’s an #ottbike Strava club now to remind people to log their short, slow, urban trips, to generate the kind of data we want generated.” About 80 people have joined the #ottbike club to date.
Strava Metro Manager Brian Riordan points out that, “Of the 7,000 users in your region, over 4,700 of them upload commute trips. Of the 160,000 bike trips logged last year, more than half were commute trips and not recreation. The demographic of the Strava user is changing as the social network continues to grow. So there is already a large group of commutes on Strava and with new folks coming on board this will only provide deeper data.”
Ottawa’s Citizens for Safe Cycling is encouraging people to join Strava as a voting platform. “This data will be used in decision-making about cycling and walking infrastructure. Every trip you take is a vote for where you want to go. The City will be able to learn how bike traffic flows at intersections, how usage patterns change in winter or darkness, which streets even the most enthusiastic Strava users refuse to use, how far out of our way some of us have to go to cross a river or a highway, the desire-lines that need to be made into official routes, how long pedestrians wind up waiting at intersections, and how far and how fast a typical active commuter will go.”
Riordan echoes the importance of participating in the data capture: “Every time you log into Strava, you vote for your ride and the paths that you use.”
This is civic engagement with a side of fun. Kathryn Hunt enjoys that “cyclists who’ve signed on for Strava in spite of its sportsiness, and because they want people to know that not everyone on a bike is training for a century [a 100-mile ride], are having some fun with it. They’re giving the rides they log sarcastic names. They’re making a point of the ordinariness of their ride to get cat food or toilet paper or bagels. They’re speculating on whether, at some point, an engineer at Strava will stop and wonder why there’s suddenly been this spike in slow, short, meandering, un-athletic trips in the Ottawa area.
Stephen Lund of Victoria, BC spent the whole of 2015 creating Strava GPS drawings, chronicled at his website Sketchbook of a GPS Artist www.gpsdoodles.com. The cycling community took immediate note and countless GPS designs of dinosaurs, queens, Star War characters and birthday messages later, his art was covered by press everywhere, and Lund himself was featured on CBC News and talked on Tedx Victoria.
If you cycle and want to participate, download the smartphone app or register at www.strava.com to begin using Strava. The basic app is free; a premium subscription is offered to users who want more functionality. Once you register, consider joining the #ottbike club so you can keep track of what’s happening in Ottawa. Go to: http://www.strava.com/clubs/168195.
To learn more: ‘Bike Data in Ottawa’, an infographic courtesy of Citizens for Safe Cycling http://www.bikeottawa.ca/index.php/24-data/41-bike-data