Can GPS improve urban cycling?
Interview with Billy Charlton, Deputy Director for Technology Services at the San Francisco County Transportation Authority.
Since 2002, San Francisco’s County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) has been using a computer-based tool, SF-CHAMP (San Francisco Chained Activity Modeling Process), to predict daily travel migrations.
Demographic and infrastructure facts, as well as street data, are analyzed in SF-CHAMP to improve the city’s transportation system. So far, the computer model has been used to improve bus services and study the effects of a subway extension to Chinatown or even a possible London like congestion zone for downtown San Francisco in which access would be subject to fees.
But until recently, bicycles were left out of the equation. Now the authority is encouraging cyclists to use a newly developed tool, the smart-phone app CycleTracks to record their habits, since it has become apparent that wheeled vehicles’ operators soon find the easiest, safest and fastest routes that will get them to their destinations. Billy Charlton explains that the system already received substantial input, but lacked information on preferred and used bicycle routes. With such data collected directly from users, a computer model will do a better job at predicting daily migrations:
“We have a general idea of how many people are bicycling from the Mission District to downtown, but we don’t really know what streets they are using. It turns out that cities don’t have such data. They just put bike lanes where street was flat, or there they had room, mostly based on planning hunches on where they thought bike lanes should go. But we never really had information on specifically what people wanted. For Cycletracks, we thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could use smart phones to track people who are cycling and have that information come back to us.”
Not so long ago, most people would fight strongly against sending their exact locations to anyone; especially when the data would be collected by a government agency. But as location-based services are evolving, so is the perception of privacy. According to Charlton, motivating cyclers to report their tracks was not at all difficult.
“It turns out that in this era, when people are posting on Facebook where they are every 10 minutes, and using their phones to find out where their friends are, the privacy issue really evaporated. We didn’t have issues with people worried that we’ll use the data in some problematic way.”
To assure better input from crowd sourcing, SFCTA engaged with bicycling advocates like the San Francisco Bike coalition and blogs that cover transportation issues. They have also put effort into making iPhone and Android applications appealing to users.
“We tried to make the app look nice and let it track details and statistics about your ride. That way users get something also. But really the main thing is motivating people to want to help, to pitch in on making bicycling better for everybody, so there are enough people out there who want to do that, who will download the app, just by hearing about it or seeing friends using it.”
Although SFCTA is targeting people in the San Francisco area, the app works anywhere and the database shows that people from other locations are using it too. In fact, other planning agencies have shown an interest in using CycleTracks. Around 1100 people use it already and more than 8,000 separate trips have been recorded. “We were hoping to get a fraction of that,” says Charton.
Data gathered so far confirms that cyclists are avoiding hills and prefer to ride a few blocks more to reach safe bike facilities. However, the model hasn’t yet been able to further examine the patterns and identify problems like dangerous spots or missing facilities. Smart-phone users will know Cycletrack is not the only bicycle app but it is unique in its feature: information gathered might soon improve the over-all infrastructure. But beware, smart-phone use is not always safe on bicycles. In fact, the State of California is considering a law that will ban texting while riding a bicycle, already unlawful in the case of vehicle drivers.
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