Rapidly expanding mobile apps for crowd-sourcing bike data to new cities : final report.

Details

• Creators:
  Barbeau, Sean J. ; Cetin, Cagri
• Corporate Creators:
  University of South Florida. Center for Urban Transportation Research
• Corporate Contributors:
  National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC)
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Data collection
  • Mobile applications
  • Bicycle facilities
  • Travel behavior
  • Cities
  • Crowdsourcing
• Publication/ Report Number:
  NITCN-RR-857
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States ; San Francisco (California) ; Atlanta (Georgia) ; Portland (Oregon)
• Edition:
  Final report
• Corporate Publisher:
  National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC)
• Abstract:
  Cities such as San Francisco, Atlanta, and Portland are using novel methods of data collection to learn more about the use of their bicycle ; infrastructure. These data can help transportation planners better design or upgrade bicycle facilities. San Francisco created an open-source ; project, Cycle Tracks, a mobile app used to collect bike path data from bicyclists’ smartphones. These data then were used in the SF-CHAMP ; travel demand model to forecast how attractive Bike Facility A would be compared to Bike Facility B to understand the potential mode shifts ; that could occur with implementation of bike infrastructure, and to better understand the impact of new SF bike infrastructure on bicyclist travel ; behavior. A similar project, Cycle Atlanta, was implemented in Atlanta, GA, and was based on the Cycle Tracks open-source code, as was ; ORcycle for Portland, OR. These methods of gathering data from the public via mobile apps are referred to as “crowd-sourcing.” ; Whereas open-source crowd-sourcing mobile apps can provide a wealth of information to transportation planners, there is at least one major ; obstacle to deploying these projects in new cities: software engineers for iOS and Android must modify and re-deploy these apps for each city. ; As a result, deploying these apps in new cities can be very costly, which limits adoption and removes opportunities for innovation based on data ; collected from such apps. ; This project takes the first steps towards helping to overcome the barriers to wide-scale adoption of bike data crowd-sourcing mobile apps by ; creating a proof-of-concept “multi-region” architecture, allowing cities to share the same set of mobile apps on the Android and iOS apps stores ; while setting up their own server specific to their geographic area. This solution can reduce the cost of deployment by leveraging the mobile ; apps that already exist, rather than each city needing to modify and launch its own version of the apps. Future work should focus on developing ; a brand identity of these multi-region apps, including a possible partnership with existing organizations that have deployed existing apps (e.g., ; Georgia Tech for Cycle Atlanta, San Francisco County Transportation Authority for Cycle Tracks) to further test and release the multi-region ; improvements as updates to their existing applications. Use of the standardized Open311 format to report issues can also be examined, along ; with leveraging other open-source transportation applications such as OneBusAway to give users additional incentive and value to continue to ; contribute trip data.
  More +
• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/32298/dot_32298_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.53 MB]
• Collection(s):
  University Transportation Centers ; US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:fe4ceb6c6a5a2703013b00f662fad0c53408b73ac5743f13fce6b288ccc23904