Bicycle Network: Join in

Smart iPhone app to boost bike planning

15 June 2010 RiderLog usage continues to grow. More than 1600 rides have been logged in the last month – a total of more than 18,000 km and more than 1000 hours of riding. A number of local governments and state government agencies have expressed an interest in seeing where riders are going.

26 May 2010 Bicycle Network Victoria today released RiderLog, an iPhone app smart enough to plan the routes and locations of future bike paths and bike facilities.

RiderLog monitors your bike trips via GPS and then sends them to the ‘cloud,’ where, anonymized and combined with every other user’s trips, it builds an accurate and realtime map of where, when and how people are riding their bikes.

For the first time planners and engineers and policy makers will know for sure where riders are actually travelling, not where they guess or hope they are going.

The app, which is a free download from the iTunes store, has a dual role. For the rider it is an easy-to-use bike computer that displays vital statistics of a ride and greatly assists in the assement of exercise targets. RiderLog also shows a riders a map of any past rides.

At the end of a ride, rider data, including GPS coordinates, are securely uploaded to become part of what will be an invaluable source of data that shows rider flows throughout Australia.

RiderLog is being made available to bike riders everywhere and to any transport authority in the world interested in getting the best possible data on rider behaviour.

The Chief executive of Bicycle Network Victoria, Harry Barber, said that RiderLog had the potential to revolutionise the way transportation authorities managed their bicycle communities.

“Bike riders have often been the invisible road user,” Mr Barber said. “While motor vehicles are counted, weighed, photographed and modelled on a minute-by-minute basis, road managers could rarely tell you where the bikes were going."

“We have a major bike count in Melbourne once a year, but many places never count bikes. Even when you do count, you only get a snapshot."

“With this data we can see every trip from the riders perspective: every hill they avoid, every quiet road they prefer, the quickest route through the peak hour crush—this all shows up instantly.”

Mr Barber said that if authorities could get a clear picture of riding patterns, they could better plan their investment in bike facilities, and not waste money on unpopular routes.

The application is available at the iTunes store.

For more information:
http://www.riderlog.org

RiderLog was developed by Melbourne software developer, Outware Mobile