[HN Gopher] Video: Why Open Data Matters for Cycling: Visualizin...
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Video: Why Open Data Matters for Cycling: Visualizing a Cycling
City
Author : raybb
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-03-24 16:11 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.trufi-association.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.trufi-association.org)
| kiliantics wrote:
| I am in the process of planning a trip and wanted to visit a city
| that was bicycle friendly. I figured there must be some index or
| metric that I could use to compare cities. There are such numbers
| to compare things like air quality, traffic, cost of living, etc.
| But I couldn't find any kind of standard for bikeability or
| walkability. The only related measurements made are for how long
| an average trip takes for cars.
|
| Without a good measurement, we won't have something to point at
| to force cities to be better. And making these changes is an
| urgent must right now for the climate of course and just for the
| average standard of living, which seems to be going down
| everywhere due to the sizes and quantities of cars that are
| arriving in cities lately.
|
| I really support this kind of work and hope it grows. Here is
| another nice project I found using OSM during my search:
|
| https://pasaentuciudad.com.mx/ranking-cyclability-in-europe-...
| snthd wrote:
| Look at "modal share".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share
|
| https://cityclock.org/blogs/cycling-mode-share-data-700-citi...
| cmdalbem wrote:
| Your point is super important, but fortunately there is
| actually a lot of research and debate on this topic. The most
| common misconception is that it's enough to talk about the
| absolute total length of cyclable paths, but I simple to
| understand that's not the best metric to compare cities.
|
| I'm the designer and developer of CicloMapa [1], one of the
| tools presented in the video. The project is a partnership with
| ITDP, which is an international organization that created and
| constantly measures a metric called People Near Bike (PNB) [2].
| In summary takes into account if the infrastructure is really
| serving people that live nearby.
|
| Another metric we use, at least for some brazilian cities, is
| IDECICLO [3], which analyses the quality of the existing
| infrastructure in terms of access, comfort, safety etc. It's a
| very holistic metrics, but compared to PnB is way more complex
| to measure and more prone to subjectivity.
|
| [1] https://ciclomapa.org.br/ [2]https://itdpbrasil.org/pnb/
| [3] https://plataformadedados.netlify.app/ideciclo/
| CalRobert wrote:
| This is really cool! Though a writeup would be nice instead of a
| 50 minute video. OpenCycleMap is really a gem - it's why I bought
| the house I did (among other reasons). Thunderforest puts
| together some nice bike layers in their map tiles too.
|
| Related, there's some free courses on how to do Urban Mobility
| Visualizations (those cool 3d renders architects and urban
| planners make) at urbanmobilitycourses.eu, well worth checking
| out.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Though a writeup would be nice instead of a 50 minute
| video._
|
| It looks like it is a recording of something that was intended
| as a live seminar1 so a conscious decision was made to make and
| present it this way. Though transcript would be useful, that
| could take time to produce2. If you have an abundance of time,
| perhaps you could volunteer?
|
| [1] one that might have been in a hall somewhere but was pushed
| into homes by C19 restrictions, going by the backgrounds
|
| [2] the speakers may not have had full scripts, just crib
| notes, meaning a transcript would be more work than simply
| collecting their notes together, and I've not seen great
| results from automatic transcription except when the speaker
| has a very clear "standard" accent and the sound quality is
| high.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Very cool! I need to use this more for Los Angeles. The city is
| known to be one of the worst cycling cities in the US (and many
| parts are quite awful). But given that it is such a huge behemoth
| of sprawl there are also some quite amazing bike paths and places
| to cycle if you know where to go. And the LACBC is doing amazing
| work on getting that expanded - one day somewhat soon there
| should be a bike path running the entire LA river. On top of that
| Cyclavia is an amazing event I highly recommend anyone in the
| area participate in.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| LA is surprisingly progressive; it's (still, I believe) the
| only city in the US to outlaw harassment of a cyclist, though
| as always, good luck getting the police to do anything for you
| if you're on a bike.
|
| LA has a lot going for it in terms of biking for transport.
| Easy to navigate road system, the sprawl means bikes are an
| attractive alternative to walking, ditto for having pretty flat
| terrain.
| julvo wrote:
| Tangential, but I wish there was open traffic data with high
| coverage for planning low-traffic cycling routes. Looked at
| openly available aerial images, but the resolution is not high
| enough to detect traffic
| loeg wrote:
| Strava global heatmap is pretty good if you trust other
| cyclists' judgment: https://www.strava.com/heatmap .
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Strava heatmap is terrible. It is heavily biased toward
| experienced (and often very fit/quick)
| recreational/sport/fitness cyclists.
|
| I'm a very experienced cyclist and I don't upload my
| 'transportation' rides. It's not worth it. So all the data
| from me riding a particular route twice, five times a week -
| as well as my preferred routes to various activities,
| shopping, etc - doesn't make it into strava. My fun /
| training rides do.
|
| Strava ride uploads tend to come from more confident and
| willing to ride on roads that are more intimidating or
| require confident riding techniques to be safe (such as
| riding at the edge of a bike lane, or on a multi-lane road,
| taking the lane). Cycling in urban settings is much less
| intimidating if you're fit and able to accelerate quickly and
| bike at closer to the average speed of traffic (which often
| really isn't that fast.) Drivers are a lot less prone to
| "punish passes" and other dangerous behavior if you're fast.
|
| They may ride a particular road that is terrible for cycling
| but they have no other choice because of where they are
| coming from or going to, and because they tend to ride a lot,
| they'll bias the heatmap. One of my favorite routes to ride
| involved an utter shitshow of 5 minutes worth of riding, and
| I took that road several times a week.
|
| It should also be known that Strava tries to play up their
| "we make data available for city urban planners and cycling
| advocates!" to their userbase...and then turns around and
| charges an obscene amount of money.
|
| Speaking of money: strava data means you miss the vast
| majority of people riding bicycles - those on the very lowest
| rungs of the economic ladder. They don't have GPS activity
| watches or GPS bike computers, they don't give a damn about
| recording their ride to/from work/school; they may not even
| have a smartphone, period. They don't have 12+ hours of
| leisure time a week to go for rides for fun, etc.
|
| Bike advocacy groups are increasingly trying to account for
| these folks, because they're largely "invisible" - they don't
| sign up for newsletters from bike committees and advocacy
| groups, they often are riding outside "9-5" commute hours
| because they're working shifts/nights and riding to/from
| neighorhoods wealthier folks do. Most people think that in
| any given city the predominant cycling demographic is hipster
| programmers on track bikes...not realizing how many cyclists
| are maintenance/cleaning/construction/food service workers
| are out on the roads while they're asleep.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| As a mapper (into OSM), the Strava Heatmap is one of the
| most valuable things ever for mapping off-road trails. I've
| found nothing more accurate for actual trail locations than
| the heatmap. The only thing that comes close is multiple
| passes with a high quality hand held GPS receiver, taken
| when the leaves are down.
| 0des wrote:
| The lingering issue I have with that is that at first glance
| you see some cool routes, but then you get there and realize
| it was clearly a route for mountainbikers. I commute via
| track bike, which couldn't be any more ill-suited for the
| terrain. Given that my bike and style of riding is more
| suited for flat smooth pavement, I generally just ride with
| traffic as the routes are better maintained and it is easier
| to know when there is a pothole ahead.
| Lio wrote:
| That's odd as Strava routes has an option to control the
| terrain it uses for a route. You should be able to just
| choose smooth tarmac only.
|
| I guess that could be limited by how good the mapping data
| is where you live but it works really well where I am.
| JNRowe wrote:
| To further your point about trust a little: Strava-using
| cyclists are a _very_ specific group of cyclists IME.
|
| Back when I used it my commute had tens of segments with
| 40km/hr medallists, and a sprint segment with weekly new
| records in excess of 50km/hr. And, you can even catch snipers
| rolling on to and off a road near me to protect effort for a
| two kilometre junction-free sprint most weekends.
| Lio wrote:
| That is true but you also see people putting there dog
| walks on there. Or their commute to work or to the shops.
|
| These days it's all a bit moot as you get people on ebikes
| and scooters "cheating" by recording their rides as road
| rides (either deliberately or more often by accident).
| JNRowe wrote:
| I'd be interested in reading about the changes as Strava
| expanded. I imagine they see a lot more casual
| recreational use as the viral growth moved beyond the
| club riders/runners, but I'd also expect you see
| performance increase as they captured more top performers
| too. Did the performance distribution grow evenly? Do
| people shift their routes towards segments with
| accessible leaderboards? ...
|
| On cheating: I used to moan about Strava accepting car
| and train journey speeds when it felt obvious how to
| detect some of them, but I can't even begin to imagine
| how to automate detection in the era of e-bikes. People
| must spend a lot more time flagging rides to maintain
| their magic internet points trophy now ;)
| Someone wrote:
| https://github.com/graphhopper/open-traffic-collection may be
| of help.
|
| I would think it would be a challenge to get useful data from
| such a source even if resolution were high enough. That nice
| low traffic road may have been photographed in the weekend,
| outside traffic hours, on a national holiday, because of a road
| black a kilometer away, etc.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Cyclestreets.net has traffic avoiding routes, but I believe
| it's mostly based on the road type from openstreetmap data.
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(page generated 2022-03-24 23:01 UTC)