Make Use of Your Workout Data
Jersey City has a vision to eliminate traffic deaths. According to its “Vision Zero” report, 63% of fatal crashes are pedestrians and 7% are cyclists happened on city roads in 2017. Cyclists on busy city roads are always pedalling between speeding vehicles and huge trucks and dedicated bike lanes always end abruptly when approaching intersections. Even though city governance owned data about crash statistics, it may not be helpful in terms of which street needs to be improved and what’s the impact after they add bike lanes. We need to collect data about where people are biking and where they are walking.
Strava developed an app that allows users to record their motion trails during workouts for wellness improvement purposes. After collection of a huge anonymised database of how people move in the city, they launched a platform called Strava Metro which visualised their users’ movements. These maps can definitely help city managers understand that cyclists and pedestrians would take which routes in the city most frequently for their daily needs. Then cost-effective investments can be made on those identified streets instead of just investing entirely.
Other than Strava Metro, there are many more apps embedded in our smart phones collecting such information. However, government today seem to be overwhelmed with data but unsure on how to utilise them. In order to scale, smart city data scientist should present the incisive judgment regarding to the allocation of dedicated datasets for corresponding urban solutions.
