Case Study: Crowdsourcing data for a bicycle plan
At the start of 2015, the City of Melbourne approached us to help engage the local community in the development of their Draft Bicycle Plan 2016–2020. This was an exciting proposition at the time as conducting projects like this one was the reason for creating CrowdSpot.
Starting with a blank map, the project gave citizens the opportunity to add their ideas, issues and ‘likes’ directly on the interactive map below. We designed the base-map to include different types of bike lanes, bike parking and the Council Boundary.
Participants not only had the ability to add ‘Spots’ to the map but also the ability to add ‘Supports’ (votes) and Comments on Spots added by other users. We received an overwhelming level of participation.
In total, there were 7,231 submissions added to the map, made up of:
- 1,056 Spots
- 4,714 Supports
- 1,461 Comments
This project still represents the largest online community participation activity for an individual City of Melbourne project.
The beauty of crowdsourcing spatial data is the ability to represent the data in visually engaging ways. Understandably, the City of Melbourne wanted to uncover what were the highest priorities according to the community.
Below is an image of the top 20 Spots added to the map. This is based on the number of ‘supports’ and comments a spot received.
This map is for the top 10 ‘Issue Spots’ …
…and now for the top 10 ‘Like Spots’
The communities priorities then helped guide the creation of priorities detailed in the Draft Bicycle Plan 2016–2020 (refer to page 70).
While the engagement is no longer online you can still explore all the data submitted by the public via the interactive map below. Click here to open the interactive map.
The final Bicycle Plan 2016–2020 was endorsed by the City of Melbourne Council on 15 March 2016.
