BicyCool
“Will our life in New York City be much easier, if BicyCool really exists?”
- Xifan Wang
🚲 What is BicyCool?
This is an App designed for all bikers to protect their safety and provide a better biking experience. It aimed at solving the current bikers’ struggles and inspiring more potential bikers to go on an enjoyable bike ride.
BicyCool has a clear and user-friendly interface for bikers. For each generated navigation route, details will be generated, including road types for each section and warning signs, to make your destination more accessible and your trip safer.
🥵 Bikers are Facing Awkward Situations
Cyclist injuries and deaths are on pace to rise every year. Not only this bother the current bikers who want a safe biking journey, but it also sets up obstacles for potential bikers to join the biking team. According to NYPD’s TrafficStat in 2019, New York City has around 4000 cyclist injuries yearly citywide despite all the efforts on putting the infrastructures and bike lanes.
The concerns are real, as Jacob Ouillette, an artist from Chelsea, claimed, “When I ride my bike it’s free transportation; free exercise and it’s carbon-free. It’s three wins in one — the only downside is I might get killed.” And, “[near collision] happens every trip,” said Wong, an Astoria, Queens resident, who quit biking to commute after four years’ experience because of the concern.
What bikers have is limited in NYC: inaccurate “GoogleMaps” navigation, leading to a highway with a calculation priority of driving, an official “bike map” that is only available online or in hand as a printout, an app “Ride” collaborated with DoT that doesn’t provide navigation. Not to mention that none of the maps above, no matter un-interactive or interactive, is an updated version that includes recently finished bike lane constructions.
There is a gap in the current market for bikers to navigate and organize their biking trips as they would like to. As they are worried about their safety and suffered from poor information visualization, BicyCool here is aimed at solving their problems, providing a viable solution.
🧐 How to Get Started
Check the Bike Map
Every time you want to start a bike trip, you can open our application and check the bike map to get a whole picture of the potential routes you have. BicyCool transfers bike lane type from pure description to conclusive classification. It answers two questions:
“Where are the bike lanes?” and,
“Is it safe to ride there?”
Generate Navigations
After checking the map, users will input the start point and destination. Then the app will generate the routes based on different situations. Users are able to select one of the routes they like.
Have bad experiences when Google Maps guided you to a highway? BicyCool never does this. The navigations are powered by data and designed for bikers’ real needs.
Behind the navigation are the multiple data we mentioned and algorithm that decides each data’s weight.
With the basic road network map, BicyCool doesn’t lead bikers to the highway like some other apps that treat car navigation and biking navigation in the same way. With the updated bike lane network, BicyCool keeps you in bike lanes when possible. With live traffic data and user feedback, BicyCool helps you avoid heavy traffic in rush hour, keeps you away from bike lanes filled with tourists, and areas with high accident rates.
Select the Route that YOU Like
Want to enjoy the natural view from Central Park when you ride to your company? First time in New York City and would like to know the city via a bike ride? Tired of Riverside Park and would like to try a new route for exercise? Select the bike route you like that we provide.
Check Route Details and Safety Reminders
Are you concerned with safety? If you has been doored before, hit a pedestrian in Midtown, or almost been hit by a truck, try BicyCool!
BicyCool labels potential dangers on the routes with the live public data and user feedback.
We divide this useful information into three levels:
Areas with potential pedestrian or car obstructions. These are places where bikers can hit a pedestrian or get doored.
Areas with heavy traffic or complicated traffic conditions. These areas are not friendly to new bikers in this city.
Areas with high accident rates.
When you are all set and ready to go, just hit the button and the app will start navigating.
🙌 What’s Next?
This demo is only the MVP of our complete version while the app developing has several phases. Phase I is our demo, which features the basic functions that have high impact and are in high urgency.
In this version, we aim at attacking the significant pain points and prioritizing safety concerns.
In the upcoming versions, we try to incorporate parking preference and communication platform. Parking friendly zoning will be calculated based on the bike racks location and density and the platform will be established based on the collaboration with public agencies. We are also looking for the opportunity to work with public agencies as the app can benefit the safety plans and projects with the data collected while obtaining more fresh official information.
In the future, we hope to go further to divide user groups. We identified three user groups and develop group targeted features based on their needs.
For sporty cyclists, BicyCool will generate suggested bike routes nearby with the route calculation and user feedback on suggestions so they can click on the preferred route and the navigation route will be calculated based on the nearest starting point of that route and current location. For tourists, we use multi-rings to show levels of distances and identify attraction spots within each distance band so they can click on the spot they want to go and jump to the navigation page.
FAQ
Q: Can I save my frequent destinations for convenience?
A: You can either input a destination address or label and save a destination in the app to get a quicker route generation. The search history will be stored by the system and it can be easily retrieved by getting to the input panel.
Q: How can I retrieve the detailed information about the road?
A: Users can click on the warning signs generated or highlight any road segmentations displayed on the map to get the detailed information for your generated navigation routes. If you have any concerns with regards to the base map safety ranking or road display, the team will be noticed once you give feedback on any of these and provide in-time updating and maintenance of the database.
Q: Where does the detailed information come from and will there be mistakes on the map or in the generated routes?
A: The information is generated based on the official bike map as well as user feedback. If you have any concerns or find any information that needs to be updated, you can either contact BicyCool team (bicycool.ny@gmail.com)or report to us by getting to the feedback panel within the app.
Q: Does the generated navigation routes allow the user to have a full-ride along safe bike lane?
A: Our algorithm will generate the safest route, to include the most bike lanes as it can and still keep the route fairly direct to the destination. But due to the missing segmentation between routes, sometimes there are still segments where you have to bike for a short distance before entering another safe lane. If you have any recommendations or concerns with regards to the bike lane and bike infrastructure implementation, please reach the “reportDOT” panel and all your information will be kept anonymous while we aggregate the messages and report to DOT. The user data will also contribute to the construction of the biking system and will only be used for the purpose of providing a better bike service citywide.
📲 Closing Call and Contact Us
This is BicyCool. This is a bright future we imagine for all bikers.
If you have any questions or concerns about the app, please contact us at bicycool.ny@gmail.com.
Xifan Wang, Jay Zhengzhe Jia, Prototyping for Urban Policy and Decision Making, Fall 2019
Special thanks to Clara and Kaz ❤️
