The PING if you care! campaign collects data about traffic situations, which are not covered in other statistics to provide a big picture on the daily traffic. The PING button delivers the data to the Bike Citizens app via a bluetooth connection. In this way, municipalities receive feedback from their citizens on where cycling routes should be improved.
Cyclists can carry the PING button during their journeys, attached to the handlebar or clothing. Cyclists can ‘ping’ problematic points on their cycling routes, which will then be automatically marked on a map. These can be dangerous spots, bottlenecks or infrastructural defects. At the same time, the app collect data about traffic situations, which are not covered in other statistics.
The campaign ‘PING if you care’ has run as a pilot campaign in Brussels, organised by BikeCitizens and Mobiel 21. Since the pilot’s start in 2017, Brussels cyclists ‘pinged’ more than 36.000 times. A heatmap created in July 2017 gave a first impression of where improvements could be effective for many cyclists.
At the end of the campaign the project partner receives a proposal for a plan of action, that takes into account the feedback of the cyclists, that was gathered by the PING if you care! campaign.
How does it work?
The PING button, a device of is around four centimetres in width, is connected to the app Bike Citizens through Bluetooth. Cyclists can categorise and comment on their PINGs straight away or afterwards in the Bike Citizens app, using GPS technology. PINGs are visualised in a PING heatmap where all the tracked rides and different PINGs are shown in different colours. The heatmap visualises cycled tracks as well as places in the city which have been „pinged“. The brightness and concentration of the lines show where the most people have cycled. And the bigger the circle, the more PINGs have been marked on this location.
Contact Bike Citizens: info@bikecitizens.net