iPhone Bike Apps - Why?
I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to bike stuff. I have a stack of apps on my iPhone that are bike specific. Usually variants on either
"Ooh look! I’m just sooo NOW and green and good for the planet which really needs saving. Look at all this CO2 I’m not creating!" (BikeYourDrive)
or… "Yes! I am a proper tough, fast rider. Look how fast I ride!" (TheBikeComputer, BikePro, etc)
… or … "Tell me where I should have turned left. Oh, and how far did I ride?" (Bi.Cycle - GPS Cycling Computer).
They may appeal to my inner nerd, but what are they really for? Surely the important thing is to get on your bike and ride?
Or maybe this app - Cycle Tracks - previewed on Bike Portland yesterday is something that’s more than just a doodad for dweebs like me?
As it says in the blurb . . .
CycleTracks uses your iPhone’s GPS support to record your bicycle trips, display maps of your rides, and help transportation planners make San Francisco a better place to bike. At the end of each trip, data representing your trip purpose, route, and the date and time are sent to the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (all data will be kept confidential*). By using CycleTracks, you’ll be helping San Francisco’s transportation planners better understand the needs of cyclists—and you’ll get to see maps and statistics of your rides.
We’ll use the real-time data we collect to improve the bicycle-use component of our computer model SF-CHAMP to better predict where cyclists will ride and how land developments and transportation infrastructure will affect cycling in our community.
Sounds pretty cool to me - use real data to figure out what’s needed. And then hopefully provide that. I’ve only really got two worries though:
- In places with low cycling numbers, the data might be mis-used to confirm planners’ conception that there’s no need for cycle infrastructure. They seem to be in favour of predict-and-provide for motorised traffic, but not so much for pedal traffic.
- Uploading data on my movements to some vast database? I’m not sure I’d be too comfortable about that!
Hi there, First, thanks for taking a look at CycleTracks! We encourage all sorts of feedback so that we can make the application better. I just wanted to touch on some of your concerns. First, we do not expect this application to give us a representative sample of the origins and destinations and routes of where people are biking. What we DO want to be able to do is get an idea of the route choices they are making….and we don’t expect iPhone users or people who bike in low population/activity areas to dislike hills any more than non-iPhone users/people who are biking down Market Street. The thing is, that in order to build these sorts of relationships in a statistically significant model, we need a lot of data - so help us out! The data will by anonymized and wont be used for evil things…rather for helping the bike community. That said, the data upload part is completely optional.
For more information you can visit our website at http://www.sfcta.org/CycleTracks where there is more info about how the data will be used and a FAQ. And again, any other feedback is welcome. Thanks!
Should check out Cadence. It plays music from your library that matches the speed you are working out at. Its not really a mapping or timing tool, more of a motivation tool i guess.
http://www.cadenceapp.com
Hi Elizabeth -
That’s what I loved about CycleTracks as a product - a really cool way to gather relatively large data sets, relatively cheaply. The BikePortland.org piece was asking if you had plans to roll out the product beyond San Francisco - can I add my voice to that, and ask if you’re going to add other [EUROPEAN!] cities? Similarly, although the iPhone is very popular, it by no means has 100% market share for the neat-little-device-with-gps-built-in market. Any plans to roll out the product for other phones’ operating systems?
Stagen -
Cadence looks like a really cool app! This is both for people who want music to match their exercise pace, and for people like me who can’t dance - all I have to do is start dancing to my own internal beat, and the app selects music that matches what I’m doing. Voila! I instantly would seem to have rhythm.
Howdy there again-
CycleTracks is location agnostic and doesn’t care if you are in San Francisco, Jakarta, or Stockholm so long as you can download it on your iPod and get a GPS signal. Truthfully though, I don’t know much about data over wireless networks, iPhone apps, and GPS in other countries, so I am not sure how well it would work (maybe better?). That said, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority isn’t likely going to spend our taxpayer money sifting through data points from outside of the Bay Area. Due to the number of requests we have gotten though, we are working on ways that we can share data to other public agencies without sacrificing the anonymity that we promised our users. We’ll have something up on our webpage about this in the next few days as soon as a scheme is worked out.
As far as other OSs…we are going to add the ability for people to upload GPX or KML files (any other we should consider?) to our databases for those who want to. Both Android and Garmin devices can easily make these files — check back at our website for instructions soon! We are not actively developing the application for other OSs at this time, though there is always the off chance that one gets developed over a rainy weekend or two.
Thanks!