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news
Strava Metro London UKStrava moves into 'big data' - London & Glasgow already signed up to find out where cyclists ride
Strava has moved into the 'big data' game with the launch of Strava Metro, which it says gives data providing “ground truth” on where people ride bikes or go running – and it is licensing the results to city authorities and advocacy groups, including in London and Glasgow.
The San Francisco, California-based company, developer of the smartphones apps and website that allow users worldwide to track their rides and runs, says that “millions of GPS-tracked activities are uploaded to Strava every week from around the globe.
“In denser metro areas, nearly one-half of these are commutes. These activities create billions of data points that, when aggregated, enable deep analysis and understanding of real-world cycling and pedestrian route preferences.”
The popularity of using Strava on main commuter routes can clearly be seen on the map of London accompanying this article – you can find a bigger version here on the Bicycleretailer.com website – with strong levels of usage on roads such as the Embankment.
Making the data available to local transportation authorities or advocacy groups can help identify where demand for cycling, for example – and thereby the need for safe infrastructure – is strongest.
According to the company, “Strava Metro’s mission is to produce state-of-the-art spatial data products and services to make cycling, running and walking in cities better.
“Using Strava Metro, departments of transportation and city planners, as well as advocacy groups and corporations, can make informed and effective decisions when planning, maintaining, and upgrading cycling and pedestrian corridors.”
Clearly, there are bound to be privacy concerns with such a service – we’ve reported in the past, for example, concerns that thieves use rides uploaded to Strava to target where people who own high-end bikes live.
Strava has sought to allay such worries by emphasising that Strava Metro “processes the data to remove all personal information linked to the user and structures it for compatibility with classic geographical information systems (GIS) environments.”
It adds: “Strava Metro tools enable DOTs and advocacy groups to do detailed analyses and glean insights into cycling and running patterns dissected by time of day, day of week, season and local geography.
“Advocacy organisations and the general public can now access high-resolution heatmap visualisations of the data free of charge at Strava Labs.”
You can find those heatmaps here.
“Organisations seeking deeper insight and analysis can license Strava Metro data and tools for use with geographic information systems (GIS) mapping software. Licensing costs are based on the number of Strava members in the requested geographic area.”
There is an inquiry form for anyone wanting to find out more information.
The company’s co-founder and president Michael Horvath said: "Bicycling safety is a top concern to our members worldwide, especially when they're riding through metropolitan areas with a high concentration of motor vehicle traffic.
"Strava Metro delivers an innovative way for us to serve Strava members and non-members alike by helping to make their daily commutes and weekend rides smoother and safer," he added.
Pricing of the licensing of the data will depend on the number of Strava users in the area concerned.
According to a blog post by Reed Albergotti in The Wall Street Journal, the first local authority to sign up is the department of transportation for Oregon, which will pay $20,000 to license it for 12 months to analyse usage in Portland.
A policy analyst working for that body, Margi Bradway, said: “We’re dipping our toe into the idea of big data with this project.”
Jennifer Dill, who is a professor at Portland State University’s Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, said: “Right now, there’s no data. We don’t know where people ride bikes. Just knowing where the cyclists are is a start.”
Other customers are located in London, Glasgow, Orlando in Florida, and Alpine Shire in Victoria, Australia, although the actual bodies to have licensed the data have not been reported.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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46 comments
Amen to that.
It's a heat map of MAMILs not cyclists. End of.
I disagree
Sorry, but it won't show that at all.
You only have to think about the percentage of people you see on your commute who you think might be using Strava to see the problem with this approach.
In Cambridge, some routes that are known for commuter cycling congestion are very, very faint. Whilst routes that are known to have almost no commuting are very, very bright.
Let's be clear here - if you want to traverse a decent distance in London, you are not taking a back route, it's just too convoluted. So I'm happy to take the Strava data as a proxy on what is going on. Is there any other stats that are available? If so, happy to get a pointer.
For East London - the A12, A406 and the M25 are effectively massive firewalls for travelling East/West. You only have a few routes to get across these without becoming a Jam tart. So the Strava data is pretty relevant.
- Example - Commercial Road (City to A13). This is not a signed bike route, but you can see a medium level of bike traffic using it via the Strava data. I use it as well to access the A13 CS3 beyond Canary Wharf. It's nasty and intimidating, but significantly faster than using the "pedestrian friendly" CS3 between City and Canary Wharf.
So you don't want new bike shops to pop up on heavily used routes?
Yes that's true but it's not "End of".
The fact that it is not representative of the entire cycling population is not a problem as long as you know what segment the sample represents.
As I said above, if used in conjunction with 'small data' then this sort of thing can be useful.
By using more detailed and representative information such as traffic surveys you can effectively calibrate the data and make adjustments for such things as representativeness.
It's done all the time. The only concern here is that the people using this data know that they need to do it.
I know what I'm talking about on this, as I run a research agency.
Are you sure about this though?
Perhaps they can filter the data they have, but they can't put back in data that was never there in the first place. Its always going to be a partial and biased sample, as large numbers of cyclists will not be using Strava to begin with (I don't - no disrespect to those who find it useful or just amusing, but I have no interest in it).
Unless you can be sure its entirely random whether someone registers with Strava or not then how can they know what data they are missing?
I guess this is partly an answer to what I just asked!
I remain unconvinced that the necessary information to properly 'calibrate' this data is going to be available though.
The danger is the 'unknown unknowns' to invoke Donald Rumsfeld!
I mean, what if you do your traffic survey and then discover that what it shows is that there is no consistent correlation at all between Strava traffic and non-Strava cyclists?
I love that we are all speculating on what the data can or cannot show, without access to that data, or any demographics of Strava users what so ever!
What is likely, is that this probably represents some of the largest and most detailed datasets on riding ever collected, and there will undoubtedly be value that can be gleaned from this. I would be shocked if any other studies will have been able to GPS track a group of cyclists on anything like the scale Strava has.
I'm not speculating. I know for a fact that on the publcily available activity heat map- the data for councils is just this, with some filters- some of the busiest cycling routes locally (ones that get actual traffic jams of cyclists) show almost no activity, whilst roads with known small numbers (from council counting) are very bright.
You talking about London here or somewhere else? Because the commuting heat map shown above seems pretty accurate to me.
College road in Dulwich is used by all types of riders on the morning commute and is represented by a big thick orange line. It's also not somewhere that Lycra louts generally go on their weekend jollys.
I think the data will be useful (certainly in London), the ability to select times will show some interesting patterns.
For example it may show that a lot of cyclists are not using a crap cycling facility and staying with the road instead, showing that the facility needs improvement.
Most of the utility cyclist I know in London also use Strava, not just the people going on training rides.
Strava users will tend to be younger (but that is always the case with new technology), but younger riders do make up the majority on London's roads.
If it shows where cyclists actually ride - direct main road routes - rather than where TfL hopes they ride - hopelessly indirect back street 'quietways' - then it will have achieved something, encouraging investment where cycling is already happening.
Space Syntax has also done independent research showing where cyclists actually ride:
http://www.spacesyntax.com/project/encouraging-cycling-in-central-london/
And surprise surprise, it's NOT on quiet back streets. Space for cycling needs to be provided on the main roads where most cyclists ride. If that includes the main road I ride along on Sunday morning, so much the better.
Actually it is - a huge number of S. London based cyclists ride up that to meet at Crystal Palace on a weekend and also ride along that road to access Herne Hill Velodrome.
Speculating on what the data does or doesn't show isn't particularly helpful. I'd guess that this is the first step in Strava making their data available and this is just a massive data dump to attract attention (and therefore ££) from potential buyers. In it's raw form it's probably not *that* useful - after all I'd be willing to bet that very few casual commuters use Strava - but I reckon if you combine Strava with the heatmaps that have already been done on the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme, then work that in with traffic cameras, known accident blackspots, mainline stations, the congestion charge zone etc, it could actually be very useful.
It looks Strava released a new FAQ about the data: http://metro.strava.com/faq/ . I think before I make any large leaps about what this data represents i might wait to actually see what the data is. To me it looks like an amazing opportunity to get ALL cyclists represented. I mean you can say Strava is only racers or you join and start to make your voice heard.
Ride on.
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