New website shows live data on travel times by bike and car in Oxford

Oxfordshire County Council has launched an experimental website that tracks cars, bikes and people across Oxford in real-time. The hope is that oxbike.co.uk will show how quick and easy it is to get around the city by cycling.

The data is being collected by Vivacity Labs via sensors installed at 60 locations. Artificial intelligence logs and classifies passing transport throughout the day.

The site features a map highlighting transport hotspots; a chart indicating estimated travel times for various modes of travel; a current breakdown of transport types; and historical patterns.

At the time of writing (lunchtime on Saturday) it was showing similar travel times for cycling and driving along four ‘key commuter corridors’.

One imagines this will skew in favour of cycling during rush hour periods.

Councillor Yvonne Constance, Oxfordshire County Council’s Cabinet member for environment, told The Herald: "Oxbike is a welcome contribution to our travel and transport work as a county and will enable the council and partners to understand the journey data much better.

"This will play a particularly important role as the council looks to expand and develop an upgraded cycling infrastructure amid the recovery from the pandemic and as we look to implement ways to cut emissions and wider transport plans including bus gates for Oxford."

Llewelyn Morgan, head of the innovation hub at the council, added: "There has been a lot of expectation of the benefit of connected vehicles, which are now becoming prevalent on our roads.

"Oxfordshire is committed to be at the forefront of this through enabling applications that benefit our communities.

"This project will develop an important application by connecting data with smart infrastructure to help improve our knowledge of road use and safety on the road for all users."