CycleStreets: Our Story - presentation to Net2Camb event

CycleStreets: our story Martin Lucas-Smith www.cyclestreets.net twitter: @cyclestreets UK-wide cycle journey planner & photomap For Cyclists, By Cyclists

CycleStreets: who? Simon Nuttall Routemaster Martin Lucas-Smith Webmaster … and various people helping out in various ways!

What is it? Cycle journey planner Online service Photomap Campaigning tool System of two parts:

Journey planner

Journey planner: features
Plan route from A-B, anywhere in UK
Simplest possible interface
Click-click-plan, and simple Namefinder
Gives set of route choices
(fastest, quietest, balanced)
Takes accounts of hills (uses NASA data)
Turn-by-turn directions
Photos-en-route

Journey planner: features
Shows distance, time, CO2, soon: calories
Google Street View at any point
Feedback system
Localised versions for easy linking
E.g. cambridge.cyclestreets.net
Link methods
E.g. www.cyclestreets.net/journey/to/cb1+2py/
‘ Fly in Google Earth’
Export to GPS

Photomap

Photomap: features
Icons on map (per type of feature)
Click to view image and info
Add photo (+ ‘my photos’ view)
Categorisation
Photo of the day (+ tweeted)
Tagging
Gallery (theme/issue)
Photos nearby

Mobile
Key features on small screen
iPhone app out
Android under development
Generic mobile web version under development
Can you help us code these?

Mobile
Other apps now incorporating our routing
Public API
Bike Hub – great world-first iPhone bike real-SatNav
In the leading Boris Bike app, ‘London Cycle’

Why?
Fundamentally, we want to see “More people cycling, more safely, more often”
New cycle users face many challenges in UK:
Poor infrastructure, traffic hostility
Confidence cycling (address with training)
Cultural/identity issues: not yet mainstream
Lack of utility bikes in shops
Routes – different to car routes!
We try to tackle the last problem
... and the first (through the Photomap)

How it works (briefly)
1. Data comes from people collecting data on-street for OpenStreetMap
The ‘Wikipedia of maps’
Factual data only – e.g. presence of road
NOT “This is a nice cycle route”
2. We take OSM data ‘off the shelf’
Though we’re part of the community in practice
Import each week (daily in ideal world): fresh data
Conversion process is complex – understanding the data

3. Score each type of path:
4. Take account of hills (add/remove penalty)
5. Account for turn delays (work ongoing)
6. Take account of detailed cyclist behaviour (ditto)

7. Compress the network, to make the system much faster (system called ‘Cello’):
Park: 4 nodes & 7 ways After: 3 nodes & 3 ways 8 9 9 A B C D A B C 4 10 6 3 6: BC 7: AD,BD 9: AC

So each path / road / shortcut / etc. now has a score
Higher score = worse for cycling (more ‘friction’)
8. Find the lowest total score from A to B
Standard problem in computer science, we use A* method
9. Route is found
10. Repeat for quietest, fastest modes – each have different scores
11. Routes shown to user

Route feedback goes to OSM contacts

OpenStreetMap
Lots of different renderings
We are using OpenCycleMap by Andy Allan
Cloudmade serves ‘tiles’ which form a static background once a route has been planned – i.e. we just put this behind a line we have calculated

Why don’t we use Google Maps?
Google Maps very popular for websites
Google doesn’t provide data
Only gives a cartographic rendering of a map
A picture of a map is useless for routing!
We need both the cartography AND the underlying data
So Gmaps no good for offering custom routing
Also we wouldn’t be able to fix the data or add new data

OSM vs Google Maps
Google often doesn’t have information needed by cyclists/walkers – park paths, cut-throughs, pubs!
OSM Google maps

CycleStreets: history
Cambridge-only cycle journey planner
Originally written for Cambridge Cycling Campaign
Launched June 2006
Google Map –based
5,000 lines drawn over satellite imagery
Google doesn’t give you data: just cartography
47,000 journeys planned
15,000 photos added

CycleStreets: history
Lots of requests for same thing in other places around the UK
Result is CycleStreets
We are using OpenStreetMap for our data
We don’t have money for an OS license
Went to public beta in March 2009
418,543 journeys planned as of today!
Promotion ramping up this year
Key deficiencies being fixed

CycleStreets: legal structure
Set up as UK Ltd company (July 2009)
Separate to Cambridge Cycling Campaign now
No dividends (not-for-profit)
Social enterprise
Legal structure exists for legal reasons - not because anyone wants to make any money
Sorry investors / VCs!
Basically a hobby that has had to become a business

CycleStreets: funding
Huge challenge
Income (so far £28.1k) from:
Tiny seed funding (£5k, Scottish Government)
Grants (£11.2k)
Consultancy and API fees (£10k)
Donations (£1.9k)
Grants were key to getting going
Wouldn’t have happened as a For-profit
Only just started paying ourselves
Small amount, 5 months only so far

Want to have funding to create full-time posts
Work done in spare time, so improvements slower than we’d like: full-timers means rapid development
Routing work is very complex
Open-source has role to play but can’t rely totally
Funding drive recently launched
www.cyclestreets.net/funding/drive/
Goal: Raise 130k
90k: 18 month, 2 fte developers (3 people)
15k: Hosting costs, 3 years
25k: Promotion, misc costs

What work is needed?
Improve routing quality (encompass more of the geog. data)
Implement turn delays (very rare in any routing engine)
Way-points (‘go via’)
Instant response routing
Develop the mobile apps
Overhaul user interface
Roll out embedded sites everywhere
Photomap needs code/interface work
Live routing!
Adaptive routing on-street
Wider coverage?

Uniqueness
CycleStreets is more than just a routing engine
Routing engines are two-a-penny
+ OpenStreetMap engine market crowded
Detailed knowledge of how cyclists behave
We provide a real interface
User-friendly, ‘warm’ interface
Cycling community embeddedness
Whole ecosystem of products
Platform for building stuff around
Ideas of routing and cycle infrastructure problems

Competing against the big players
“ How can you compete with Google?”
http://jessenoller.com/2010/10/14/how-can-you-compete-with-google/
Some great observations
Lesson for other startups?

Competition
Google?
... Well not really, and there’s room for both anyway
Will never provide customised stuff to Local Authorities, cycling groups, etc. or market that
(Anyway, more exposure to cycle routing == GOOD thing = more people cycling)
And ‘Ooh, hadn’t thought about cycling’, when planning car route
OpenStreetMap
Plenty of routing engines, but not marketing, promotion, involvement, interface approach
UKGov
Hmm...

Transport Direct CJP www.transportdirect.info/Web2/JourneyPlanning/FindCycleInput.aspx £2.4 million (from tax) 72,344 journeys planned (31st October), running at 6,092 per month £33.17 per journey £1m – budget for 2011 32 areas (professionally surveyed) CycleStreets www.cyclestreets.net £28k 328,432 journeys planned (31st October), running at 27,353 per month 8p per journey £130k needed UK-wide (but depends on OSM completeness)

UKGov We think cycle journey planning is more effective when done by local people using Open Data So we are working to ensure that CycleStreets is the solution of choice

Effective delivery?
FoI request by Cambridge resident Richard Taylor www.rtaylor.co.uk/2940, dated April 2010 before 2nd FoI request
“ Government Wastes £2.4m Building Cycle Route Planner Instead of Linking to CycleStreets.net for Free”
“ Each cycle route planned ... cost the taxpayer about £57”
“ Usage of the [Transport Direct] planner remains very low” (Programme paper, 12/Feb/2010)
The Register
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/12/cycle_route_planner/
“ Where end-users have already put in the ground work, central IT should make use of what has already been done, rather than try to reinvent the wheel.”

DfT project
Competition has definitely spurred us on!
Release of (expensively-collected) data
We are seeking funding from Cycling England / DfT to get this data into OpenStreetMap
Local Authority strategy
Getting Local Authorities to use Open Data / citizen data a key challenge (‘untrusted’?) – but times are changing
CycleStreets has innovation, living data from OSM, community involvement:

Big Society –compliant
We tick all the boxes:
Collaborative : involves local people
Low cost : datasets have no license fee, agile delivery
Trusted : for the people, by the people
Open Data
Citizen involvement : combines skills and input of large numbers of people (collecting data)
Quality delivery : problems can be fixed easily
Transparency : more people oversee the data and spot problems or potential improvements
http://www.green-alliance.org.uk Cabinet Office

Currently main feature on data.gov.uk!

Local Authorities
www.cyclestreets.net/localauthorities
Mock-up site: http://cyclemap.placeford.org/

Flexible platform
A *lot* of work done to make ‘skinnable’ interfaces and re-use of components in other systems
Key defensive business strategy against ‘generic’ Google / DfT

Mass-market
Local Authority strategy
One going live shortly
Embedded versions in cycling sites
Use of API in external systems
Could AA / RAC journey planners add cycling?
Wide use of mobile Apps
Approaching app developers for API usage
Planners for multi-site businesses
Cycle there links (postcode in URL)
Listings sites, businesses, etc.
Big events
Leisure industry?
We’re not marketing experts though - and need help!

Retrospectively ...
Approach the DfT formally, more quickly
We think they probably agree with TD problems too!
Getting big funding applications in earlier
E-mails containing opportunities we’ve not followed up (lack of time sadly)
Getting more promotional work done earlier
So we need ...

What do we need?
Funding (and a fundraiser!)
Coders
Mobile app coders (esp. Android!)
Promotional help
Designers
Routing feedback in areas of the UK you know is very useful to us
Spread the word
Link to us! Banners on promotion page:

Martin Lucas-Smith, www.CycleStreets.net
Twitter: @cyclestreets [email_address]
David Earl

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CycleStreets: Our Story - presentation to Net2Camb event

by CycleStreets on Jan 14, 2011

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CycleStreets: Our Story - presentation to Net2Camb event — Presentation Transcript