Fire Up The Heat Map: How Data Can Save Cyclists' Lives

Strava is like a religion. Whether you’re into it or opposed to it, it brings out some strong opinions. From segment hunting to organizing group rides to finding new roads and trails, it’s easy to lose track that at its very core, the app is all about data. At the end of the day, your workout information is the combination of a number of latitude and longitude coordinates packaged alongside heart rate, weather, and power. What displays as a slick metric on a white and orange screen is really about as black and white data collection as exists in the digital world. 

Data is nothing unless you use it. While athletes use to structure their training, check their mileage volume, or see how they stack up compared to their pals, safety experts are using the exact same data files to plan entire cities. The data provided by Strava athletes and similar apps are vital tools in designing smarter, safer roadways. Your ride to the office in the morning provides critical feedback that could shape the roads and bike paths in your town for generations to come. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

If you haven’t looked at Strava Labs’ Heat Map function, you should. The Heat Map project allows users to see how popular certain roads, routes, and trails are by different users. The massive trove of data can be filtered to isolate running versus cycling, commuting versus exercise, or nearly any other variation of those metrics to really paint a picture of where people bicycle anywhere on earth. You and I may use this feature to scout out a good route to explore in a new city, but at its heart, this information is tailor-made to make valuable changes to roadways. 

This information is crucial in identifying major cycling routes within cities and catering to that traffic by introducing safety features like bike paths, extra bike lane paint and markings, even altering the number of lanes of a specific road or the direction it travels. Once experts have access to this data, they can overlay their own crash and incident reports and begin to isolate specific intersections or roadways with a high risk of injury. Armed with this customized map, they can begin to address any number of changes. 

One of the first changes they can make requires minimal investment or infrastructure. Simply lowering speeds is often the first step in reducing the risk of routes that see heavy cycling use. Additional low-cost options include creating a bike lane simply with new painted signals along the shoulder, or introducing additional four-way stops. 

If these changes don’t do enough to address traffic issues, it’s back to the data. If a city can’t afford most expensive traffic calming solutions like protected bike lanes, they may work to redirect that bike traffic away from higher volume corridors and onto smaller, slower roads that already see some cycling use. These efforts use simple signage to save lives; this is very often viewed as a short-term solution to keep cyclists safe until road redesigns are approved or funded. 

You can help your community by marking your ride to work as a commute on Strava. Even if you don’t use the software to track rides or your training, tracking commutes can help communities make smart decisions as they look to upgrade the roads. Across the country, cities are committing to being more bike-friendly, and providing them with accurate Heat Maps and growing numbers of dedicated commuters goes a long way to motivated and fueling positive change. 

For more, check out this really interesting podcast from Marketplace.org.