The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is the first state transportation agency in the United States to ink a deal with Strava <http://www.strava.com>, a leading website and smartphone app used by people to track their bike rides via GPS.
Last fall, the agency paid $20,000 for one-year license of a dataset that includes the activities of about 17,700 riders and 400,000 individual bicycle trips totaling 5 million BMT (bicycle miles traveled) logged on Strava in 2013. The Strava bike “traces” are mapped to OpenStreetMap <http://www.openstreetmap.org/>. If all goes according to plan, the data could revolutionize how ODOT makes decisions about their policies, plans, and projects. At the very least, forging boldly into the realm of “big data” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data> and pushing the boundaries of bicycle planning marks an important step for an agency that’s facing a very different future <http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/GOVREL/Pages/Seven_Trends.aspx> and actively looking to shed <http://bikeportland.org/2013/05/22/odot-launches-initiative-to-move-away-from-highway-centric-approach-87172> its old-school, highway-first reputation. http://bikeportland.org/2014/05/01/odot-embarks-on-big-data-project-with-purchase-of-strava-dataset-105375 -- a Andy Bach, [email protected] 608 658-1890 cell 608 261-5738 wk
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