PING engages cyclists to col­lect data about cycling routes and bot­tle­necks in their city. PING col­lects these data on a heatmap, which cities can use as a start­ing point to improve cycling on their streets. It’s cit­i­zen sci­ence at its best!

How does PING work? 

As a cit­i­zen sci­ence tool, PING works with cyclists to col­lect data on cycling routes and bot­tle­necks. These cyclists are true experts, as they have first-hand expe­ri­ences with cycling in their city! 

The only tools a cyclist needs to engage in data col­lec­tion through PING are a PING but­ton and the Bike Cit­i­zens app. The PING but­ton is a small push but­ton that a cyclist can con­ve­nient­ly attach to the bike’s han­dle­bar, or to his or her cloth­ing. Via Blue­tooth, the but­ton is con­nect­ed to the Bike Cit­i­zens app on the smart­phone of the cyclist.

If the cyclist encoun­ters an unsafe sit­u­a­tion dur­ing a ride, he or she sim­ple press­es the but­ton. This push of the but­ton, or ping, is auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­mit­ted to the app, which records the ping and marks the accom­pa­ny­ing location.

When his or her bike jour­ney fin­ish­es, the cyclist can add more infor­ma­tion about the unsafe sit­u­a­tion in the app, for exam­ple by adding a com­ment or a spe­cif­ic cat­e­go­ry to the ping. Final­ly, the app gath­ers the pings of all par­tic­i­pat­ing cyclists on a detailed cycling map. This heatmap of routes and bot­tle­necks is the most com­plete start­ing point for cities to fine­tune their cycling policies.

“PING start­ed in 2017 as a pilot project in Brus­sels. There, over 1.000 cyclists col­lect­ed data and helped the city to improve its cycling poli­cies. This suc­cess was soon picked up abroad. Both Ams­ter­dam and Munich worked with PING and their cycling inhab­i­tants to make cycling more pleas­ant. An inter­na­tion­al suc­cess” - Elke Fran­chois, cit­i­zen sci­ence expert at Mobiel 21

PING in your city?

The PING approach allows for trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ca­tion and coop­er­a­tion between a city and its cyclists. Crowd­sourc­ing and cit­i­zen pol­i­cy par­tic­i­pa­tion have nev­er been this easy.

More­over, PING can be tai­lored to suit every city’s needs and wish­es, both towards a spe­cif­ic neigh­bour­hood or tar­get group (e.g. cycling chil­dren in a school envi­ron­ment). Cities can use the inno­v­a­tive tool to map bot­tle­necks, to col­lect jour­ney data (such as routes, speed and dis­tance), to pri­ori­tise infra­struc­ture invest­ments, or even to eval­u­ate pol­i­cy changes. Every­thing is possible.

Sup­port by Mobiel 21

Thanks to the sup­port of Mobiel 21 in set­ting up the cam­paign, col­lect­ing the data, analysing the data and for­mu­lat­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, cities can rest assured that PING leads to objec­tive pol­i­cy deci­sions based on rel­e­vant and reli­able data. In short, PING has a direct impact!