Bikeshare data in Washington, DC, provides a useful context for planners to grow the city’s cycling network. When this data is publicly available, coders and advocates can highlight areas of need that officials may miss.
At Transportation Techies’ Bikeshare Hack Night IX last week at Southeast DC’s WeWork location, coders dug into the potential that open data feeds hold for providing low-income neighborhoods similar access to the mobility services that banked, smartphone-enabled travelers can so easily utilize.
The planning power of open data
Daniel Schep made a strong case for the benefits of publishing open data and open standards for bikeshare information.
Because Capital Bikeshare deployed CaBi+ electric pedal-assist bikes into the system at the beginning of September, Schep wanted to know where they were at any given time. However, because the e-bikes only account for 80 of the system’s 4000+ bikes, they can get lost in the sea of other, “regular” choices.
Building off of the efforts of a coder who built a web tool to find New York City’s newly deployed electric Citi Bikes, Schep “remixed” the page’s code to apply the tool to Capital Bikeshare’s electric fleet. This was possible thanks to open, standardized data.
Citi Bike and Capital Bikeshare both use a General Bike Feed Specification (GBFS) to communicate bikes’ locations, and they leave them open for developers to create their own tools, such as the Citi Bike e-bike finder. With that, and the open code from the Citi Bike finder tool, Schep replaced New York GPS coordinates with DC’s, swapped references to New York and Citi Bike with the District and CaBi, and it became CaBi+ focused tool.
To show how effective it is to leave open and standardized feeds, Schep remixed the information again, live, to find the locations of e-bikes in San Francisco’s bikeshare fleet. Schep emphasized how open data is great, and open standards are even better, allowing coders to spread innovative hacks quickly across communities with minimal effort.
Research into the value of open data – meaning actual studies from entities other than advocacy organizations – is still nascent, but some studies have begun to articulate Schep’s call for open data as especially valuable to entrepreneurs. The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance articulates the value of open data to startups, saying that open data sources benefit startups because of the low barrier to information, allowing “founders augment their own resources and focus on the parts of their businesses that provide added and unique value.”
Indeed, a recent Politico Magazine profile showed how Boston’s MBTA opening of data to residents led to specific improvements in its nightly system shutdown that the agency had long overlooked. Of course, the success of such efforts depends on if agencies actually listen to customers and experts.
By opening the data to the masses, a startup or a large agency can augment their resources with minimal cost, and possibly even save money in the process, like MBTA did. Though more study is necessary to quantify the exact value of open data, Schep’s ask seems well-founded.
Jacob Baskin of Coord. Photo by Michael Schade.
Schep also asked for dockless companies to include their scooters in GBFS formats to give coders a single view of all available mobility options in their study area. Coord, a data company, is working on a similar effort. Jacob Baskin from Coord demonstrated the usefulness of data sharing from dockless companies (as required by some cities mobility pilots) by examining the equity implications of scooter distribution throughout DC.
Baskin analyzed the availability of scooters from Bird, Lime, and Skip across the city and compared those locations to the income levels of the Census tracts in which they were available. He found that each company had unique distributions of availability, with Bird best serving low-income Census tracts while Lime tended to be available in higher-income tracts. In addition, Skip and Lime scooters had much higher swings in availability, while Bird stayed relatively consistent until after the evening rush hour.
Just this metric can introduce a cascade of questions for planners to address: Does Lime place their scooters in high-income areas because of demand? Why is demand different across income levels? Could it be because of disparities in the safety infrastructure that, if improved, would attract more ridership where it’s currently low? (Yes).
Considering dockless options have attracted riders from communities that Capital Bikeshare has long overlooked, these are questions worth asking. Using this data, cities can make smarter decisions in prioritizing improvements, like where to build bike lanes first or ban right turns on red lights. With efforts to standardize information and pull it into one space, it is getting easier for cities and community members to explore the possibilities together.
Real-time information without Internet access is possible
People tend to focus on apps as a means to improve customer experience, but apps aren’t always the most accessible way to provide information to the people who need it.
Bob Kraig presented a Capital Bikeshare station availability app that operates via SMS text messages. Users who want to know the closest station with an available bike text their address to a Gmail API, which responds with the nearest station, the number of bikes and open docks, and the distance and direction to that station. If the closest option is empty, the app sends the three next-best options.
Though a significant majority (77 percent) of Americans own a smartphone, especially in urban areas (83 percent), it is not total, and many with smartphones lack data plans to access apps like Capital Bikeshare’s to find stations. An SMS-based location system could be instrumental in lowering a perceived barrier to access Capital Bikeshare in low-income neighborhoods. Taking it further, combining a texting system with alternate payment methods to credit cards would help make bikeshare in DC much more equitable.
These hacks, mostly from people tinkering in their free time, suggest a broad set of opportunities for advocates and planners to collaborate on improving the mobility ecosystem – Capital Bikeshare, dockless bikes, scooters, and other vehicles we haven’t seen yet – that could be fleshed out into innovative tools with the right resources and champions. Improving access to information about these systems could further shift travelers’ decisions and ability to choose options other than cars that would go far in improving communities.
Photo by Abe Landes for Mobility Lab