Mapping routes from schools and other community centers is a step towards much-needed bicycling infrastructure improvements.
If you asked a student how long it takes to get from her high school to her house on a bike, she might tell you how long it takes to drive – something she’s familiar with – followed by a guess that it takes even longer to ride home on a bike.
Of course, the real answer for biking home depends not only where students live and the distance, but on the other important conditions such as a route’s safety, car traffic, light timing, and the access to safe crossings. So how could you answer this question for an entire school’s population? Organize a Radius Ride!
Radius Rides are organized events in which a group of cyclists starting from the same location, like a high-school parking lot, library, or shopping center take routes away from there. This actual ride data is then valuable for showing the local public how far one can get on a bike in five, 10, or 15-minute intervals from the selected starting point. The rides are relaxed-speed group rides – not races – for the purpose of recording data to plot on maps.
In Alexandria, Virginia, we chose the high-school’s main campus as the start of our first Radius Ride because it is central to the city and generates a lot of car and schoolbus traffic. Starting from the high-school parking lot, we traced out routes along the roads and paths that led to the edge of the school’s boundaries (in Alexandria, these are the same as the city limits). These paths radiated out from the school much like spokes in a wheel and went through or ended in many of the population centers of the city. (The original paths can be seen in the picture below.)
Next, we recruited experienced riders who could face our inconsistently bike-friendly roads. We asked them to bring a cell phone loaded with an app, like Strava, that could collect and export the route data in the commonly-used GPX file format. Because many of Alexandria’s streets still don’t have bike lanes, we wanted experienced riders who could handle the sometimes-stressful roads and intersections. On the designated day, riders took to their routes and recorded their rides.
When all the rides were completed, we sent the GPX files to Mobility Lab’s tech guru Michael Schade. He spent several long nights compiling the data and creating a way to display the information in a very informative full-motion graphic of the entire event.
So what did our Radius Ride show us? Prior to the ride, we estimated that it would take a maximum of 15 minutes for any rider to reach the outer limits of boundaries required to attend the school. What we found:
- The first rider reached the school’s boundary on Mt. Vernon Avenue almost directly north of the school – a route known for low stress biking and traffic calming – in 10 minutes and 44 seconds.
- Two additional riders taking the northeast routes reached the city limit at Four Mile Run Creek at Potomac Avenue in 14:00 and Commonwealth in 15:26 – also areas known for excellent biking conditions.
- Riders on eastern routes made faster progress to the city limits than western route riders. The motion graphic shows the ride leaders (shown by the largest white circle) were always on eastern routes and the laggards (small white circle) always were in the western and southern routes. This shows how areas in the west have significant barriers, such as the Metro and Amtrak railroad tracks that do not have any available crossings throughout the majority of their lines in the west and south parts of the city
- At the 15-minute mark, all riders had reached or traversed major population centers of the city.
- It took 27:34 for the last rider to reach the far west boundary of the city where bicycle conditions are weakest.
What could be the next cool hack for a Radius Ride?
- Provide the Radius Ride capability as a service on a website. Riders and advocates anywhere could then upload their own data and present the results. This would eliminate the greatest challenge we had – making the graphic presentation of the data. But since the graphic engine is now completed, we’d certainly like to share it with others who want to use it.
- Although the ring presentation is informative, it would be cool to have other display options such as a “Radar” plot or an “Ink Stain” plot. The Radar plot would encircle and connect all the riders in a “rubber-band ring.” This would more accurately show the distance and area covered by the riders highlighting the leaders and laggards. Ink Stain plots would take the Radar plot one step further and shadow the area covered by the riders, allowing the stain to creep along the lateral roads and trails at the rider’s average speed – once the rider passed certain intersections.
Bike photo by Rich Mason