Call for cities to join Bologna for a cycling challenge
Following its campaign "Bologna Citta in bici" (Bologna cycling city) the city of Bologna, Italy, is now extending its scope and looking for cities to join a cycling challenge between several European cities. During May 2012 a group of citizens in each participating city will track their cycling kilometres as "cycling transportation", not as sport, through a GPS tracking system. During a month also CO2 savings would be quantified.
In cooperation with Endomondo, a sports community based on free real-time GPS, customized web pages for each participating city will be developed. Tracking facilities as they have been used already for Bologna’s recent cycling campaign are easy-to-use free applications for smartphones. Track points and workouts in CSV format for the whole challenge period will be delivered by Endomondo to all cities, thus allowing further elaboration for statistical purposes.
Endomondo offered to deliver the needed support for a group of at least 10 cities aiming at pure costs covering: the amount of 3.500 € per city was quantified. Then each city should be active in enrolling its own citizens using its own channels: mailing lists, press releases, local promotional activities. Costs can be this way very limited, ensuring a very positive impact in terms of image and results. A corporate image logo of the campaign will be agreed.
If you are interested to join the challenge please contact Polis for more information before 15 Februrary:
Contact Bologna: dora.ramazzotti@srmbologna.it
Contact Polis: shaon@polisnetwork.eu
Background:
Within Civitas MIMOSA measures to encourage the shift from polluting transport modes to more sustainable ones, such as bicycle, car-pooling, car sharing and Flexible transport services are to be implemented in Bologna. A dedicated campaign for "Bologna Citta in bici" (Bologna cycling city) was prepared with the purpose to collect data on mileage and to calculate the C02 saved in comparison with habitual behaviour. This was organised in cooperation with Endomondo. A group of volunteer cyclists was involved: they were engaged to win a mileage challenge, tracking their "transport cycling" trips during a month. The challenge mechanism was stimulating and appreciated by cyclists.
GPS tracking allowed SRM to produce a heat map where the main paths used by the involved cyclists were highlighted. If created by means of a wider sample of users, the heat map could be a useful tool for planning bicycle paths and controlling cyclist flows in the cities.