CicloMapa
ITDP+UCB, 2019Today in Brazil we face a big challenge of not having data on the cycling infrastructure available in our cities. This makes it very hard to paint a clear picture of our reality and calculate the relevant metrics to measure the opportunities and impacts to society of improving urban mobility. The most common problems with current solutions are not standardized data and typologies, data not being available publicly, or sometimes data not existing at all. UCB (Brazil Cyclists Union) and ITDP (Institute for Transport and Development Policy) are two influential civil society organizations that have joined forces to solve once and for all these problems. We've developed the first cycling maps platform encompassing all Brazilian cities, leveraging the open data and collaborativeness of OpenStreetMap (OSM). We've created an open-source web application, free and accessible from any computer or smartphone, aimed at both the average citizen, who wants to know more about their city, and researchers, who now have easy access to this data without needing OSM knowledge. On the newly released version of the website we even took a step further from just making the data available and launched a new Metrics section. Following a "show don't tell" logic, we are giving examples of what you can do when you have this data in your hands. For the time ever it's now possible to check in real time the total length of cycling infrastructure in all Brazilian cities. Knowing, however, how limited and misleading this metric alone can be, we joined forces with other institutions that develop other important metrics, such as the PNB (People Near Bike), which measures how accessible the infraestruture is to people, and IDEciclo, which measures its quality. In conjunction with the platform, we're organizing educational programs to evangelize and educate people on how to contribute with OSM, thus empowering citizens to take part in this collaborative process and gaining ownership of our cities' data.
