MICROMOBILITY
Anecdotally, somebody could do a survey and suggest a business case for there to be a cycle lane but upon building it they only see 60% of the cyclists they anticipated. “It would be easy to think ‘my business case is no longer right, we’ve wasted money’ when the reality was that 40% of the cyclists were choosing not to cycle in the cycle lane,” explains Mildon. “Now that’s not necessarily bad, it’s just the fact that the data was missing.
“The assumption would be to avoid building that type
of cycle lane again because it didn’t attract the number of cyclists thought, whereas in fact that corridor suddenly had more cyclists on it, but the data measured was wrong as they were only measuring the cycle lane and not the main traffic as well. “I’m getting technical with that, but it helps to link the
policy, objective and reality.” Uncovering the reality plays an integral part in determining the success of a scheme, but it also protects against any sensationalist backlash from locals who were against it being implemented. “You’ve got to deliver a city for everyone,” adds Mildon “Accurate data is the best way to understand how people are actually using the infrastructure, rather than listening to people who are shouting loud.” Further to this, tracking the data on a continuous cycle is equally important. Something which was incredibly hard to do prior to the invention of the technology. Commuters in towns and cities throughout the past will have been familiar with the sight of an individual in a hi-
PHOTO BY MAVIS CW ON UNSPLASH
Accurate data can change how a scheme is perceived PHOTO BY LUKE STACKPOOLE
ON UNSPLASH
vis coat on the side of the street, holding a clipboard and monitoring traffic. Mildon says there was a critical issue with this approach. “Car traffic tends to be remarkably consistent each day of the week and each week of the year, whereas with active travel you get huge swings from one day to the next, from the summer to the winter.
“So if you just go and sample and it happens to be a bit more humid that day, someone might choose to get a bus rather than cycle. If it was raining, you get a lot more people choosing to drive or get a bus than you would choose to cycle. And so you see swings that can be hundreds of percent week to week, on walking and cycling in a way that you don’t on car traffic.
“So that mentality of ‘we can do a temporary survey and plan our transport infrastructure for the next five years based on some temporary data’ doesn’t work when your objective is trying to encourage people to get out of their cars and use active travel because it is more weather dependent.”
Vision Zero
Road safety is a growing concern for many community stakeholders, emergency services and local authorities. As such, VivaCity is seeing changes in ways of thinking and approach to this issue more generally. Recently, the company launched a road safety based product, which is looking at enumerating near misses. “Historically, an intervention to try and make a road safer required KSI (killed or seriously injured) data, at that site before the safety team would get involved at looking at improving it, which is a bit of a challenge if you’re aiming for Vision Zero,” says Mildon.
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