Cycling

Cyclists are an pro-active and organised group of transport users and seem to have kicked off a great number of different initiatives with the aim of improving information services to cyclists and to improve provision of services and safety.

Cycle mapping and routing

Cyclists are busy building an opensource mapping base for the UK and many other countries within OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap was not actually started by cyclists, but much of the surveying is done on bikes which turn out to be very suited to the task. A special cyclist map rendering of OpenStreetMap was created by Andy Allan from Gravitystorm and Simon Nuttall from the Cambridge Cycle Campaign has developed and offers a Cycle Journey Planner.

Bikely offers a way of cyclists sharing information about cycle routes. Wikipedia has articles on many articles UK National Cycle Routes and on the network itself In addition to route information, there was also places where cyclists are uploading photos of routes, for example Flickr National Cycle Route Photos has nearly 2,000 geocoded photos taken along the UK national cycle routes.

'Community' policing

A number of web sites are springing up using photos to highlight illegal/thoughtless parking in cycle lanes.

• Making Cycling Dangerous
• Self-Absorbed Bike Lane-Parking Morons
• MyBikelane
• CamCycle offers this service and has said that the local police sometimes monitor the site and respond to parking violations from it.
• FillThatHole
• Facility of the month

This will become easier with GPS enabled mobile phone/cameras. Flickr already allow MSM messages to be received and geocoded and tagged photos could be immediated sent to the relevant authority.

Promotion of cycling

• Cycle to the match
• Life Cycle Uk

General

There are over 2000 groups on Flickr with the word 'cycling' in the title. The cycling group has 1,700 members and 13,000 general photos of cycling and taken from cycles (Apr08).

http://www.flickr.com/groups/cycling/