Why activity data is good for cities

Strava fitness data and what it can tell us about town planning

The ambition of Smart Data Research UK is to drive cutting-edge research that helps solve social and economic challenges.   

We focus on four key research areas: productivity and prosperity, health and wellbeing, digital society and sustainability. Some research projects incorporate all four themes. One example is the use of Strava data by the Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) at the University of Glasgow.   

Via its mobile app and website, the Strava app connects millions of runners, cyclists, hikers and walkers. Users can track their own journeys as well as the progress of others. 

In recent years, UBDC has worked extensively with mobility data from Strava, enabling its economists and geographers to gain a much clearer picture of the way people use towns and cities.

Cycling data in Glasgow

In 2020, the UBDC team set out to examine the use of safe cycling routes on their doorstep in the city of Glasgow. 

Data on cycling has traditionally been difficult to gather or has lacked detail. Using apps like Strava has been a game-changer for researchers, opening up a wealth of digital data relating to routes travelled and distances covered. For the UBDC study on safe cycling, the insights were invaluable.

The benefits of cycling are well documented. It can reduce car dependency, traffic congestion, and air pollution and improve public health. Due to the significant health and environmental benefits, many local authorities in the UK have tried to encourage cycling. Glasgow, like many cities, has spent a substantial amount of time and money providing safe cycling infrastructure to improve cycling environments. However, it is unclear whether these expensive physical investments are an effective strategy to encourage people to cycle more in cities where it often rains – places like Glasgow!

The UBDC study investigated the relationship between cycling, weather, and infrastructure using data collected from the Strava app over one year, alongside information on the location of cycling infrastructure, and hourly weather data.  

Specifically, two research questions were considered:  

1. Do safe cycle routes make a difference to cycling volumes?
2. Does providing safe cycling infrastructure (i.e. segregated lanes and shared off-road lanes) encourage people to cycle more on rainy days? 

Findings

The UBDC researchers found that providing safe cycle paths does indeed encourage people to cycle more, especially on dry days. 

However, their findings suggested that rainy cities like Glasgow may not have realised the full benefits of safe cycling infrastructure because there are larger reductions in the volume of cycling on rainy days on these routes.

The team recommended that planners, especially from cities with a high level of precipitation, should consider how to improve cycle paths to overcome adverse weather and other policies, for example, providing shower facilities at workplaces and incentives to cycle, to increase cyclists’ resilience to bad weather. 

Impact

Across the world, smart data from the Strava app is helping researchers working at universities and institutes. It is also enabling town planners to understand which routes people use, and which destinations are busiest. This can help academics and policymakers track how popular cycling is over time, evaluate the impacts of infrastructure, and plan new interventions to encourage active travel. 

Glasgow City Council is expanding its cycling network, in line with the recommendations of the research papers produced by UBDC.

The researchers at UBDC have also produced another paper, presently under review, which extends their previous work by looking at what characterises the types of routes cyclists avoid and the types they are attracted to.

About Urban Big Data Centre 

Supported by Smart Data Research UK and the University of Glasgow, the Urban Big Data Centre is a national research hub and data service, championing the use of smart data to inform policymaking and enhance the quality of urban life.  

Read the full paper sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856419310687: Hong, J., McArthur, D. P. and Stewart, J. (2020) Can providing safe cycling infrastructure encourage people to cycle more when it rains? The use of crowdsourced cycling data (Strava). Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 133, pp.109-121

For more insights about mobility data, go to the UBDC website and you can access the team’s historical Strava data here.