We’re pleased to report that Collectively has built the technology powering this year’s Team Bike Challenge. Each year in the San Francisco Bay Area, the TBC gathers competitors interested in riding their bikes to work rather than commuting via car. Riders sign up through our site, where they can track their daily mileage, create and join teams, and earn medals rewarding them for their progress.
We’re proud of our product, so please do check the competition out, and let us know what you think.
The Marin Independent Journal covered a study that showed weekday biking up 46% and walking up 10% in Marin since 2007. While the article talks at length about the importance of new facilities to increasing biking and walking, those increases wouldn’t be possible without the outreach efforts that accompanied them. Providing a safe network for active transportation is of primary importance, but if new facilities aren’t effectively promoted, no one will know about them. Marin County Bicycle Coalition’s campaigns like Bike Locally and Marin County’s Safe Routes to School program established in 2000 deserve much of the credit for the change in transportation choices towards biking and walking. Read the full article at the Marin Independent Journal
Rarely do I leave a conference feeling as inspired as I did at the end of Transportation Camp West. Here was a room filled with all the thought leaders exploring the intersection of transportation and technology. They were exactly the people I love to meet, from fellow transportation tech startups to progressive agency staffers to academics in the field of urban planning.
The energy and excitement in the room was palpable. Because it was an unconference, there were no spectators, only participants. With nowhere to hide, everybody came ready to share. Within the first hour I met Jerry Jariyasunant, PhD Student from Berkeley working on the application of persuasive technology and open transit data to change mode choice, and we quickly organized a discussion session to share the tools and techniques we’ve developed to support sustainable transportation.
Our discussion group was attended by a diverse group of non-profit event coordinators, agency staff and transportation application developers all sharing their experiences and questions for how to apply the principles of game design and incentive systems to promoting sustainable transportation. Everyone got swept up in the cross-pollination of ideas that ranged from leveraging transit card data to create personalized incentive programs to visualizing the health and environmental impact of mode choice at the moment of trip planning.
Later that night at the ignite event I joined an impressive list of presenters putting it all on the line to inspire others with our visions for the future of sustainable transportation. Aaron Ogle shared the tricks his family uses to get around without owning a car. Brendan Nee shared the latest in car and parking share technology. While I made the case for applying the feedback loops and reward systems that video games use to save virtual worlds from imaginary threats to promote sustainable transportation to save the real world from the very real threat of global warming.
Events like Transportation Camp West are critical to catalyzing the changes that need to happen in transportation. Everyone there brought a different piece of the puzzle to the table from progressive government agencies making critical transit data free and easily accessible to agile tech startups who are using that data to provide innovative new solutions and non-profits engaging the public on transportation issues at the grassroots level. Seeing all the pieces together for the first time reaffirmed my belief that together we can and will build a more sustainable future.
More on the event at TransportationCamp.org
Images from Transportation Camp’s Twitter
