Data Sources and Cycling

Something I’ve been droning on about for a few years concerns our reluctance to use datasets that already exist.

Specifically in relation to cycling, we have a lot of data on cycling that is rarely used, and that’s without worrying about data that aren’t disseminated in a way that lets us use it. Here are some high quality UK based data sources. These come from surveys that are very expensive to conduct:

• Travel to work data (Census, 2011).
• National Travel Survey (Ongoing and updated regularly)
• Active Lives Survey / Active People Survey (Ongoing and updated regularly)
• Other official surveys ask for information on cycling (this blog is really a placeholder for me to continue to list these).
• Local government has a lot of cycle loops in a lot of places, but seemingly there is no standard way to expose these on API to anyone who might be interested.
• Dock based bicycle hire (I’m sure some of these data are available)

I’d be very interested if anyone can add to this list. Please do get in touch if you know of more. These data are presumably currently sitting around in data stores somewhere adding to our Carbon dioxide footprint without contributing as much as they could to our understanding of active transport. Now imagine not only having the data, but being able to apply some data fusion ideas so that we can gain a more holistic understanding and do this in a way that informs us where we have gaps in our knowledge, and quantify the value of closing those gaps.