The BITS project has already worked on data driven cycling solutions for more than 2,5 years. A lot of data and analysis results were provided by the Bicycle Data team to the BITS circle. In this context it is time for evaluating the effect and the contribution of the Bicycle Data website to the further uptake of cycling in the North Sea Region. For a first evaluation of the Bicycle Data project, the research team of the VIVES University of Applied Sciences from Kortrijk/Belgium that is mainly working on the Evaluation of the BITS project and relating recommendations for stakeholders organized an online meeting with the Bicycle Data project at the 1st of December 2021.
Griet Vanwynsberghe and Julie Tieberghien (VIVES) learned more about challenges regarding the development of the Bicycle Data database and the website. As Johannes Schering, Jana Klemp and Jan Stüven of the Bicycle Data team stated, a huge topic is the harmonization process and the (partially missing) comparability of the bicycle data sets that were used so far. The BITS project will end at the end of 2022, but the discussion about standardization of bicycle data sets has to be intensified among the European stakeholders in the forthcoming years. Suitable definitions (e.g. what a near accident is or how to count the bicycle traffic amount) also need to be clarified. Another issue is the management of privacy relevant data in terms of GDPR. Different perspectives and approaches in NSR countries need to be considered. There is a lot of work to do in the forthcoming years what makes clear the necessity of follow-up European project in the cycling data domain.
A lot of Bicycle Data data sets were recently connected to the CyclingDataHub (CDH) what gives the project of the University of Oldenburg a huge impact on the European scale. Bicycle Data is the first website that systematically makes available cycling Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These numbers improve the comparability of different cities and countries in terms of traffic safety or cycling amount. A very positive aspect is also the stakeholder orientation as the KPIs were presented and evaluated with many different stakeholders in the cycling domain (for instance as part of the BITS Academy on Cycling Data that was organized by Cycling Industries in Europe in April 2021).
