This article was published in 2008, in Newsletter 80.
The Cycling Campaign’s online Journey Planner and Photomap has now been running for over two years and in that time has been used to generate almost 40,000 cycle journeys around Cambridge and a few other places. During this time we have received a lot of grateful feedback from users who have used the system to find quiet routes across the city for themselves or their children, or to simply check their own commuter routes to see if they can find anything better. Some people have even joined the Campaign because of the journey planner.
|
For those unfamiliar with the system, the Journey Planner does what it says on the tin (plan a journey from A to B and get a route plan back). The Photomap lets members of the public add cycling-related photographs, to demonstrate good or bad practice, or for instance to show where cycle parking is needed.
We have received a lot of enquiries from other groups wanting a system for their area or local cycling campaigns, since we presented the original system at the CCN/CTC national conference of cycling groups back in November 2006.
So we are pleased to announce the release of www.CycleStreets.net, a national version of the journey planner which we hope will grow to be as good at generating cycle routes in other cities as it currently is for Cambridge.
Also, other groups around the UK can now go to the CycleStreets website and set up a customised version for their own area. Local Authorities are also welcome to do so, but will incur a charge which will help fund ongoing development and the cost of running the scheme. Please contact us via the CycleStreets website if you are interested.
Competition from other online cycle planning systems around the world is now hotting up, with a few other systems each of which is focussed on a specific area. Simon’s recent article in the CTC’s ‘Cycle’ magazine outlines these recent developments.
We are grateful to our hosting company, Mythic Beasts (www.mythic-beasts.com), who have kindly provided us with a free development server, and to colleagues in Edinburgh who have sourced grant funding for the most recent development work.
This is a project now being taken forward separately from Cambridge Cycling Campaign, although the Campaign will obviously continue to benefit from it in various ways. We welcome help and assistance with its development, as we turn it into an ‘open source’ project. People are needed to help with coding, design, and the running of a company. Do contact us via the website if you can help in any way.
Feedback, via the link on www.CycleStreets.net, is very welcome!
Martin Lucas-Smith and Simon Nuttall, Developers of CycleStreets