East Riding Council - Bike Library

For the 22% of the UK population living in poverty, the choice to be able to cycle is beyond their financial means. Successful behaviour change requires barriers like cost to be removed, and opportunities provided to build confidence and motivation to enable new behaviours to be sustained. These barriers are exacerbated in rural and coastal towns, with greater travel distances to access services and a shortage of public transport options. This support package and lasting change needs significant investment in order to support equitable uptake in cycling. 

To address such travel barriers, in 2021 East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) received funding from Bicycles and intelligent transport systems (BITS) and the North Sea Region (NSR) Programme for the European Union to use technology to increase cycling. The project  is supported by Active Withernsea and delivered by local charity SHoRes. This multi agency partnership aims to increase cycle trips by 10% and reduce carbon emissions by 9% across the other pilot countries in the North Sea Region. To achieve this a bicycle library was launched, providing free access to bikes to 50 participants along with maintenance and cycle training.

Support is also provided to increase cycling levels among residents across 4 ‘Active Towns’ with targeted marketing and interventions across each.  

The bikes in the library are fitted with See.Sense's state of the art patented tracking system to monitor and evaluate against the programme targets. See.Sense SUMMIT (Sensor Unlocked Micro-Mobility Insight Technology) devices use the LPWA network to wirelessly send large amounts of data into the cloud, (collecting up to 800 sensor readings per second) that is validated and fed into the near-real time ERYC user friendly Dashboard. Data is aggregated and anonymised and not only looks at bike usage and carbon saving, but the technology is also recording data on swerving, braking, destination and popular routes, idling and road surface.

See.Sense award winning bike lights are also being provided to riders in the 4 Active Towns to encourage more cycling. Participants agree to community crowdsource data, with users being able to connect to the See.Sense mobile app to push reports into the cloud about their riding experiences. All of this data is being used to monitor behaviour change, and give personalised support to users, like help with route planning, to provide incentives and reward to maintain motivation. Data can also be used in future to plan for infrastructure developments and address road safety issues. 

The project is having a positive impact on local people with delivery by local charity partner also operating a cafe provision alongside the library giving participants a place to meet and connect with the local cycling community. In the first 6 months of the project, nearly 2,300 trips have been recorded, also sending millions of data sensor readings into ERYC for analysis. 

Helena Moss, Local Growth Programme & Policy Manager for East Riding of Yorkshire Council says,

“we are delighted to partner with See.Sense on this project to help us gather data which will give us the data insights needed to effectively monitor the success of the programme, as well as helping us enhance our cycle services and deliver the changes in travel behaviour“.

Our partnership with East Riding of Yorkshire Council and other organisations like them, are collecting the quantitative data and insights for a range of demographics of riders, to build the long term evidence base needed for Active Travel Projects. This never before seen data is supporting the development of local cycling infrastructure plans based on insights from a much wider demographic than previous data collection methods has enabled. 

To find out how See.Sense technology and data services can help with your monitoring, evaluating requirements please email team@seesense.cc and a member of our team will be in touch.