East Riding of Yorkshire Council - Bike Library

East Riding of Yorkshire Council BITS Project Overview

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.

To address such travel barriers, East Riding of Yorkshire Council was chosen to deliver a behaviour change and data collection programme, as part of the Bicycle Intelligent Transport Systems (BITS) Project, which has been co-funded by the Interreg North Sea Region Programme.

BITS funding was also awarded to 9 other EU organisations to increase cycling levels and reduce CO2 emissions across the North Sea Region. 

The shared international data and learning provide a world-class showcase of applications of connected cycling technology and data, to address barriers and help enable more people to cycle.

The project was supported by Active Withernsea and delivered by the local charity, the Southern Holderness Resource Centre SHoRes, who ran a free to access bicycle library and cycling support services.  

How Was See.Sense Involved? 

See.Sense was selected as the technology and data provider. 70 bikes in the library were fitted with both See.Sense smart connected lights and SUMMIT GPS Sensor technology to monitor bike usage and collect a range of sensor data.

The project pioneered data driven behaviour change support, tailored to individuals. 

Rider trip data gathered by the See.Sense SUMMIT device was fed into a user-friendly dashboard, which was accessible to the scheme’s designated ‘bike buddy’.

The bike buddy was able to then contact riders to offer motivation, praise and support to maintain or increase their riding levels. The buddy was able to provide cycle training, maintenance advice and lead rides. 

Participants could also access their own ride data via the See.Sense mobile application and share data on their riding experience by reporting things such as close passes or requesting infrastructure improvements.

Bicycle Library Rider Stats between 2021-2022. 

What data did See.Sense Collect? 

Whilst collecting data to help monitor and evaluate the libraries impact, See.Sense technology was also capturing data on swerving, braking, destination, popular routes, dwell time and road surface conditions.

See.Sense aggregated and anonymised this data and provided detailed specialist analysis providing valuable insights on the cycling network for a demographic of riders for whom data was previously unavailable. 

Some highlights from our sensor data analysis can be seen below:
 Heat maps showing: 1. Popular route choices and the top 3 most frequently used, 2. Adverse swerving and top 3 locations and 3. Adverse braking with top 3 locations. 

Project Quotes

Helena Moss, Local Growth Programme & Policy Manager for East Riding of Yorkshire Council says, “We have been delighted to partner with See.Sense on this project. It has helped  us gather data and provided valuable insights needed to effectively monitor and evidence the success of the programme. It has helped us enhance our cycle services and deliver changes in travel behaviour”.

BITS Legacy Brochure - A summary of the accomplishments of the BITS project over its four-year duration, "The county of Yorkshire (UK) launched a bicycle library where inhabitants could borrow bikes. Those bikes are equipped with sensors (See.Sense) that collect data such as braking location, speed, and road quality. In general, the sensor technologies were well received by participants. 

This data can be very valuable, especially if combined with data on intensities (counting) ... we see growing opportunities and interest for using and combining new data sources (e.g. GPS combined with counting to get a detailed insight in cycling behaviour)."

Get In Touch

Through our partnership with East Riding of Yorkshire Council and other organisations like them, we 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. 

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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.