Alex Poznanski is a graduating MS student.
My thesis presents an analysis of the demographic and geographic characteristics of Cycle Atlanta users. Cycle Atlanta is a smartphone application that was developed to collect bicycle route and infrastructure data in Atlanta via crowdsourcing. The data will be used to guide transportation planners and public agencies as they improve and build new bicycle facilities. However, if the data are to be used for equitable urban planning, it is important to ensure that they reflect a wide variety of cyclists with regard to demographic and geographic characteristics. The objective of my research is to analyze how the demographic characteristics and reported home locations of Cycle Atlanta smartphone app users compare to those of cyclists reflected by other datasets.
The findings of this research reveal a bias toward Cycle Atlanta users who are young, white males belonging to either a very high annual income group or a low annual income group, with fewer users belonging to middle-income groups. Most of the app’s users live in east-side, “intown” Atlanta neighborhoods. Other cyclist data for the Atlanta area show similar trends, although they are less pronounced than the trends exhibited by Cycle Atlanta users.
Public agencies using Cycle Atlanta data to plan bicycle infrastructure should keep these biases in mind, to ensure that updates to Atlanta’s bicycle network benefit as many types of cyclists as possible. In addition, the Cycle Atlanta team should do more public outreach to attract a more diversified user base.
To learn more about Cycle Atlanta app or download it, visit cycleatlanta.org