Resident Submission by Tim Schaefer (Sunnyside Resident)
One of the most popular cycling apps on the market today is Strava. This freemium model service (basic features are free, advance features for a fee), is one part GPS fitness-tracking and one part social-media-fitness-motivation-network that has grown to nearly 80 million users since 2009. In recent years it has moved beyond cycling to include running, hiking, walking, swimming and just about every other human propelled activity that exists.
What’s interesting for Strava users and non-users alike is in 2017 Strava made an anonymized mass-data version of their members' movement available free to the public through what they’ve called Heatmap. This online map shows the most travelled routes recorded by Strava members by highlighting the relative usage with different colour intensity.
Have a computer or device nearby? Open up Strava Heatmap now (strava.com/heatmap), position the map over Hillhurst-Sunnyside and follow along as we walk through some observations. If you don’t, you can still follow along.
When you take a close look at Hillhurst-Sunnyside on Strava Heatmap, to no surprise the most popular route is the river pathway along the North shore of the Bow River. This multi-use lane is protected from vehicle traffic and is well suited for recreational and commuting purposes.
The next most popular routes (as of July 2021; Heatmap updates monthly) are the cycle tracks on 5 Ave and 6 Ave NW and the cycle tracks on 9A St and 10 St NW. This makes sense as dedicated lanes tend to see high usage, but not as much as lanes protected from vehicle traffic.
Streets that do not currently have dedicated lanes but show relatively high usage include 7 St NW, 9 St NW, 19 St NW, 21 St NW and Broadview Road NW. All of these streets are all listed as “bike friendly roads” in the City of Calgary’s bicycle network, but they show higher usage than other similarly designated bike friendly roads. Their higher usage is likely influenced by those travelling through our neighborhood to reach the popular river pathway, but also to reach downtown and in the case of 9 St NW to reach Kensington.
While Strava Heatmaps only shows generalized usage (start and end points not listed), a more advanced data-rich platform called Metro is also available from Stava. Metro still keeps Strava users' data anonymous but provides more specific details and trends on where people are going and when they are travelling. In September 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Strava decided to drop the $20,000 annual fee for Metro and made the service completely free to municipalities and other advocacy organizations. This goodwill gesture allows communities to have the best information from Strava’s dataset so the best decisions can be made when planning or evaluating human powered movement infrastructure.
How relevant is Strava’s dataset in understanding human powered movement in Hillhurst-Sunnyside?
While Strava provides the single largest source of data of human-powered movement, Strava estimates that in general its data represents at most 40% of all movement. Strava also acknowledges and is making efforts to improve the societal representation of its data. So While Strava provides a great data set, it tends to skew towards more athletic individuals and does not proportionately represent society.
Another limitation is Strava’s data only represents historical data (obviously), so while it may guide decisions on future investment in pathways and sidewalks it is unable to predict future usage. So the question “If we build it they will come” won’t necessarily be answered by Strava’s dataset.
Despite these limitations, Strava’s data remains the best available source for people powered movement and it’s working every day to improve its representation of society.
As HSCA works with the City of Calgary to plan and prioritize future investments in human-powered movement, Strava data will be used as one of the tools to help guide decision making and evaluate effectiveness of past investments.
While Strava may not be for everyone, if you are interested in contributing towards Strava’s anonymous data set (and track your fitness activity too), you will find there are numerous privacy settings within Strava that you can use to protect your identity, maintain your privacy and still contribute towards the dataset.
If you are already a Strava user, please consider tracking more of your casual activity in the neighbourhood to help provide even more data to the heatmap dataset. Your contribution will help the planning and understanding of people movement in Hillhurst-Sunnyside and elsewhere in the City of Calgary..
Have questions or feedback, email hscatraffic@gmail.com
Tim Schaefer (Sunnyside Resident)