uMove
Scotland's Cycling Framework Makes Infrastructure Greatest Priority

May 17th, 2023

The Scottish Government has published a new plan to increase everyday cycling across the country. The new Cycling Framework for Active Travel supports the 2030 Active Travel Vision - which aims to make walking, wheeling and cycling the most popular mode of transport for shorter everyday journeys.

UrbanTide is proud to support this initiative with its uMove data platform.

Challenge for Supporting Active Travel

Cycling Scotland manages an extensive network of automatic cycle counters that enable them to track cycling activity and modal share throughout Scotland. The cycle data they collect informs how they support active travel across the country to promote a more sustainable Scotland. But before working with UrbanTide, Cycling Scotland only had access to its own cycle data.

Cycling Scotland Objective

Cycling Scotland wanted to see travel data from other organisations to gain a broader, more accurate and holistic real-time view of active travel in Scotland.

Solution

In partnership with Cycling Scotland, UrbanTide has built the Active Travel Open Data platform: a collaborative data source for all national cycling data in one place.

We worked with local authorities and their transport partners to integrate and standardise their transport-monitoring data and provide it as a single source. This data is now readily available as open and shared data through the platform, with access to bespoke real-time data visualisations to inform wider strategy of the Active Travel Agenda across Scotland.

Results

900+ - We integrate real-time data from over 900 cycle sensors across Scotland, collecting 100,000+ records per day. Our pipelines standardise and continuously verify the data to ensure Cycling Scotland always has an up-to-date view across the entire network.

20 - We currently collaborate with 20 public and private sector partners to collect real-time cycling data. We’re making this data available for the first time by bringing these organisations together. As our partnerships grow, we'll continue to add new data.

47% - During the pandemic, the Active Travel Open Data platform recorded a 47% increase in measured cycling rates. This was recorded by the extensive National Monitoring Framework of real-time sensors across the country.

By integrating cycle data from multiple transport partners across the country, Cycling Scotland could gain a more accurate, real-time understanding of active travel across Scotland. Going forward, the uMove data platform will be central to evaluating performance and helping strategise improvements using data from local authorities.