Friday, January 9, 2009

Web app idea

An idea came to me today while reading on the net. The idea is not new, but I see its potential to be implement in Melbourne. Inspired by the project in New York, I think I can inspire people in Melbourne to establish something similar. Here is a gist:

Notice that on Google map, one can get a direction from one place to another by clicking on the map. However, in the perspective of cyclist not all roads are created equal. While some roads is suitable for motorised vehicle, it may not be suited to the rider. To complicate the issue further, riders are different in term of their comfort on riding the same road. For instance, some riders wouldn't prefer to ride on Nicholson st during peak hour, but I don't see it as too dangerous. 

With this in mind, I suggest an idea to develop a web-based application that allow each rider to plan his/her route. I believe that it should have the following elements:

  1. Each rider can select different minimum road safety level to travel on. 
  2. The road safety level will be evaluated through the inputs of cyclists travelling on the road. The idea that is similar to Wikipedia. That is, you allow a public contribution or road assessment. The road safety level should be judged according to existence of bike lane, Copenhagan style?, tram?, traffic and road condition (like steepness). Initially, the project should only be opened for people to contribute their road assessment. Once, enough data is collected, then we can begin open for the general usage. 
  3. The road assessment should be reviewed every year for more update information. 
  4. The route should be weighed toward straightest path, and less so towards path with high number of right hand turn. In the next stage, the time dynamics should be included in the calculation. The road condition differs greatly over the day, and therefore it would be nice to include into the project. 
  5. Therefore, evaluation for each junction will needed for all traffic direction.
  6. If bike sharing system is implemented, the stations should be shown on top of other information.      
  7. If impossible, the calculation should include the possibility of mix usage. Incorporating the train timetable into the calculation (I believe that you can receive real time information on train now), the rider can plan the route that integrates with travelling on train.   
Anyway these are just a quick inspiration from reading things. Any comments or suggestions are welcome. In fact, if anyone can start the project, that would be awesome.

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