CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
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It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35640743
The Scottish capital was home to the shortest average ride - at 20.7km (12.86 miles).
While the length does not seem particularly short, the data includes both recreational rides and commutes.
Strava says the average commute distance across the UK is 15.9km (9.88 miles).
I do wonder if the above average volume of bicycle commuters coupled with compact geography led to this.
Strava data is possibly not very representative of commutes or even non sport recreational cycling, people that buy the device may like sports cycling.
It may be Edinburgh is more hilly so can achieve more exercise on shorter trips than flatter areas so unlike sporting cyclists in flatter areas may not length the route as much to achieve exercise aims.
An association with cafe density? ;)
I do wonder if the above average volume of bicycle commuters coupled with compact geography led to this.
It could do. For a UK city it is relatively cycle friendly so "normal" people can cycle for short trips. I notice the NEPN and the canal show up very brightly.
@Ed1
"Strava data is possibly not very representative of commutes or even non sport recreational cycling, people that buy the device may like sports cycling. "
Strava is a free app and can just be used as a mileometer- lots of people at our work use it for that. I found it great for claiming mileage expenses. My current interest is in metres of ascent- so it records me riding very slowly up hills...
It doesn't necessarily mean that if you install it on your phone that you will automatically turn into a wannabee Wiggo/Froome/Cav who must wear full kit lycra.
I promise...
It doesn't necessarily mean that if you install it on your phone that you will automatically turn into a wannabee Wiggo/Froome/Cav who must wear full kit lycra.
Anything wrong with that if it does?
I thought Strava was a pizza joint
@galaxy, not at all, but there seemed to be a "non-sport cyclist" vibe coming off that post...
Point is Strava isn't just for athletes and can be used for lots of different things, e.g. segments/mileage/altitude/route planning, and also lots of different levels of ambition. It is a great tool.
@paddyirish. I'm sure you've noticed that the bridge is best for altitude gains on Strava. It seems to be convinced that crossing the Forth involves descending to sea level.
the shortest average ride
I wonder what the shortest absolute (regular) ride is? I often feel I'm spending more effort carrying my bike up and down 3 flights of stairs than I ever expend/save while commuting on the thing.
I wonder what the shortest absolute (regular) ride is?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, but I very regularly ride (and record on Strava) the 1.6km between my flat and Haymarket. Admittedly this is part of a bike-train-bike commute.
I started Strava-ing everything I did on a bike because I was curious to see how far I ride the Brompton (over 3000km since I started recording, which I think was just over a year ago).
I used to regularly ride just 1.69 miles from my old flat to work in the mornings but usually took extravagant detours on the way home.
"Point is Strava isn't just for athletes"
Er, that'll be why the strap line on the Strava web site is "The Social Network for Athletes"? I think it pretty much is for "athletes" i.e.. sporty cyclists who go for segments, PBs, KOMs, etc. Unless you're a runner, then you go for whatever runners go for...
Don't use Strava myself but then I hardly use GPS, even on my phone. Don't have a Garmin, etc. Prefer map, compass, sense of direction, no batteries...
What is this "sense of direction" you speak of??
@crowriver - I started out using Strava as a segment bashing tool, but after a couple of years, I've calmed that right down and it is now very rare to get anywhere near the top of a leaderboard, partly because its use is so prevalent amongst 'sporty' cyclists that there will always be atleast 10 who have really gone for it with a tailwind and partly because I can't be bothered trying.
I use it now as a social network. I know what my friends have been up to and they me. It makes the brief changing room chats (that IWRATS won't talk about) more interesting as you know who's done a long ride and where they went.
The ability to quickly add photos and name your rides appropriately make it easy see what people are doing.
I use it to track my mileage and comparison to previous years etc and never look at cups.
Each to their own though...
Oh & I particularly like that on the heat map you can see that I'm not the only one who cycles round the wiggly path at the Gyle Sorting Office.
"I think it pretty much is for "athletes" i.e.. sporty cyclists who go for segments, PBs, KOMs, etc." is a little narrow in my experience.
I use Strava cos I'm a gadget freak who loves the whole GPS and flyby thing and maps and elevations and bar charts of distances and time. Just checked the flyby for yesterday morning and tis rather cool that I can see exactly when I first encountered Hankchief, caught up, chatted for a bit, then I pushed on in the knowledge I had a 9am meeting. Hypnotic watching.
If I was just going for KOMs and the like, then switching back to the tank of a commuter this morning after a fun two weeks on the cross bike, I'd have left the Garmin at home. But I didn't. The ride above that Hankchief recorded was him on a tandem with a tagalong!
Debating whether to go premium almost entirely so I can check out personal heatmaps. Just appeals to the geek in me.
"
omata (@omata) tweeted at 1:50am - 9 Mar 16:
We’ve launched our site – Omata, the world’s first analogue GPS bike computer. omata.com #cycling pic.twitter.com/KPw6bj0X02 (https://twitter.com/omata/status/707383011608633345?s=17)
"
@WC
You can create your own personal heatmap for free here:
...and there is also a Free Premium 60 day trial if you are a member of British Cycling.
Regardless of your views of Strava, I'm led to believe that because of it's significant number of users globally, the data it holds is held to be of great value and a larger database than anything else available. I think there is a commercial side of the business which produces anonymous data that local authorities can purchase for example. Strava rides can be marked as commutes so it is possible to get the 'commute only' data but I guess they've just released it as a lump sum in the press release.
I'd also say the sweeping generalisation that all it's users are 'athletes' is a little disingenuous. It's definitely more of a social tool with those I follow and most log far more commutes than the odd recreational ride.
....and they want to use their data to make cities better for cycling.
"Mission
Strava Metro’s mission is to produce state-of-the-art spatial data products and services to make cycling, running and walking in cities better. Using Strava Metro, departments of transportation and city planners, as well as advocacy groups and corporations, can make informed and effective decisions when planning, maintaining, and upgrading cycling and pedestrian corridors."
"Advocacy organizations and the general public can now access high-resolution heatmap visualizations of the data free of charge at Strava Labs. "
Not wishing to pigeonhole anyone but the strap line on the Strava web site is "The Social Network for Athletes". So it's pretty clear who they're targeting, even if 'non-athletes' are also using the service.
Or maybe they just mean 'athlete' in the way your average Brit uses 'sporty' i.e.. "Oh you ride a bike/jog/occasionally walk up big hills/play five-a-side on the pub team, you must be a bit sporty'.
....or the way in which darts players are athletes?
It was probably originally targeted at 'athletes' but these things evolve in their own way. As others have said. It is used by a much broader demographic these days as people have found as use for it that the designers may not have intended when they set up the site.
"It is used by a much broader demographic these days"
Is it? I wonder if that's true.
From a year ago: "Strava has about 8.2 million users, about 1.2 million have posted an activity in the past 24 days, and (perhaps the most closely guarded secret) about 192,000 are premium members."
http://markslavonia.com/sampling-strava/
Now maybe all those figures have doubled, or trebled, in 12 months. It's possible. Even so, it pales in significance compared to say Facebook's 1.5 billion active users in 2015 (not just sign-ups), Or WhatApp's 900 million, Instagram's 400 million, etc.
http://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
So it might be fair to say Strava is very 'niche' as a social network service, and probably fair to say most of its users could be considered, if not athletes, at least 'sporty'. :-)
Here are Strava's own stats: no mention of the number of active users, but if you drill into those figures then the user base is either much bigger than the estimate above, or they're just a very active bunch.
http://blog.strava.com/the-big-adventure-2015-animated-11265/
GoBike recently had a look at the City Centre Cordon where the council count all bicycles going in and out of the city centre area. There's just over 30 different entry/exit points. Then the data was compared to the Strava data recorded at the same time.
There was a very high correlation, 0.83, between the two data sets. So it indicates that Strava data is a good proxy of Glasgow city centre bike use.
So either all the bike users in Glasgow city centre wear lycra/carbon-fibre/spd or an eclectic range of people use Strava.
That's really interesting & a useful indication of how valid Strava data might be
It strikes me that if Strava is going to be used as a data source by local authorities then perhaps those of us who are not of the lycra persuasion should sign up to make sure our journeys are counted. As an added incentive, is it possible to be awarded the Lanterne Rouge as I'm never going to get any QOMs
The same guy who estimated Strava's user base muses on geographical reach here. I don't know how he can meaningfully extrapolate this from these relatively small sub-samples, but he concludes that Strava's strongest market is.....the UK. Both in terms of number of members and active members. Oh and 22% of Strava users are runners, the rest mostly cyclists. Only 15% of his sample identified themselves as female, of which over half were runners.
Is there a similar correlation between these figures and the cycling/running population at large?
http://markslavonia.com/stravas-global-reach-confirmed-by-sampling/
Okay, using that guy's methodology of entering numbers into the browser, I can say that Strava, at the time of posting this, has a total of 13,837,616 13,837,763 users. Let's also assume his estimates of the proportion of active users are fairly accurate at slightly less than 15% of all users (14.6%).
So Strava has added 5.6 million users over the course of a year. Pretty impressive, but still quite niche as a social network.
(In the time it took to write the post, an extra 151 users joined, many it seems from Brazil).
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