Spain-Vitoria-Gasteiz: Cycling tracking technology for enhanced security measure

Challenge

How can Vitoria-Gasteiz effectively monitor cycling, in order to understand existing bike infrastructure use and to ensure traceability and safety? 

Context

Vitoria-Gasteiz has an extensive 180-kilometre network of bike lanes, making it a highly bike-friendly city. Residents enjoy easy access to this network within 250 meters of their homes. The city offers around 11,500 on-street bike parking spaces, along with VGbiziz, a secure bike parking service with 14 locations and 1,000 secure spots (as of December 2023). More than 14,000 bicycles are already registered in the public bicycle registry.

Despite its position as a cycling leader, the city lacks precise data on cycling habits and the utilization of its existing bike infrastructure.

To address this, the city is looking for innovative technological solutions for bicycle traceability (e.g., passive registration of bicycle electronic tags). Such solution(s) should enhance bike traffic monitoring capabilities, improve security, and optimize cycling parking infrastructure utilization. Ideally, the solution would also contribute to reducing bicycle theft within the VGbiziz parking network. The city seeks cost-effective, functional, and scalable solutions to seamlessly integrate into the city’s existing infrastructure and effectively address its cycling needs.

The expected outcome

• Implementation of a robust data capture and monitoring system
• Regular reports on bike lane usage and secure bike infrastructure
• Increased awareness and promotion of cycling benefits
• Enhanced security and accessibility to bike facilities
• Measure success through increased bike lane utilisation and secure bike infrastructure subscriptions

Physical bike parking infrastructure will not be considered for this challenge.

Published on 5 March, 2024.