BICIFICATION: Supporting modal shift and cycling through gamification and rewarding
BICIFICATION is the EIT Urban Mobility project rewarding urban cyclists in Braga, Istanbul, and Tallinn with economic incentives. The project adopted the patented system by Pin Bike for the certification, monitoring, and gamification of urban bike rides.
Cross-border/international
Estonia
Portugal
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Other
- Braga, Portugal
- Tallinn, Estonia
- Istanbul, Turkey
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
EIT Urban Mobility 2022
No
Yes
2022-12-31
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Pin Bike Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Angelo Domenico Last name of representative: Capogna Gender: Male Nationality: Italy Function: CEO Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: S.P. 231 km 32,700 Town: Corato Postal code: 70033 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+393401454127 E-mail:capogna@pin.bike Website:https://www.pinbike.it/
While introducing and improving urban cycling infrastructure and services is important, citizens need to first change their attitude toward active mobility. In this context, BICIFICATION, an EIT Urban Mobility project, nudged active mobility in Braga (Portugal), Istanbul (Turkey), and Tallinn (Estonia) in 2022. The project adopted the antifraud system patented by Pin Bike to certify, monitor, and reward urban bike rides. The system is based on the comparison of two sources of data collection, both from hardware (Pin Bike sensor) and software (Pin Bike App) devices. Local authorities can reward urban cyclists with economic incentives to be spent in local shops, while benefitting from valuable and trustable data collected in the Pin Bike Dashboard, a web portal informing smart cities' data-driven policies and investments with different data on traffic, users, infrastructures, etc.
The BICIFICATION project lasted one year, while the pilot with citizens and storekeepers lasted 6 months and led to a qualitative and quantitative assessment allowing cross-area comparisons. The traffic data collected is displayed in an Open Data Platform for each city open to all users and available here: http://bicification-project.eu/join/.
The solution adopted by Braga, Istanbul, and Tallinn had already been rolled out in more than 20 Italian cities (e.g. Bari, Bergamo, Bologna, Foggia, Roma, Pescara, Torino, etc.) before BICIFICATION and is easily transferable to other cities. In the long term, the solution by Pin Bike will certify, monitor, and reward all sustainable transport modes.
Active mobility
Proximity economy
Accessible mobility
Co-creation
Rethinking urban spaces
Transport emissions represent around 25% of the EU's total GHG emissions and road transport represents more than 70% of GHG emissions compared to other modes of transport. At the same time, urban mobility has been singled out as a key focus area for the European Green Deal through its mission to have Europe be climate neutral by 2050. Therefore, the first objective of BICIFICATION was nudging travel behavioural change towards more cycling through local games and economic incentives (km reimbursements, multipliers for peak times, extra monthly prizes, survey prizes, location prizes for participating in local events). The modal shift from individual cars to cycling results in significant emission reduction, which Pin Bike monitors in its app for cyclists and dashboard for city managers.
BICIFICATION empowered citizens, storekeepers, and mobility managers to take action against climate change. In 2022, IPSOS estimated that 40% of the adult population world wide owns a personal bike, but only about 10% uses it as a communing means of transport. The gamification and economic incentives proposed by Pin Bike can help fill this gap to promote several climate-related benefits: climate mitigation (increased modal shift to cycling, decreased modal share of private cars, reduced energy need and consumption needed for electric cars), public health (reduced noise pollution and heat island effect, increased road safety thanks to cooperative maps, reports, and gadgets included in Pin Bike’s kits, increased physical activity resulting in enhanced physical and mental well-being, enhanced liveability of public spaces thanks to better data-driven and co-created planning and policies), social inclusion (enhanced citizen & communities’ participation & social capacities for participation/engagement thanks to cooperative maps, reports, and local events, increased awareness of social issues, environmental activism of different stakeholders, economic development).
BICIFICATION fostered cultural benefits, participation and social innovation. Nudging travel behavioural change through economic incentives leverages the cultural resistance to cycling and triggers a permanent modal shift towards active mobility.
City managers engaged citizens with extra prizes rewarding users taking part in local events and/or surveys. Citizens contributed to healthier and fairer communities by cooperating on the creation of local maps to pin cycling-relevant infrastructure and services. Even more importantly, they were able to receive in-app notifications and surveys by their city managers and to send reports about infrastructure status and architectural barriers. City managers were able to spot those reports on their dashboard map, as well as to change the status of those reports from noted to solved. All this information is incredibly valuable to plan urban spaces, traffic, and infrastructural interventions and investments in a more data-driven and co-created way. In this way, BICIFICATION proposed a community solution for inclusive mobility to increase the fruition of public spaces by creating a real sense of community. At the same time, the solution proposed by Pike Bike contributed to digitalise city managers and citizens alike to produce, collect, and monitor data, to cooperate on local maps, to communicate, and to get more involved in healthier and more sustainable communities through Pin Bike app and dashboard. Finally, the engagement of local storekeepers made urban cycling more economically valuable for the whole community, especially in the framework of economic recovery from COVID-related restrictions and from the current energy crisis.
This inclusive participation in effective climate action resulted in greener, safer, more accessible and inclusive mobility-related infrastructure and more liveable public spaces. An indirect result was healthier, more collaborative, cohesive, and environmentally-aware communities.
BICIFICATION nudged more cycling not only as a low-carbon mode of transport improving urban quality and wellbeing and facilitating social cohesion, but also as an affordable means of transport. Cycling is a cheap, flexible, and personal mobility option unlocking opportunities for low- and middle-income citizens that would otherwise be unable to participate in the economy and community, or access education, healthcare and other urban services.
Regarding gender equality, diversity, and inclusion, city managers decided to select some minorities and disadvantaged groups to take part in BICIFICATION, in order to contribute to fairer, more accessible and inclusive mobility for all.
BICIFICATION addressed the cross-cutting themes of inclusion and accessibility, since citizens were able to cooperate on the creation of local maps to pin cycling-relevant infrastructure and services, as well as to send reports about architectural barriers and dangerous status of the infrastructure (insufficient lightning, damaged road signs, illegal occupation of bike lanes, etc.). This bottom-up approach enabled more co-created and data-driven urban and traffic planning, decision-making, and investments.
Thus, decision-making processes, urban planning, policies, and investments are more data-driven and more co-created with citizens thanks to the community engagement and co-created features of Pin Bike app, as well as to valuable data collected by Pin Bike’s sensors.
Citizens voluntarily signed up to take part in BICIFICATION. If they met the requirements set by their city managers, they were eligible to earn money as they cycled and to spend them in local shops. Citizens were also encouraged to co-create a better urban cycling experience for all by creating cooperative maps with other users and by reporting directly to their city managers through a dedicated in-app feature by Pin Bike. Therefore, decision-making processes, urban planning, policies, and investments in cities were more data-driven and more co-created with citizens. Pin Bike also trained city managers and local storekeepers on the use of their dashboard, as well as participants on the use of their app, as digitalization can greatly improve mobility and liveability in cities. Also, local storekeepers joined the pilot in order to redeem vouchers earned by cyclists. This engagement encouraged the environmental and social activism of a whole local community.
The results of this citizen and community engagement in the design and implementation of BICIFICATION are:
• More community engagement thanks to collaborative maps and multiplied incentives to participation in local events and surveys
• More co-creation activities thanks to reports of architectural barriers and infrastructural status to the city mobility managers and urban planners resulting in more accessible mobility for all
• Business opportunities for local storekeepers and generation of new economic benefits for the whole community (bikeconomics).
• Increased connectivity to the city centre through intermodality
• Increased modal share of cycling modes, especially while commuting
• Data-driven policies, strategies, interventions, and investments.
BICIFICATION ensured diversity of participation by the different players required to run the pilot activities. At the local level:
- city managers set the rules of the game, monitored the performance of the pilot and took strategic measures to reduce emissions, to plan traffic and urban spaces, to engage citizens.
- citizens got rewarded to cycle in their cities, as well as to participate in local events and initiatives, to contribute to collective maps and to report architectural barriers and infrastructural status.
- local storekeepers were able to redeem the vouchers earned by urban cyclists, thus receiving indirectly the economic incentives meant at nudging travel behavioural change. This engagement encouraged the environmental and social activism of a whole local community.
National and international stakeholders (associations, universities, etc.) supported the design and implementation of BICIFICATION to perform qualitative and quantitative data analysis and to draw recommendations for local authorities in other cities and countries.
BICIFICATION adopted the technical solution by Pin Bike to nudge travel behavioural change towards more cycling. This solution was implemented in three cities (City of Braga in Portugal, City of Istanbul in Turkey, City of Tallinn in Estonia), which represented an ecosystem of stakeholders engaged (citizens, sterekeepers, companies, associations, media professionals, etc.). BICIFICATION counted on different expertise by different partners in the consortium that met regularly during the project implementation:
- Academic partners: CERTH in Greece and KTH in Sweden, whose added value was related to data collection and analysis, focusing on qualitative and quantitative studies about bikeconomics, social impacts, and travel behavioural change.
- Technical partners: Nextome and Pin Bike in Italy, whose added was related to the optimization of the technological solution.
- Institutional partners: City of Braga in Portugal, City of Istanbul in Turkey, and City of Tallinn in Estonia, whose participation in the projects allowed for the adoption, testing, and validation of the technical and social innovation proposed by Pin Bike.
BICIFICATION adopted, tested, and validated the business model proposed by Pin Bike to nudge cycling and to boost local proximity trade. Bringing together citizens, associations, and storekeepers in 3 different European cities showed how economic incentives to urban cycling could represent a local solution to address specific needs (cultural, infrastructural, strategic, academic, etc.), all while tackling global challenges: climate change, sedentary lifestyles, fragmented communities, economic and energy crisis.
BICIFICATION engaged 1,500 users in 3 different cities, saving more than 133 tons of CO2 in 6 months and spending more than 85,000 euros in local shops. One of the main outputs of the project is the Open Data Platform, showcasing traffic heatmaps, cooperative maps, and in-depth statistics related to each city. This Open Data Platform is public for the wider audience (researchers, local authorities, urban and traffic planners, etc.) to acquire knowledge regarding cycling habits in Braga (https://pinbike.web.app/opendata/21), Istanbul (https://pinbike-turkey.web.app/opendata/23), Tallinn (https://pinbike.web.app/opendata/22).
Another output of the project was a set of guidelines for other local authorities, city managers, and urban and traffic planners to make sense out of the experience of BICIFICATION and to replicate its solution in their specific context.
The uniqueness of the BICIFICATION technical solution provided by Pin Bike is mainly based on the patented system combining data collected by the Pin Bike app and the Pin Bike sensor. Unlike many other systems only based on apps, Pin Bike is the only one that can certify the truthfulness of bike rides. This unique characteristic allows city managers to adopt an incentive policy with financial benefits for the users, which has a major impact on the attractiveness and efficiency of the system.
Moreover, other similar technical solutions do not provide local authorities with useful data to monitor and plan urban spaces, inform their policies and investments fostering sustainable mobility, and communicate directly with citizens.
Additionally, Pin Bike allows users to report and communicate existent architectural barriers that restrain mobility for vulnerable groups.
Another added value is the engagement of local storekeepers that can receive the credits earned by urban riders, thus multiplying the positive effect of active and sustainable mobility and encouraging the environmental and social activism of a whole local community.
The BICIFICATION project was concluded in December 2022 with successful results in citizen engagement, travel behavioural change, business opportunities for proximity trade, and CO2 emission reduction (as monitored by local Open Data Platforms). Before BICIFICATION, the technological solution proposed by Pin bike had already been implemented in 20+ Italian cities (e.g. Bari, Bergamo, Bologna, Foggia, Pescara, Turin, etc.). Thanks to the improvements introduced during BICIFICATION (e.g. technical optimization, testing in different environments, translations, etc.), the solution can be more easily replicated in other European cities following the same methodology:
- Management and coordination activities throughout the project
- Communication and dissemination activities throughout the project
- co-created design of gamification features in the early stages of the project
- User and citizen engagement in the early stages of the project
- training of city managers and local storekeepers in the early stages of the project
- Implementation of the game during the majority of the project duration (at least 4-6 months)
- impact assessment, analysis, reporting, and sensemaking in the final stages of the project.
The successful example of BICIFICATION can be transferred to and tailored on other cities. In the past 6 years, the technical and social innovation by Pin Bike has been adopted in 20+ Italian cities (e.g. Bari, Bergamo, Bologna, Foggia, Pescara, San Giorgio a Cremano, Santeramo, Sassuolo, and in 11 Municipalities of of the West Metropolitan Area of Turin), with different features (e.g. Bike”work, Bike2School, Bike2Art, etc.). Thanks to BICIFICATION, the Pin Bike patented system proved to be replicable in other international cities and with different rewarding mechanisms.
In order to launch a new project, it is important for cities to have a clear overview of their urban mobility conditions and some clear objectives to improve its sustainability. Pin Bike will then apply the most appropriate features to meet those objectives (e.g. user selection, citizen engagement, co-creation features and activities, traffic calming measures, etc.).
Finally, another essential element needed for the successful launch and implementation of the project is communication with participants and local stakeholders. BICIFICATION envisaged several communication channels:
- Social media advertising
- Organisation of both ad hoc events for Pin Bike users and public events open to the whole citizenry in liveable public spaces
- Bilateral communication between citizens and city managers through in-app reports and notifications.
BICIFICATION addresses the challenges of public and liveable urban spaces, citizen engagement, co-creation, and road safety, as well as urban traffic congestion, noise, environmental degradation, and pollution. On the other hand, the project addressed inactivity as a source of several health issues. On a wider scale, BICIFICATION tackled the challenges of sustainable mobility, climate action, and economic acceleration in urban and metropolitan areas, while contributing to several SDGs, namely "Good health and wellbeing", "Sustainable cities and communities", and "Climate action".
