SUSTRANS Active Travel Data
CASE STUDY: SUSTRANS ACTIVE TRAVEL DATA
SUSTRANS Active Travel Data
Drakewell was chosen to supply Sustrans with our C2-Traffic and C2-Gateway solutions, plus a dedicated Active Travel Public Interface. Sustrans are a charity organization who serve as custodians of the UK National Cycle Network, comprised of over 12,000 miles of signed paths and routes for walking, wheeling, cycling, and exploring outdoors. Drakewell solutions manage and present all active travel data for bicycle and pedestrian counters overseen by Sustrans throughout the UK.
The Challenge
Sustrans approached Drakewell in 2020 to begin implementing Active Travel data management for bike/ped sites. The organization required a system for processing, analysing, and sharing active travel data. Drakewell’s history in traffic data management, including open-protocol auto-polling and file processing, made our team and Sustrans confident and ambitious in our objectives for the Active Travel solution.
The Approach
Drakewell leveraged our existing data lifecycle for the active travel framework. The business team at Sustrans worked with the Drakewell team to identify most common data sources, desired reports, and data handling.
Throughout requirements tracing and configuration, Drakewell and Sustrans collaborated closely, incorporating feedback from the client and from data customers.
THE OUTCOME
The Project was completed on-schedule, with the agency’s requirements fully completed at Go-Live.Drakewell implemented an Active Travel data management system, public interface, and auto-polling for Sustrans, incorporating existing assets, historical data, and plans for future data needs.
Drakewell implemented protocols for the Agency’s Bike/Ped counters, implemented auto-polling, and developed the required API tools for certain counter types. Additionally, Drakewell configured key reports and dashboards to display data in the desired class scheme and format.
The Public Interface is widely accessible, and it features National Cycle Network linework alongside bike/ped sites for a contextualized, geospatial display of data.
Lessons Learned
Over the course of the implementation, Drakewell expanded the range of counter protocols supported, adopted new data visualization and processing methods to accommodate bicycle and pedestrian data, and developed numerous reports to support active travel data management.
Our team had the opportunity to discover alongside the customer what the trajectory of active travel data management was, use-cases for data, priorities for data consumers, and the key trends and patterns active travel data often follows.
This implementation also highlighted the growing importance of weather data, new counter technologies, and baseline reporting for local, regional, and national traffic agencies.
