PORTLAND, OR: COMBINE USER BIKE TRIP INPUT & REAL-TIME BIKE COUNTS

-> One of Portlands most interesting tech startups is about to move into its next phase: attempting to recruit thousands of local bike users to become rolling bikeway evaluators. Knock Software, the company that is simultaneously contracting with the City of Portland on an experimental piece of hardware that aims to radically lower the cost of counting bike traffic, is also setting out to convince 10,000 people to install its mobile app by the end of this summer. The offer: put the free app on your phone, give each bike trip a quick "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" as you complete it, and the city will be able to parse massive numbers of such trips into data that can rapidly improve Portlands streets.
Knock founder William Henderson said in an interview that the combination of instant real-time bike counts (gathered by Knocks small, low-cost sensors) and real-time user evaluations (gathered voluntarily from people who install Knocks upcoming app, which is called Ride) would completely change the citys ability to prove that its biking improvements are making a difference. http://bit.ly/1Ob4RpO

from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.