This two hour session attracted many folks from Caltrans, SCAG (Southern California Association of Governments), California Highway Patrol, LAPD, Burbank PD as well as Metro. Unfortunately there was no sight of LADOT, who would have really benefited from this presentation.

Cyclists on the street know the roads and the issues better than bureaucrats sitting in an office.

The LA Bike Map, created with data from the LAPD, has more impact when presented by a cyclist, who has experienced those incidents that he is addressing and that he is researching. Alex Thompson did a wonderful job and his presentation drew a lot of comments and questions resulting in some nice brainstorming going on in the room.

Hit & Run incidents are always more shocking when one knows the victim. Having had Louis Bianco at the Bikeside SPEAKS! presentation on Saturday left people upset and at the same time fired up to change our streets.

It was no different today, when Sara presented her data about the various incidents that occurred in the past few years. Sara talked about Roadblock, Ed Magos, Jen Diamond and Jesus Castillo among the many other victims of hit and runs and Sara brought her vulnerability to the table, because she knows the people she talked about.

After our presentation, Sgt. Krumer showed the LAPD officers training video and CHP’s Officer Vince Ramirez and Burbank PD Motor Officer Justin Meadows made themselves available in a panel discussion about law enforcement and how each entity deals with cyclists on the streets.

Questions were raised and discusses about how we can educate the motoring public, about law enforcement around Freeway ramps and about jurisdictions. Metro vs. Cyclist incidents were again brought up and Sgt. Krumer repeated that LAPD will handle those incidents because the crime occurred on the street and they are responsible to cover those incidents. Krumer said that just like with any collision on the street, there needs to be the same informational exchange between cyclists and Metro driver and LAPD will help us handle those situations.

It was a great meeting with robust discussions, great crowd and great energy. Bikeside had 6 people representing, including Stephen Box, Jeremy Grant, Max Berson and DJ Wheels.

Check out our photos on facebook and don’t forget to follow us on twitter for up-to-the-minute updates.

Bike collisions around USC

A million times a cyclist has said “wouldn’t it be great if we could track where bike collisions happen?”  Now we can.

The LA Bike Map lets cyclists submit incidents, see them displayed instantly, and study the overall pattern, dynamically, in one place.

What is LA Bike Map?

Bikeside’s LA Bike Map allows you to submit bike incidents in LA County. You can then view the incident on the maps, and see what other incidents have occurred nearby. You can submit collisions, bike theft, harassment, and near misses.  You can also examine collision data from LA from 2008.  All the 2008 data for collisions is integrated and displayed, and you can choose the time frame for the data you want to display.  Soon we’ll have data for 2007 and 2006.

Remember that driver who cut you off in slow motion, you tapped the breaks and missed their bumper by inches, and then rode off into the sunset?  The only difference in the world was that you knew you nearly bought it, and your heart leapt out of your chest for an instant.

2008 Cyclist Fatalities for Los Angeles. There were 9.

Instead you can now put a marker on LA Bike Map describing what happened.  It seems like a small thing, but it gives us all the power to identify where near misses happen, and figure out how to stop near misses from being full on collisions.  Maybe it gives you some peace of mind too – now we can all learn from each others close calls.

Same with bike theft.  By submitting instances of bike theft, whether it’s a junk bike, Cervelo, or your lights got jacked, we can start to get a grip on a city wide problem.  Now we’ll be able to see the pattern, if there is any.  And best, it’s a public, community tool, so that if agencies aren’t responsive to our needs, we can use data from the map to argue for change.

How do I use the LA Bike Map?

Right now there are two primary ways to use the LA Bike Map.  You can report an incident or you can examine the mapping data.

Submit an incident button

To report an incident, just click the “submit an incident” button.  You’ll be redirected to a from, where you can choose what kind of incident it is, map the location, and provide some contact information.  Do all that – it’s pretty self explanatory – and then click “Submit.”  Your submission should appear on the map instantly.  If not (things are a little buggy), adjust the slider below the map to include the month for the incident you submitted, and your incident should appear.  As well, look in the List View, and you should see your incident listed.

To examine the data, just go to the main page and play with the maps.  Adjust the slider or use the drop menus above it to choose the range of months you’d like to display data for.  You can view the data by category – so try clicking different categories.  Categories can have sub-categories, but for right now only collisions has a sub-categories.  Try clicking the collisions category to get a list of sub-categories for display.

Sub-categories for display on the LA Bike Map

Fool around – there’s some cool stuff and there are endless data mashups we might do in the future.

A Work In Progress

LA Bike Map is very much a work in progress.  Just in the last few weeks, Paul Bringetto and Mihai Peteu have streamlined the code immensely.

There are imperfections.  There are prettier websites out there, for example.  The site is a bit clunky too, if you’re running an old PC, LA Bike Map will cripple your browser.  If you’re running something faster, you’ll probably be ok, but it does take a little while for the markers to display at times.  Browser wise, for right now, Firefox is your best bet.

Especially important, except for user submitted data, which y’all are no doubt generating right this minute, we’ve only added data for the City of LA.  So, surrounding cities are currently blank.

The 2008 LA bike involved collision data needs to be cleaned up a bit too.  The coding of the points on the map isn’t perfect; 100 or so of the 1581 incidents that will need remapping.  As of this writing, five incidents are mapping to points in Michigan.  Somehow I don’t think LAPD is really taking collision reports in Michigan winters.  More glaring, 56 incidents appear to have happened at City Hall, more than any other intersection by a factor of 10; when the Google Maps API can’t find a listed intersection in LA, it automatically maps it to 1st & Main, at the corner of City Hall.  There aren’t actually that many collisions outside City Hall.  And the Mandeville Canyon road rage attack, the most famous of 2008, is missing or not mapping correctly.

56 accidents outside City Hall? Geo-coding error!

You might also notice that the 2008 LA data shows all the collisions taking place at intersections.  That’s because we haven’t dug into the guts of the code to figure out how to code mid block incidents en masse.

So bugs, problems, they’re going to happen.  They ARE happening!  I’m convinced that imperfect data is better than not at all.  If you notice a bug, write me at alexcthompson@gmail.com.

The Future

For the immediate future Bikeside is looking to add new data sets to LA Bike Map.  We hope to add other years of data for the City of LA, and to gradually fill in the holes for other cities – West Hollywood, Compton, Inglewood, Culver City, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica etc etc.  We also hope to collect data for bike theft from local police departments, though we expect that data to be more difficult to work with, since it is likely to be less standard.  Over time, week by week, we will enrich the maps.

For the long term future . . . well, I don’t know.  But there’s a lot of great ideas on the table.

Help Us Out

We can use all the help we can get.  If you’re a coder, we can probably find a way to plug you in.  If you’re an expert in GIS, lets pump out some cool data displays!

We also want to follow up with as many reported incidents as possible.  Bikeside could really use volunteer help in calling and writing people who report incidents, especially serious ones, to find out more about the incident.

If you want to volunteer, write me at alexcthompson@gmail.com.

Thanks!

A very special thanks is owed to Mihai Peteu, Paul Bringetto, Dr. Lyke Thompson, Tait McCarthy, LAPD Sergeant David Krumer, and LAPD Deputy Chief David Doan for making this project happen.  Mihai and Paul refined, revised and recoded the site; without them this project wouldn’t exist.  Lyke (my dad) discovered the application and pushed me to do this project.  Tait provided some key technical support.  Sgt Krumer and Sgt Doan helped with understanding and acquiring the LAPD data.

Most of all, mad props to the coders at Ushahidi who built the platform on which LA Bike Map runs.

Cyclist involved collisions in and around the Bike Kitchen in 2008

Have you wished you knew how safe each street is for cycling?  Thanks to Deputy Chief David Doan, Mihai Peteu, Sergeant David Krumer, Paul Bringetto, Tait McCarthy, and Lyke Thompson, Bikeside is proud to bring the community one step closer to that goal.  Above we have displayed all the collision data from 2008 recorded by LAPD (involving cyclists.)  A single red dot represents a collision, and a larger red dot with a 2 or a 3 or a 4 in it represents 2 or 3 or 4 collisions.  As you can see, East Hollywood, the defacto center of bike culture in LA, has plenty of accidents.

As always, the problem is we don’t know how many cyclists ride these streets, so the data does not give relative risk.  Regardless, if you check out the maps for San Fernando Valley, Van Nuys Blvd stands out like a fresh bloodstain.

Collisions in the central Valley in 2008 involving cyclists (click to embiggen)

Where are we getting these maps and how can you view and play with them?  Check back next week!