Velo-City is one of the world’s biggest annual cycling conferences, bringing together policy makers, advocates and cycling industry representatives for four days of discussions, brainstorming and networking on how to make our cities more cycle-friendly. What better audience to promote cycling ITS and the MegaBITS project!
During the course of the four days, the 1,650 participants at this event got the opportunity to hear about the MegaBITS project via its visibility in sessions (“Data-driven cycling: Maximizing the benefits of floating bike data”), competitions (Smart Pedal Pitch) and on the CIE booth, where the project was visible with a roll-up, promotional videos, a report on Floating Bike Data and highly appreciated chocolates!
What follows is a short overview of each of these activities during the event. For more information feel free to reach out to CIE.
In the MegaBITS session on “Data-driven cycling: Maximizing the benefits of floating bike data”, hosted by CIE, speakers from the project (Province of Overijssel and the City of Enschede) and industry leaders in this space (Vianova and Strava) spoke about Floating Bike Data (FBD) and the potential for this dataset to provide city planners and policy makers crucial information cycling trips and trace data made in their city or region. These speakers discussed how better infrastructure planning, routing and even traffic management for cyclists could be achieved through the use of this data. The deliverable on a standardised dataset for FBD, put together by MegaBITS partners imec, was also presented to the audience in order to promote the groundwork being developed by the MegaBITS project on a consolidated understanding of this dataset as well as the standardisation efforts that are currently underway.
Smart Pedal Pitch was held for the fifth time at Velo-city Ghent, with a record number of 23 applications received! This competition is an annual international call for the most innovative and market-ready cycle tech solutions, to shape the future of cycling in cities. This field was narrowed to eight for the semi-finals, which took place on the first day of Velo-city. The semi-finals saw each of the eight start-ups pitch their product to a full audience and six judges who had the opportunity to ask questions following the pitch. These judges, coming from the City of Ghent, the European Cyclists’ Federation and Cycling Industries Europe, deliberated and selected three finalists - Locky, Velopass and Tiler – who presented at the plenary audience on Thursday, and who were judged in real-time by the audience. The winner was... Locky, a smart locking station. The winner will now have the opportunity to pilot their product on the streets of Ghent.
To cap all of this off, the MegaBITS project was visible on the CIE booth, where attendees of the conference could see and read more about the project, the work that the project is carrying out on Floating Bike Data (a QR code linking to the report was on display), all while enjoying a free coffee and custom made MegaBITS chocolate.
