
NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
Recipient: |
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Initial Amendment Date: | September 16, 2021 |
Latest Amendment Date: | August 28, 2022 |
Award Number: | 2133309 |
Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
Program Manager: |
Vishal Sharma
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
Start Date: | October 1, 2021 |
End Date: | September 30, 2023 (Estimated) |
Total Intended Award Amount: | $999,770.00 |
Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $1,197,612.00 |
Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2022 = $197,842.00 |
History of Investigator: |
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Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
10889 WILSHIRE BLVD STE 700 LOS ANGELES CA US 90024-4200 (310)794-0102 |
Sponsor Congressional District: |
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Primary Place of Performance: |
CA US 90095-1406 |
Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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Parent UEI: |
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NSF Program(s): | S&CC: Smart & Connected Commun |
Primary Program Source: |
01002122RB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
Program Reference Code(s): |
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Program Element Code(s): |
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Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
CiBiC (Civic Bicycle Commuting) addresses the spatial mismatch gap by increasing the number of people who are willing to bike to work, using a community-driven group bicycling system. We propose that biking will increase transportation satisfaction, lower transportation costs, and increase flexibility to respond to employment and housing opportunities, while our unique technosocial, cyberphysical approach will enhance recruitment and retention, foster community engagement, and inform future plans for physical bicycling infrastructure. The research is situated in Los Angeles, California, within a pilot study area whose residents are predominantly lower income people of color. It brings together community organizations that support them with bicycling advocates to help design and execute the approach in partnership with university and industry collaborators, a model that will improve engagement within the project and applicability beyond it.
CiBiC will design and deploy a cloud-supported mobile app that engages communities in organizing demand-aware bike "flows", or group commuting corridors. It aims to generate emergent bike-to-work communities of practice that commute together, pair less skilled riders with more experienced ones, and can incorporate eBikes to enhance inclusion. Flows are planned around enjoyment and "bikability" as well as efficiency and connectivity to public transportation. Riders will use the CiBiC app to join these flows in small groups to increase safety and facilitate adoption. Participating bicycle commuters are further invited to co-create the system itself through a participatory data-driven public art component that provides visualization of flows and the activity of pods and riders within them. This promotes participation of community members that will influence both this project and future system designs. The participatory public artwork will be displayed in public spaces, such as transit hubs and community centers, providing entry points for engagement and stimulating collective reflection, evaluation, and co-design. CiBiC combines the day-to-day support of a smartphone app with novel, data-driven create expression to enhance feelings of collective identity, inclusion and ownership and sustain its ridership. Its route planning emphasizes a broader range of metrics than trip efficiency, providing additional degrees of freedom for route planning that could have lasting impact on mapping and navigation tools. With its exploration of potential machine learning support for emergence and tuning of new flows in new locations based on local transportation demand, CiBiC aims to maximize future scalability, transferability, and impact.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
In a Los Angeles and Buenos Aires-based case study, CiBiC (Civic Bicycle Commuting) explored how to address the "spatial mismatch gap" between where people work and where they live by increasing the number of people who are willing to bike to work, using a community-driven group bicycling system.
Based on earlier pilot studies, the project proposed that switching to biking will increase transportation satisfaction, lower transportation costs, and increase flexibility to respond to employment and housing opportunities. The team proposed a unique technosocial, cyberphysical approach to enhance recruitment and retention, foster community engagement, and inform future plans for physical bicycling infrastructure. CiBiC explored how groups of people can be organized to form "human infrastructure" more dynamically and in advance of physical infrastructure investment, using mobile and participatory mapping technologies to encourage people participation in what has been called the "bike bus" movement.
Initial research was situated in Los Angeles, California, within a pilot study area whose residents are predominantly lower income people of color. Led by UCLA, it brought together community organizations that support them with bicycling advocates, such as the Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition and People for Mobility Justice, to design and execute the approach in partnership with university and industry collaborators.
The CiBiC team, including small business partners RideAmigos and SudoMagic, designed and deployed a cloud-supported mobile app that engages communities in organizing demand-aware bike "flows", or group commuting corridors. It aimed to generate emergent bike-to-work communities of practice that commute together, pair less skilled riders with more experienced ones, and could incorporate eBikes to enhance inclusion. Flows were planned around enjoyment and "bikability" as well as efficiency and connectivity to public transportation. Riders used the app to join these flows in small groups to increase safety and facilitate adoption.
Over 230 individuals enrolled in CiBiC, through a process that included informed consent, biking workshops / test rides, and onboarding onto the technology platform. In Los Angeles, financial incentives were used to encourage riding and well as journaling through the project's mobile platform. In Buenos Aires, existing biking groups and commuters to a single destination, the "Ciudad Universitaria" campus of the University of Buenos Aires, were recruited. About 160 people engaged in bicycle commuting using the platform in both cities. Participating commuters were further invited to co-create the technosocial system through a participatory data-driven web and public art component that visualized activity within the flows.
Recruitment in Los Angeles was unexpectedly challenging, with self-report from participants, non-participants, and bike mentors indicating strongly ingrained cultural perception of bicycling not being viable in the region due to safety concerns. While a large percentage of the community members surveyed in an earlier study indicated a high desire for bicycle commuting and a strong interest in participating in facilitated grouped riding to overcome such concerns, even considerable investment and concerted efforts by the project's community partners faced strong barriers to actual participation.
In addition to various modifications to the recruitment process and organizational process in Los Angeles, during an extension period, the team ran the parallel effort in Buenos Aires, known for its long term commitment to bicycling as a means of general transportation and its implications for civic cultural identity, to provide a point of comparison. It also provided the opportunity to explore how to ensure both the human coordination and technological support could be extended to other cities, cultures, and modes of riding organization.
Across both implementations, preliminary findings included: 1) High density destinations involving pre-existing communities of practice provide a better recruitment and more robust ridership framework than simply route-matching; 2) networks of existing bicycle commuters and their pre-established routes should be the initial basis for the establishing commuting groups; 3) integration of a general usage biking platform (e.g., RideWithGPS and similar tools) strengthens adoption opportunities in communities where there are already active riders; 4) offering the participatory interpretive cartography artwork on the web promoted a stronger sense of agency among a broader group of people than place-based installations.
For the team, the project was a valuable opportunity to participate in a research and development process involving multiple perspectives (academic research, community service, technological development). It generated an open source codebase for the backend platform that was developed around the specific needs of bike pooling, which included support for ride data collection with privacy protection, route matching (to find pods), ride opinion journaling, and rider communication, along with summary creative data visualizations.
While this NSF-supported CiBiC project is completed, a forthcoming publication submission is planned to the World Bicycle Forum, as well as a presentation for the Foro Argentino de La Bicicleta (Argentinian Bike Forum); these will detail the process, findings, and potential future work around the CiBiC concept.
Last Modified: 06/26/2024
Modified by: Jeffrey A Burke
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