SAN FRANCISCO –  September 23, 2020 – Strava, the leading platform for athletes and the world’s biggest sports community with over 68 million athletes, today announced that Strava Metro, the largest active travel dataset on the planet, is now available and free of charge for urban planners, city governments and safe infrastructure advocates. As cities around the world are grappling with the effects of COVID-19 on active transportation, Strava Metro provides cities with free access to mobility insights to enable smarter urban planning and infrastructure decisions.

 

“We always believed there were special ways in which the Strava community could contribute to the world at-large. Strava Metro was one such way. And given the growing need for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, we felt Strava Metro was too valuable and important not to make available to any organization attempting to make a difference in designing the cities of the future,” says Mark Gainey, co-founder of Strava.

 

With 62 percent of American employees working from home during the pandemic and a related public concern towards taking public transportation, daily travel methods and destinations have shifted on a mass scale. Millions of people upload their bike rides, runs and walks to Strava every week via their smartphone or GPS device, and Strava Metro aggregates and de-identifies this data before making it available to help departments of transportation and city planning groups understand changing commute patterns, improve safety and evaluate infrastructure projects.

 

For example, Strava Metro analyzed New York City’s changing mobility patterns from July 2019 and July 2020 and found a monumental rise in active transportation. There were 81 percent more people who completed at least one bike trip, and 80 percent more bike trips total. Earlier this year, New York City announced the opening of 100 miles of streets to cyclists and pedestrians as part of its Open Streets initiative, to allow for greater social distancing during the COVID-19 crisis. Strava Metro looked at the related sections of Crescent Street and 34th Avenue and found the initiative to be successful: seeing a 38 percent and 181 percent increase in bike trips respectively within this same timeframe. 

 

“Advocates are always looking to data to help determine which streets have the greatest need for safe cycling infrastructure,” said Transportation Alternatives Executive Director, Danny Harris. “Strava Metro is another important tool in helping to understand patterns of cycling and how to provide critical and safe bike infrastructure to more New Yorkers.” 

 

Since Strava Metro’s inception in 2014, partners have paid an annual fee for access to the aggregated, de-identified datasets. Last year, Strava released Metroview, an updated, intuitive map-based web interface providing partners with easier access to insights. Now, by making Strava Metro free to organizations that share its mission to make cities better for cyclists and pedestrians, Strava hopes to power smarter and more sustainable design of the world’s cities and to give back to the communities that support millions of athletes around the world. 

 

If you, or the organization you work for, believe in human-powered transport and think you can make an impact, apply to use Strava Metro for free now. 

 

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About Strava Metro

The Strava dataset is the largest collection of human-powered transport information in the world. Metro aggregates, de-identifies and contextualizes this dataset to help make cities better for anyone on foot or on a bike.

We work with urban planners, city governments and safe-infrastructure advocates to understand mobility patterns, identify opportunities for investment and evaluate the impact of infrastructure changes – all completely free of charge. Let’s make human-powered travel safe, accessible and efficient for everyone. Learn more at metro.strava.com.

 

About Strava

Strava is the leading platform for athletes and the biggest sports community in the world, with over 68 million athletes in 195 countries. If you sweat you’re an athlete, and Strava’s mobile apps and website connect millions of active people every day. Strava gives athletes simple, fun ways to stay motivated and compete against themselves and others without having to be in the same place at the same time. All athletes belong on Strava no matter where they live, which sport they love or what device they use. Join the community and make the most of your sport with a Strava subscription. 

 

Our favorite stats:

• More than four billion activities have been shared on Strava
• Athletes in every country on earth 
• More than 2 million new athletes join every month
• Over 19 million Segments
• 180 employees, most in San Francisco with more in Denver, CO, Hanover, NH and Bristol, UK
• 1,100+ professional athletes are on Strava
• 4.9 billion Kudos given between athletes last year
• Over 4 million photos shared per week
• 300+ communities making active travel better with Strava Metro