Santa Cruz County: Log your bike rides for transportation planning

The Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG) sent me a heat map of bike trip data they collected through their CycleTracks Monterey Bay program. Volunteers upload trip data to CycleTracks through a website or a smartphone app for transportation planning purposes. AMBAG does transportation planning for San Benito, Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties in California.

Here’s the detail of the heat map for Santa Cruz County, showing collected data from September 2013 to January 2014.


Bicycle heat map Santa Cruz County

To anonymize the source data, the points on this map represent the geographical center of a route.

While coverage for the area from the west side of Santa Cruz to Capitola looks fairly complete, there’s a big gap for South County and the San Lorenzo Valley. I know a bunch of you all ride your bikes in Aptos, Watsonville, Felton, Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek, because I’ve seen you out there.

I realize availability of technology might be an issue for some South County riders, and GPS signals can be weak and inaccurate along the Highway 9 corridor. This makes it doubly important for those who can to submit your ride data.

For more information, go to CycleTracks Monterey Bay.

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