TrailBlaze Chicago
Vote for new bike paths by riding them.
Motivation and Approach
TrailBlaze Chicago was an app for Android-owning cyclists in the Chicago area — one of the most bike-friendly big cities in America, and one that had worked hard to become so. But a city can only keep improving its network if it knows where new paths are needed, and that information sits with the people already riding.
TrailBlaze recorded and anonymously reported a rider’s tracks, letting them vote for new paths simply by carrying their phone while doing what they already enjoyed. It also gave the rider something back: a dashboard with distance, speed, and a map, plus the ability to review previously reported routes.
The app came 2nd in the Apps 4 Metro Chicago Grand Challenge, and 4th in the Transportation Round — first among the not-for-profit entries.
It was distributed through the Android Market and is no longer available.
Related Work
TrailBlaze has no paper of its own. The research questions it touches are treated in our crowdsourcing work:
- Crowd (Soft) Control — HotMobile 2012
- No One-Size Fits All: Towards a Principled Approach for Incentives in Mobile Crowdsourcing — HotMobile 2014
People
Lead & PI
- Fabián E. Bustamante (Northwestern University)
Students