Kappo is a platform that helps cities to increase the urban bicycle usage worldwide through gamification and safety navigation for citizens, wellness & CSR for companies and giving cyclists insight and predictive analytics for governments, enabling better planning and higher return on urban infrastructure investments.
The government wasn't sure about the citizens' opinion about building urban cyclists infrastructure at the side of the biggest river in our capital. This was leading to cancel the project or invest a huge amount of money in traffic studies and wait 5 years only for the results.
“Urban Cyclists are the Early Adopters of the Cities. They know where the safest, quickest and less polluted routes are. So including them in the city planning process is fundamental to becoming a Smart City.” - Iván Páez Mora, Founder & CEO - Kappo Bike For Governments; Urban cyclists risks their life everyday in many cities of the world. That’s why if a bicycle lane doesn’t give them a good sense of safety, due to it’s bad design or simply because it suddenly stops, they will avoid them and look for another route. Many times, this apparent low demand for existing infrastructure discourage investment in the future bicycle lanes. But what governments don’t consider is that the demand for bicycle infrastructure exists but existing supply is misplaced. This phenomenon is not new; it’s been observed for years in the study of urban pedestrian flows. It does not matter how the sidewalk is designed, the pedestrian will always use the way they think is most convenient, drawing what are called “Desire Line” (or Line Grass). City planners from all over the world are already modifying sidewalks in order to be aligned with the preferences of the final user. Here is where Kappo becomes more than a game. Every trip registered in the app is analyzed and, through a smart flow visualization, given to the governments of the world to help them understand the flows, behaviours and the needs of local urban cyclists, allowing them to accelerate the infrastructure building process and increase the return on those investments. Here’s an example: http://www.kappo.bike/virtual-counters-mtt_en.php?code=PROVIDENCIA Citizens that use our App nearby the project, also receive an survey to gather even more detail information. As we track the bicycle trip made by the urban cyclist we was able to figure it out more detail data as origin of the trip, destiny of the trip, distance, average speed, street preferences, in a few words we're a traficc study (in real-time) about urban cyclists.
This project set a world precedent in term of citizens being part of the decision-making process regarding urban cycling, taking the citizens' preferences about how they move and behave and translate into new dedicated infrastructure who will impact hundred of thousands of people from 7 different municipalities, they now will can use sustainable transportation reducing CO2 emission and costs helping their personal economy and improving their health making exercise on a daily basis. On top of that, the infrastructure will give the opportunity to small businesses sell their product to the urban cyclists, improving relationships among local business and local buyer.
The key is INCREASETHEC ITY’S SENSATION OF SAFETY, and this is why Kappo was born from a formula we codified analyzing how Denmark becomes the best country in the world to commute by bicycle. The Kappo Bike Formula aims to encourage citizens to commute by bicycle because if you increase the bicycle usage in any city of the world, two things are going to happen: 1. Drivers will be more aware of urban cyclists being more careful interacting with them. This increases the city’s sense of safety, which encourages more people to use their bicycle because “now is safer”, increasing demand. 2. When demand growths, a second phenomenon occurs; The government is more willing to invest more money in high-quality bicycle infrastructure, to meet growing demand. This produces a significant increment of city’s sense of safety bringing more people to use their bicycle and repeating this virtuous cycle. High sensation of safety + good infrastructure give as result bicycle friendly cities, such as Copenhagen in Denmark where 60% of the urban trips are made on bicycles: https://youtu.be/9MaDFHeEqiw
1) Citizens are open to participating in the design of their city. They love this kind of initiative where and feel more engagement (almost in love) with their city. 2) Governments are capable to understand that new technologies can help to create the cities of the future, these technologies are already available and only they need to change the mindset. 3) Olds ways to design and decide about cities' infrastructure are not longer viable, take too long and are rigid. Smart Cities are living zone in constant changing, so the best way to achieve the citizens' pleasure is including them, in an engagement way, in the all process.
No. Title Source Author Publication Title Volume Number Date Page Number 1 Web Page Project Mapocho Pedaleable http://www.yovivomapocho.cl/ Pedaleable Projecto Aprobado 1 1-AUG-2017 1 Edit 2 Los hitos tras la aprobación del Mapocho Pedaleable como proyecto permanente http://www.plataformaurbana.cl/archive/2017/06/12/los-hitos-tras-la-aprobacion-del-mapocho-pedaleable-como-proyecto-permanente/ Plataforma Urbana Los hitos tras la aprobación del Mapocho Pedaleable como proyecto permanente 1 12-JUN-2017 1
The key is INCREASE THE CITY’S SENSATION OF SAFETY, and this is why Kappo was born from a formula we codified analyzing how Denmark becomes the best country in the world to commute by bicycle. The Kappo Bike Formula aims to encourage citizens to commute by bicycle because if you increase the bicycle usage in any city of the world, two things are going to happen: 1. Drivers will be more aware of urban cyclists being more careful interacting with them. This increases the city’s sense of safety, which encourages more people to use their bicycle because “now is safer”, increasing demand. 2. When demand growths, a second phenomenon occurs; The government is more willing to invest more money in high-quality bicycle infrastructure, to meet growing demand. This produces a significant increment of city’s sense of safety bringing more people to use their bicycle and repeating this virtuous cycle. High sensation of safety + good infrastructure give as result bicycle friendly cities, such as Copenhagen in Denmark where 60% of the urban trips are made on bicycles: https://youtu.be/9MaDFHeEqiw