Encouraging school children to bike or walk to school has become more and more important in Oslo. Both to reduce the impact driving have on the environment but also for the sake of children health. However, many parents feel reluctant allowing their children to do so due to concerns regarding traffic safety on the school routes. Improving traffic safety often requires large amounts of data. Yet planners and governmental organizations rarely ask children for their point of view. Parents and teachers are often asked on children’s behalf. Even if children are asked, the questions are usually answered by the parents or done retrospectively, and the children are unable to remember where they went or how they got there. The end result of this process is that traffic safety agencies may have information on how children get to school. However, that is also all they got.
Crowd sourcing with children
In 2013 the City Council for environment and Transport in Oslo commissioned Vibeke Fredrikke Rørholt, who works for The Agency of Urban Environment, to encourage the children of Oslo to walk or cycle to school. In Norway children have a statutory right to contribute and have a say in public planning processes that could affect them. Therefore she decided to find out how children experienced traffic safety by asking them directly. However, instead of sending out a paper form to be filled out at home or in a classroom nowhere near a road, she decided to capture the information digitally as it happens.
The Traffic agent was launched in 2015 and so far 85 of Oslo’s 163 schools are subscribed to the app. However, not all schools are as active at promoting the use of the app. The Agency of Urban Environment has joined with the Agency of Education to encourage all schools to take part and increase app activity. They have also launched a campaign to reward the most active schools.
The Traffic Agent smartphone app was developed to enable children to capture how they experience their school routes. The app was designed with children in mind and with feedback and suggestions from children, parents and teachers. The app gamifies the school route and children play the part as a secret agent on lookout for challenging and positive locations in their local area, regarding traffic and traffic security and safety.
Putting traffic signs on the map: How artificial intelligence can help
If they encounter something unsafe such as heavy traffic or an obstacle on their way to school, they can report it immediately through the app. Children can give an area thumbs up or down and select buttons which explain the problem. They can also send a message with more information. The data collected by the Agency of Urban Environment is concise and pinpointed and provides the local government with important information for further traffic and mobility planning.
In the app you select your way of travel, either by car, public transportation, bicycling or walking. The app registers the speed the child has, and you have to go slow enough to be able to register a report. For example, if children are bicycling, they have to stop the bicycle in order to send in a report.
The app can be placed in the child’s pocket or backpack when it is started and it will still trace the movements. And if necessary it is taken out when the child want to report from a place or situation. It is not possible to submit a report when walking; this is a safety valve to make sure that submitting reports in the Traffic agent app does not cause dangerous situations. This can be repeated as many times as necessary. When the child reaches the school, they end the mission by submitting a final report. Our experience has been that this has been working well, and we have not received any reports about incidents or dangerous traffic situations, caused by use of the app.
Connection with schools is important for the Traffic Agent, this is because it is easier to collect large amounts of data if one class organizes to walk and map for one or two days. The teachers are therefore asked to sign up their classes. Teachers can access the data provided by their own class and can use it in class when teaching traffic security.
The data collected through the traffic agent is protected, while the phones are tracked through GPS, the children are anonymous. The first two minutes and 100 meters of all tracking are deleted to protect their privacy. Once a report is sent all tracking data is deleted from the child’s phone.
The app provides children with a sense of citizenship as they can see the impact they might have on their routes. For example, one parent contacted the Traffic Agent after her son had reported that dense vegetation blocked his view when crossing a street. He was incredibly proud and happy when he noticed that the vegetation had been cut a few days later.
Since they are anonymous, The Headquarter is dependent on using social media to inform the Traffic Agents on how their reports have contributed to traffic security measures.
Main challenges and benefits
The main key for the app to succeed is that the Traffic Agent is implemented at the city of Oslo’s traffic and mobility department so that those who receive the reports from the children have the authority to plan and take the necessary actions. The platform was developed to be easily understood to make the tool efficient for the municipality, teachers and the children using the app.
We at Headquarters check the reports from the Traffic Agents every morning. Some reports are what we call “immediate actions“, things that we can do something about immediately. The Agency for Urban Environment already has an operations department that takes care of these types of tasks. These are tasks the department already does on a daily basis, but by using the information from the reports we can tell them where and when the measures are needed. These reports could include a broken light, vegetation reducing sight and visibility in crossings, or a broken sign that needs to be fixed. Other reports may include concerns which require further analysis and more planning. These reports could be for example speeding cars, or cars not stopping at pedestrian crossings. Before measures in these cases can be decided, we go through all the data from the area and go out on a site inspection to see the areas that have been pointed out as particularly challenging in the reports.
The advantage of working like this is that we can map larger area in a short amount of time since we already have detailed information about the challenges in the area. After the site-inspection we analyze the information gathered and make decisions regarding what king of measures to be taken and what data will be stored and later used in other urban planning processes. The Traffic Agent has the support from the City Council to say that the reports from the mapping tool will be prioritized, since it is a wish to have a shared platform where all the data is collected.
The benefits and profits from a city government perspective is that by using this method we are able to map big areas with efficient resources when we engage the children this way. Also, the children get a say in something that affects them in their daily life. The traffic agent is democracy in practice. When many children report to us simultaneously we can easily see where the positive or challenging areas are and which routes the children actually use. This information will in turn help us to navigate where to place our focus, and prioritize measures in a more efficient and fair way. This data is also useful in other urban planning processes.
In order to increase the number of cyclists and pedestrians among school children, both the parents and children need to feel that the routes are safe. By asking the children themselves, we get their immediate impression about what is positive or challenging on their way to school, and with this information we can identify the need for traffic security measures along the school routes. Other perspectives are that with the Traffic Agent we can raise knowledge about traffic security. By doing measures based on the children’s reports, we can hopefully build trust between the children and the local government, and inspire them to continue to be active citizens also in the future.
The Traffic Agent is a unique initiative and if you desire to know about it in more detail, don’t miss the presentation at the Geospatial World Forum. It is one of the many best practices to be presented in the Smart Cities program there.
