RADar! offers municipalities a uniform, affordable platform for reporting issues with cycling infrastructure and suggesting improvements. Since 2017, the platform has also been available worldwide! Municipalities participating in the CITY CYCLING campaign by Climate Alliance are able to use the tool for free during the 21-day local campaign period.
Municipalities are able to invite their citizens to proactively suggest improvements to the local cycling infrastructure. They can also use RADar! as a complement to their standard road checks as the authority responsible for roads to help set priorities. Responsibility for checking the cycling infrastructure can be passed on (at least in part) to those who cycle every day and are therefore probably the most familiar with the infrastructure and know where improvements are urgently needed.
As a municipality, you are able to take advantage of the “swarm intelligence” of your cycling population – to the benefit of all!
Municipalities can view, process and, where appropriate, contact citizens who have submitted a report. The local coordinators can ask questions about the reports submitted or even simply thank cyclists for their reports. Given that only registered participants are able to submit notifications, the process is not anonymous. This helps to keep ‘hoax’ reports to a minimum.
When a cyclist submits a report, email notification will automatically be sent to the responsible municipality. And the cyclist who submitted the report in turn also receives confirmation of this. Cyclists are always kept up to date on the status of the report(s) they have submitted: whenever the processing status is changed (e.g. to “In progress”), RADar! will automatically send notification to the cyclist who submitted the report.
Municipalities are also able to create their own notifications in order to use RADar! as an information portal for (planned) cycling measures and to inform local citizens of the latest progress in sustainable mobility.
Do you want the responsible authority in your municipality to automatically be informed of a specific type of report? With RADar!, this is absolutely no problem! Please see below for an overview of the main features of RADar!
Countless options for municipalities!
Municipalities are able to decide for themselves how long cyclists can submit reports.
Whether only in the summer months or all year round, the reporting period can be adjusted to the resources available to the municipality. In the first year of using RADar!, it is possible to “test” RADar!’s reception among cyclists for a shorter period and how the report management, etc. works. RADar! can then be rolled out in full in the following year and the reporting platform potentially offered to citizens for the entire year.
Municipalities are moreover free to decide if and which reports with which processing status are publicly visible on the street map.
Report visibility: decide which reports should be publicly visible on the map according to their processing status (see pins on the right here). Order reports by short, medium or long-term issues: while glass can rapidly be removed from a cycle path, it will take longer to find a suitable solution for a dangerous major crossroad.
Report prioritisation using urgency trackers (only possible if reports are publicly visible): cyclists are able to confirm existing reports if they wish to draw attention to the same problem so that these can be dealt with first.
“Positive” reports – the ‘Like’ button in RADar! – to show municipalities and others that cyclists want to have/see more of something: municipalities can be praised and other municipalities are able to review cyclists’ reactions to measures for their own planning.
Neutral reports: all reports that have not yet been addressed can be marked with a neutral white pin.
Report comments: post public comments for each report (only visible if the report itself is also publicly visible), e.g. a reason why a particular report cannot be addressed.
Merge several reports for one and the same problem in the same place.
Assign responsibility: get reports automatically forwarded directly to the place/person ultimately responsible for addressing them or responsibilities can be assigned in advance so that the responsible place/person in the municipality automatically receives email notification as soon as a report is submitted for the according area of responsibility.
Different user profiles: local coordinators are able to create new users with different access and editing rights.
Report management: the ‘history’/processing status provides information to track what is happening with the report: who was informed when, when the status was changed, etc.
Email (templates) sent to cyclists automatically by the system when a report is submitted or the processing status is changed. The texts of these email templates can be altered to suit and complemented with a personal signature.
Filter function to sort reports according to specific criteria.
Export function to obtain reports in an Excel format.
PLEASE NOTE:
If your municipality has decided to offer RADar!, please ensure that you take cyclists’ reports seriously and react to or process these as soon as possible. Be sure to plan in the according resources! You run the risk of achieving exactly the opposite of what you are aiming at with the reporting platform otherwise: cyclists may feel that they aren’t being listened to and frustration could arise if they get the impression that their reports are not being dealt with and their efforts appear to be in vain.
If a rural district/region wishes to use the RADar! reporting platform, they are able to decide whether to enable reports either for the entire rural district/region or for individual towns/communities in the rural district/region. Cyclists can then either submit reports for the entire rural district/region or exclusively for their town/community.
If a rural district/region decides to activate RADar! for individual rural districts/regions, a 10% discount will be offered from ten towns/communities.
All municipalities participating in the CITY CYCLING campaign are able to use RADar! for free during the three-week campaign period. Citizens can submit reports via RADar! during the 21-day CITY CYCLING campaign period between 1 May and 30 September. The local RADar! coordinators are able to access and process the reports for one year from the first day of the CITY CYCLING campaign in the municipality.
All municipalities participating in the CITY CYCLING campaign are able to use RADar! for free during the three-week campaign period. Citizens can submit reports via RADar! during the 21-day CITY CYCLING campaign period between 1 May and 30 September. The local RADar! coordinators are able to access and process the reports for one year from the first day of the CITY CYCLING campaign in the municipality.