Bike industry leaders, innovative data and connectivity companies, bike users and technology experts gathered in Friedrichshafen today for the European Cyclists’ Federation/Cycling Industry Club Smarter Cycling Conference.

ECF director of Development Kevin Mayne kicked off proceedings introducing the need for such a gathering. The progress in the transport sector has come on in leaps and bounds over the past ten years, with all sectors of the transport system except for cycling. Instead cycling seems to have been framed within this context as the ‘Vulnerable’ road user getting in the way of progress. However we have seen many different actors from small start-ups to larger companies coming to us and showcasing their interesting technology and projects that add a technological dimension to cycling; perhaps there is a need to supply a level of coordination.

Phillipe Crist from the International Transport Forum at the OECD presented the importance of Smarter Cities and how cycling should be a part of this movement. The discourse of the Smart City often leaves the human being out of the equation: as Philippe clearly stated, "People do not want Smart Cities they want seamless mobility and access to services. Cities are not successful because they are smart, they are successful because they are messy". And that's how they become engines for serendipity. Cities have to allow people to connect and have access to each other.

Thanks to the new data revolution (especially with the smartphone), our sensing/tracking capabilities have gone down to a meter which gives these small computers access to huge potentials of data. But if we allow only one type of data - or one owner of data to prevail - we will deprive large numbers of society access. We need to have data as open as possible and available to as many people as possible. This includes walkers and cyclist; so far the data revolution in the transport sector has only included cars and public transport.

Paul Kompfner, replacing Rasmus Lindholm, then took the floor on a live feed from Brussels. Paul works for ERTICO, the European organisation running projects, events, platforms and working groups across all transport modes. He spoke about their Urban Mobility Programme, which was a Europe wide marketplace for all types of transport IT technologies as well as Mobility as a Service (MaaS).

MaaS is a great opportunity for mobility as a whole, but at the moment it does really lack input from cycling and he saw a real gap that should be filled with bike sharing technologies: "To strengthen cycling, we must get it into the MaaS ecosystem as a way to bring PBS to substitute car trips". It could also open up new markets for eBikes, for example in rural areas where Public Authorities are looking to subsidise bike use. Access to real time demand information and integration into traffic management were important part of the platform work but again lacks cyclist input at the moment. There is a link to Paul's presentation here

The panel discussion on the future for Smarter Cycling

In the second session, chaired by Green Revolution Association’s Raluca Fiser, Herbert Tiemens from the Dutch Cycling Embassy spoke about using technology to keep a grip on cities systems and traffic management. "Data help cycling be visible to politicians" said Herbert "If we can show interesting data coming from cycling apps and devices that help city management, this offers incentives to grow cycling. A lot of the technology comes from the sports world: how can we use it for everyday cycling?" As a Dutch cyclist, he saw a rosy future for cycling principally because it is fun: and this will always be on the side of the bicycle

Simon Klima from Strava Metro said that cycling companies need to look at the car industry and try to understand how to work with the technology that they are bringing to the table: the bike industry needs to be collaborative to get ahead to create an ecosystem to thrive. He also championed the idea of making it as easy as possible for the cyclist to use and transmit data. "Being connected needs to be as easy as it gets, bikes need to have all the necessary hardware available and running. I hope local authorities will be more knowledgeable in how to use data".

CoModule’s Kristjan Maruste said that bike connectivity and PBS services and standards need to be done on a cross border level. "It is useless to do this nationally, the automotive industry has been doing this really successfully and we need to follow this model of industry cooperation. Bike connectivity is useful for the user, to public authorities and to the manufacturer. Each has a lot to gain from this development". Kristjan also added a future industry disruption from somewhere like the automated car will propel the bike industry forward.

Nextbike's Sebastian Schlebusch said the perception of bike sharing has really changed and is seen much more positively and less of a threat from public authorities. "Still, the industry needs to get to the level of the car industry with regards to vehicle technologies and it also needs to continue making public transport companies realise that PBS complements public transport - it does not substitute it". With regards to standardising, Sebastian added that an interesting avenue could be in the field of public procurement which was very confusing and did not have easy to use models of success.

From CAN in Automation Holger Zeltwanger again looked to the car industry as a good model for cycling: "They speak as one voice and agree on standards". Car manufacturers have taken the lead in this field but the same has not happened in the bike industry, here the suppliers have taken the lead. "The industry needs to get more involved. The car industry has standardised everything, but eBikes for example have different batteries, charging systems, and so on". Holger also spoke of the dangers of cycling missing out in the connected future, "All cars will be connected to avoid accidents and cycling will miss out if it doesn’t help solve this problem. The bike industry is an industry of mechanical engineers that is now having to deal with electrical engineering problems!"

The next steps

Finally, a participant discussion was lead by Raimond Gense from PON. He said it was good that ECF is bringing people together on this subject, since cycling is becoming a major aspect of modern mobility. "Public authorities are wanting to move cars out of the cities and the replacement has to come from bikes - he argued - But we need to follow the success of the car industry in promoting their product particularly in Brussels and in Europe. Seamless mobility must include the use of bicycles: bikes will not be able to connect to infrastructure if incompatible with standards".

And Hannes Neupert from Energybus agreed. He said that digitalisation of communication between people, vehicles and infrastructure is a sleeping giant. But we need to solve problems of interface standardised in order to not have problems between them.

The floor was then given to the audience, that responded lively to the inputs of the speakers. The theme seemed to be that there was a need to develop some sort of community around these developments in cycling technologies and mobility technologies.

Kevin Mayne summed up with an offer of ECF to provide secretariat duties for possible working groups or themes to be discussed at a later date. "We as ECF want to bring this type of discussion to the technology sector, including the world of ITS next year in Copenhagen, which obviously would be an excellent to bring together technology with cycling!"

ECF is not done at Eurobike! Have a look the other events we are organising.