RideScore: Safe cycling routes to school

RideScore is an incentive-based program aimed at increasing active travel to and from school. The digital platform uses Bluetooth technology that provides real-time notifications to parents on the arrival and departure of students riding and scooting to and from school.

In order for RideScore to be replicated in schools across Australia, this project will transition the cloud application to a more secure, multi-tenanted environment that can support multiple clients, with website and hardware upgrades.

Participants

• iMOVE Australia
• WeRide Australia

Project background

Our children have stopped moving!

Today, more than 70% of primary school children are driven to and from school every day. Around a third of morning peak traffic congestion is associated with school travel. This has a detrimental impact on the performance of the local road network as well as negative health impacts on Australian children who are amongst the least active in the developed world.

The recently completed TRavel, Environment and Kids study (TREK) project in Western Australia was funded by iMOVE and surveyed students at 32 government schools across Perth in 2023. Twenty-three schools were primary schools – the target audience for the RideScore program.

It found:

• 75% of primary school students and 52% of secondary school students live within 3km biking distance to school;
• 9% of primary school students said that biking was their preferred mode of transport to/from school;
• Over half (53.4%) of primary school students would not feel safe biking to school without an adult; and
• Most (76.1%) parents were confident that their child would be able to bike to school without an adult, but almost half (45.1%) of parents would worry that something might happen if they allowed their child to bike to school without an adult.

A RideScore Pilot (Pilot) was delivered in 2022-2024. It used a ‘SCC trial environment’ (housed RideScore on a Linux based platform), supporting 1,500 students to ride and scoot to eight primary schools across the Sunshine Coast Council (SCC) region and was managed by the SCC.

The Pilot program directly addressed the concerns of parents for independent travel to school, evidenced clearly by the Trek study results outlined above. The majority of students also lived within the target range for participation in the RideScore program.

RideScore delivers a ride-to-school program that, for the first time in Australia, is underpinned by an innovative technology platform that has boosted trips to school by 55%. While the Pilot proved highly successful, further development of the technology platform is required to operate the program outside the limited scope of the SCC trial environment.

This project to improve the platform will allow RideScore to be replicated in schools across Australia, through improved functionality and transition it to a more secure, multi-tenanted environment that can support multiple clients, with website and hardware upgrades.

This includes:

• Coding to improve security, automation and user experience
• Deployment of the platform on Platform as a Service SQL topology server
• Review and upgrade of hardware solutions
• Support for multi-tenancy in the admin portal and mobile apps to reduce on-boarding, hosting and support requirements
• Transition of the administration portal and the mobile apps to be client configurable.

This project will provide a robust and effective platform to assist local government authorities, communities and the education sector across Australia meet key transport objectives. It will expand RideScore to incorporate a number of schools to be determined in consultation with the new Local Government Authorities (LGA) that have expressed interest in delivering RideScore. The LGAs that have expressed interest are City of Joondalup, City of Stirling, City of Vincent and City of Wanneroo in Western Australia.

The project will be judged a success based on:

• successful deployment of the platform in new locations;
• demonstrable cybersecurity performance;
• successful performance of the hardware;
• successful performance of the mobile app upgrades; and
• program delivery.

Project objectives

Expand the capacity of RideScore technology platform beyond 1500 students through improved functionality and transition the platform to a secure, multi-tenanted environment that can support multiple clients.

Sub-objectives include to:

• establish a deployable, robust cloud-based framework that allows delivery across multiple jurisdictions
• enhance and expand the capacity of the mobile app, platform and associated hardware for delivery in regions outside of the SCC geographic and jurisdictional area, and
• Educate LGA staff to manage the RideScore technology and mobile apps in specified locations.

Please note …

This page will be a living record of this project. As it matures, hits milestones, etc., we’ll continue to add information, links, images, interviews and more. Watch this space!