During a time when biking is becoming an ever more critical tool for essential workers to get to jobs and for communities to get the food and resources they need — we’re excited to share our partnership with OurStreets. Our Streets is an app to use crowdsourcing to report and analyze dangerous driving behavior and scooter and bike share issues.
We had already been working on parting with OurStreets before COVID-19, but we think it’s ever more relevant now.
What is OurStreets?
OurStreets is an app to use to report issues on the street - like a car parked in the bike lane, a scooter tipped over, or a near miss. Similar to 311, you can take a photo of the issue, add the location, and submit your report.
Why use this app?
While we previously directed our community to use the 311 app, we know that reporting a car parked in a bike lane on 311 wasn’t usually effective. By the time someone went to enforce the issue, the car was likely to be moved.
With OurStreets, we’ll have access to the reported data. The goal is to aggregate the data so we can identify hot spots that need targeted enforcement or dangerous hot spots that need infrastructure changes to make them safer.
And OurStreets is more user friendly than the 311 app, encouraging more people to use it. It uses automatic license plate recognition, has common issues clearly categorized, and allows you to upload a photo and report after the fact. It even gives you a citation history for the vehicle based on its license plate.
Comparison of submission times between DC’s 311 app on the left, and OurStreets app on the left. DC uses the same 311 app as Baltimore.
During this public health crisis, lessening the stress we put on the 311 service is also important. Many city employees have been pulled from their normal day jobs to focus on COVID-19 response, and this is a way for us to gather data now to make improvements later without stressing city systems and resources.
In the coming weeks OurStreets will be adding additional COVID-19 response tools to help users find and monitor supplies in nearby stores. We’re excited to partner with a company that is adapting to our current times.