Title	RADWENDE (CHANGE YOUR CITY FOR CYCLISTS)
Brand	SCHOLZ & VOLKMER
Product/Service	BIKE LANE TRACKING
Category	A01. Innovation
Entrant Company	SCHOLZ & VOLKMER Wiesbaden, GERMANY
Advertising Agency	SCHOLZ & VOLKMER Wiesbaden, GERMANY

Name	Company	Position
Michael Volkmer	Scholz/Volkmer Gmbh	Executive Creative Direction
Manfred Kraft	Scholz/Volkmer Gmbh	Technical Direction
Tom Kresin	Freelancer	Product Design
Manfred Kraft	Scholz/Volkmer Gmbh	Product Design
Nanna Beyer	Scholz/Volkmer Gmbh	Concept
Till Ulmer	Scholz/Volkmer Gmbh	Concept
Thomas Kuester	Scholz/Volkmer Gmbh	Development
Florian Finke	Scholz/Volkmer Gmbh	Development
Tai Lueckerath	Scholz/Volkmer Gmbh	Art Direction App

The Brief

Our owner-managed online agency has been on the market for 20 years. We focus on physical computing, sustainability and use/mobile. Our 160 employees work for renowned clients and for our immediate environment in order to live in a sustainable city. Cyclists in Wiesbaden have a dual problem - a lack of biking paths and a lack of a lobby. Neither politicians nor businesses are committed to promoting bike traffic. So we wanted to develop a tool to make the few cyclists visible in public. We financed the project alone and have invested ca. € 60,000. This includes the app, website and drawing machine. The mobile, physical computing and sustainability teams collaborated on the project. The app records routes individual cyclists take and aggregates them on a map, enabling us to identify roads frequently taken by cyclists that are suitable as cycling lanes The aim is to use this map to plan an extension of the biking infrastructure. To make the map public, a technical manager and product designer developed a drawing machine over a period of months, which was exhibited in the Wiesbaden state museum. It drew the cycling paths taken, providing a striking representation of real-time bicycle traffic.

"Radwende" enables cyclists to create their city's bike lanes themselves by cycling. An app collects information about the routes taken, which urban planners can use for planning. For the first time, citizens can change the infrastructure by using it – a daily petition that doesn't require a signature. The technical component used is an app for Android and iOS to record the routes. We display the routes at the website as a heat-map to publicize the campaign. The back end provides the route information. To generate awareness for the campaign, an installation was created based on purely digital visualisation. Because the app changes physical reality based on virtual data. The installation is also a physical manifestation of the data – the reason why we built a drawing machine. The drawing machine consists of a drawing board and a gondola with a pen, held and steered by 2 ropes. The ropes are coiled onto spools and powered by 2 motors. By rotating the motors, the spools are reeled in and out, moving the gondola to any place on the drawing board. A third motor moves the pen to and from the drawing board. The drawing machine operates based on polar coordinates rather than Cartesian coordinates. Pythagoras' Theorem is applied to convert the X-Y coordinates of the map into the length of the 2 ropes. This principle is initially more complex and less accurate than a printer or plotter with conventional X-Y coordinates. Its benefit, however, is that it is almost entirely scalable. The idea of the machine is not new; there are several in the Internet. However, we implemented it as an installation in a museum for the first time. Our challenge was therefore to build a robust, professional, low-maintenance and attractive installation, which has a built-in operation panel for maintenance.

Each kilometre that is travelled by bike saves CO2 emissions compared to travel by car. During the campaign, we already saved more than 4.5 tonnes. The app tracked over 22,000 km and identified the routes that were frequently taken and suitable as cycling lanes. The data provide traffic planners with continuous information, which was not available in the past. The art installation extended contact to political, business and research circles. In addition, it attracted attention internationally and we have received enquiries from other cities and partners. We are currently planning an international rollout. The next step is to involve retailers and politicians. Each retailer could participate in the campaign by giving users of the app a voucher, coffee, rebate or other gift for a given number of km cycled. The Mayor of the city could start a game with citizens by promising to create one kilometre of cycling path for 10,000 of km covered by bike. With this activity, we are fostering civic participation and making the city more peaceful and safer, thus improving quality of life.