Mapping e-Mountain Biking (e-MTB) intelligently
Ever heard of e(electric)-Mountain Biking? If not, get ready because it’s been catching fire and by this time next year “e-MTB” will be a household name. Despite the uptake, however, there’s been a lot of critiques flying at the e-MTB scene. First up – they’re unnatural. The purists don’t need electricity to power them and it flies in the face of the integrity of the sport. A valid point, but that hasn’t stopped the revolution.
e-MTB is chugging along and be it a normal mountain bike or an electric one, every rider seeks one thing – an awesome track. Trailforks is an app featuring the largest database of bike trails in the world. Once you download a region you can access all the data offline. This is super helpful if you find yourself literally off the beaten path or out of cell range. With the downloaded data you can still plan your route.
MTB Project is another app where mountain bikers help fellow bikers find amazing rides and access the necessary information to stay safe while exploring. On MTB you can instantly access insider information surrounding a given trail/park, and as you travel you can leave feedback, warnings and cool tips for other riders.
These apps are great, but getting back to e-MTBs, imagine having plucked down thousands of dollars on an e-bike, taking it out for a spin on a trail, and you get confronted with angry “natural riders,” encounter trails closed to e-MTBs, or even worse, getting fined by trail owners. There does not exist a shared database of e-MTB permitted trails, and expecting an organization, municipality or business to undertake this task is not likely.
What’s needed however has already been invented – crowdsourcing. Apps like Geme.io for example provide users the ability to create markers on their free platform (GPS enabled) and drop them on a virtual map. Other users can choose to follow and save these markers and over time the app ends up with a database of useful crowdsourced information – the best ice-cream, recycle bins, or even e-MTB friendly trails – available to everyone and anyone.
Crowdsourcing in real-time is the most cost and time effective way to get valued information to a massive contingent of people. Are you ready to crowdsource some markers on the map?
