The main objective of this project is to stimulate cycling by making the bike and its users connected through the use of different technologies. This will decrease car use in the different regions of the NSR. In this project new technologies will be demonstrated in different urban and rural areas to stimulate cycling as an alternative for using the car. This will bedone in the living lab areas of the participating partners.

What we want do to in this project:

• Use sensors for availability of ‘open/shared’ bicycles and reservation of a bicycle for last-mile transportation
• From ownership to open use/sharing of bicycles, what happens to open-use bicycles.
• Monitoring and navigation of more safe cycling routes and the “healthiest” routes in terms of air quality (real time?)
• Where did I leave my bike? Parking solutions
• Cycling navigation & always green for cyclists? Smart navigation for cyclist to avoid bike congestion
• Integration of cycling with Public Transport and multimodal information?
• Anti-theft
• Cycling Safety near junctions through communications between bicycles and cars
• One day event on which all people of Assen + also other locations (?) use bicycles and get information on how much they cycled, what does this mean for their health. At the same time measuring of emissions in the city.

The City of Assen has built a high quality and large-scale measurement fiber network to allow for the development of a variety of practical applications that use complex sensor systems. Assen will function as a living lab for sensor system applications. An example could be to develop an open source platform mapping a range of useful data on cycling networks, access restrictions, traffic measures, delivery and transport facilities, districts, population, land use and carbon emissions.

Outputs:

• Pilot Always Green Light For Bikes, based on real time bike flow data.
• Better insights in available parking areas for bicycles ánd insight and availability of shared bicycles.
• Behavioural change by encouraging cycling as an efficient and healthy way of transport.
• Reduce car usages in inner cities
• Stimulate the use of e-bikes by available charging point in cities.
• Increased integration of public transport services by cycling
• Data collection cycling behaviour (normal bike& e-bike): speed, distance, destinations, parking, traveling time etc.

This project supports the desired augmentation of the use of bicycles as a transport mode throughout the NSR. This will be done by demonstrating that connecting the bike with its surrounding environment will make cycling more efficient, fun, safe and healthy and will enhance people’s mobility. These demonstrations will be executed in in four different regions in the NSR. In these regions already a strong cycling culture exists or is emerging, however these regions all deal with different local challenges that hold-back further development of increased bicycle use. Successful tackling these challenges will facilitate the further roll-out of cycling in these four regions. At the same time gained knowledge and experiences assists regions that feature comparable geographical characteristics but lack a cycling culture in making the first steps towards a more bicycle-oriented culture. In this way the use of bikes will increase throughout the whole NSR but can only be achieved through transitional cooperation. Furthermore, transnational cooperation is needed as this project will not tackle a local problem but a problem existing in whole the NSR. This will be done by:

• Setting-up a guideline on stimulating cycling in regions with and without an already existing cycling culture in the NSR. This guideline cannot be derived from one context. Different countries and regions have different needs, possibilities and benefits. A guideline on how to stimulate the use of bicycles in a specific region should be tailor-made based on the local characteristics as there does not exist a one size fits all policy. Based on the results of the pilots in the different urban and suburban regions, a general framework will be constructed that can be applied by many different regions throughout the NSR.
• Knowledge of and experience with cycling is fragmented in the NSR countries and its regions. The Netherlands and Denmark are for example front-runners on this area. Already gained experiences, knowledge and proven policies from both countries will be shared with other partners in this project.
• Not all NSR countries offer the same circumstances to test and demonstrate the new technological solutions. For this reason different technologies will be demonstrated in the different participating regions in this project.

• Stichting Sensor City Assen: Lead partner + Promoting the use of the Living Lab Assen with real end users
• Magicview Connected Products (partner of Sensor City Assen): Developing cheap technology solutions (IOT) for multimodal services
• Nimera:  Nimera's interest in the SCARBIKE project is to develop a software solution (an  app) that integrates information for cyclists and provides the user with the  best advice on how to get from A to B at specific moment in time.
• EIFI:  The EIfI, short for European Institute for Innovation. They  will be involved together with the Osterholz – Scharmbeck Landkreis in  Niedersachsen. This region will establish a small pilot project for the use of  LEVs and its infrastructure. The project includes a charging infrastructure for  light-electric vehicles (LEVs) such as e-bikes, using among others “EnergyTube”  batteries and a so called “EnergyLock”.
• Region Sjaelland: is responsible for regional infrastructure and mobility and wants to promote the increased use of bicycles from an early age. Main objective for participating is that we want to use bikes to increase the knowledge about mobility, environment and health among school children in eight pilot schools in Region Zealand, Denmark.  
• City of Ostend will function as a living lab todemonstrate the functioning of the different new technologies and their contribution to the local challenges to further stimulate the use of the bikeas a transport mode
• FIGO is expert in remote monitoring & control for demanding applications. Applications can be found in domains such as public safety and large scale sensor systems. FIGO hasseveral options to realise solutions for a connected bike. E.g. e-bikes are equipped with trackers providing participants and project management detailedinformation on the use of the e-bikes by the participants, students of asecondary school using the e-bike for the kilometres ride between home and school.
• Louis & Ralph Technologies (LR) will further develop and demonstrate their technology which is specially developed to generate and collect data about bicycle usage and bicycle localisation. To make sure this technology will work for at least 3 years LoRa is used. For the localisation of bicycles LR uses triangulation techniques in combination with WIFI geo-localisation. The actual location of the bike can be found by an app. Via the app the bike owner may receive
  messages when the bike is moved.

This project idea was submitted as an Expression of Interest for the March 2016 call. When the Expression of Interest is selected for stage 2, other pilot cities in the UK, Sweden and Norway are welcome to join the consortium.