One of the first items on the agenda is to find a way to communicate more effectively and in a more timely manner with cyclists, those in the planning stages and those out on tour, about the information on our maps and about our routes. There are a lot of tools out there for this kind of communication from RSS feeds to text messages to good ol' web pages.
Primarily we are thinking of potentially fast changing information most important to bicycle travelers such as road closures due to construction, wildfires or floods. However, this could also expand into service information tidbits like new or closed restaurants, grocery stores, motels, and the like. Right now these communications are handled through addenda items and a temporary route road closure discussion on our Forums.
In this brainstorming stage, the possibilities are endless as to what we could do and how we could do it. What's your great idea? Do you have a preferred method for getting updates and changes? When you're out on the road, how would you like to receive communications from us? Or do you want to?
in this photo: This group of cyclists were turned back on Going-to-the-Sun Highway due to construction.
photo courtesy of pmccullar's photostream on Flickr
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GEOPOINTS BULLETIN is written by Jennifer 'Jenn' Milyko, an Adventure Cycling cartographer, and appears weekly, highlighting curious facts, figures and persons from Adventure Cycling's Route Network with tips and hints for personal route creation thrown in for good measure.
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I would definitely like to receive "road out" notices and that sort of thing.
ReplyDeleteIt may sound faddish, but Twitter would be a good mechanism for sending out notifications, simply because there are so many ways to receive twitter messages—they can come in via SMS, e-mail, custom twitter apps, etc. It would make sense to have a separate Twitter account (or separate lists under a single Twitter account) for each route.
Adam,
ReplyDeleteWe are looking at the feasibility of using Twitter as a way of making these kinds of communications. Glad to know there is someone out there who would find it handy!
.Jennifer.
Another vote for Twitter because it's so versatile.
ReplyDeleteYou could use SMS to both send and receive alerts, which could be monitored by others via Twitter/RSS, passed along, republished, whatever. In our case, we could monitor for road/route problems in Virginia, and get to work quickly in helping to get things fixed.
Hi Virginia Bicycling Federation: Thanks for chiming in! I've just followed you on the @acaroutes Twitter account we established out of the above conversation. For more information on how we're using Twitter, see this post:
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.adventurecycling.org/2010/06/routes-mapping-now-on-twitter.html
.Jenn.