LaneSpotter, the ‘Waze for bikes,’ could make streets safer for cyclists

Lynsie Campbell has been biking to work for years in San Francisco and now in Pittsburgh.

She almost never questioned how safe her daily route was from her home in Regent Square to East Liberty — until she went out biking one day with her 1year-old son riding in a child carrier.

“I’m a fairly confident cyclist, but even I started to question the routes I was taking,” said Ms. Campbell, adding that even roads with bikes lanes such as Forbes Avenue can be dangerous. “It can be very deceiving. It’s on a four-lane road where traffic is going 50 on a 35 mile-per-hour road.”

Ms. Campbell, 40, began asking other cyclists the best routes to take and ultimately came up with the idea to create a mapping app that crowdsources information from other cyclists on the best and worst places to ride.

LaneSpotter, which is free to download, allows users in real time to indicate preferred routes, rate their safety and warn other cyclists of potential obstructions using an interactive map of the city, making it, as Ms. Campbell describes, “a Waze for bikes.” Waze is an app for drivers.

Cyclists are able to assess the safety of a road or trail based on a rating system, with green roads designated as “very safe,” blue as “safe,” orange as “average,” red as “use caution” and black as “avoid.”

The alerts feature also allows users to leave tips regarding ongoing road conditions or closures.

“Over 50 percent of people who ride say they would ride more often if they felt safe on the road,” said Ms. Campbell, citing a 2015 study on U.S. bicycling participation conducted by Breakaway Research Group.

A 2015 report from Bike Pittsburgh, a Downtownbased bike advocacy organization, found that a cyclist in Pittsburgh is involved in a crash every six days. Ms. Campbell teamed up with Bike Pittsburgh, which publishes an online map of the region for cyclists, to create the LaneSpotter map.

“It’s inevitable people learning to bike in the city are going to first go to their phones for how to get around,” said Mike Carroll, director of events for Bike Pittsburgh.

Ms. Campbell, who cofounded the online ticketing platform ShowClix, launched the beta version of the app on the web and iOS in May 2017 after participating in East Liberty-based AlphaLab’s software accelerator program. The beta launched in Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Denver to about 500 users.

She’s raised $200,000 in seed funding from Innovation Works, AlphaLab and two angel investors. So far, she has been working with contractors and freelancers to engineer and update the app but plans to hire a fulltime team after the next round of funding.

LaneSpotter officially launched in 10 U.S. cities in October 2017 and has grown to about 16,000 total users to date across the country and abroad in Japan and Australia. About 1,500 of those users are based in Pittsburgh.

“It’s a community of cyclists telling each other what’s going on on the road,” said Philip Bender, 48, an attorney from Squirrel Hill who first used the app during its beta testing. “I use it more than I use Google Maps, and to me, it seems like it works great. It has never steered me wrong.”

LaneSpotter released an Android version at the start of the month.

Ms. Campbell says the plan is to work with bike advocacy groups and local businesses to come up with revenue models for monetization.

These may include advertising and sponsorships or selling a premium version that includes upgraded features.

The app currently has a “Spotter Stops” feature that highlights local bikefriendly businesses for cyclists to park and interact with other cyclists.