New Ride Report app gives ordinary Portlanders the power to evaluate streets
Posted by Michael Andersen (Contributor) on September 11th, 2015 at 4:12 pm

created by Ride Report beta testers. Knock CEO
William Henderson warns that there’s not enough
data yet to draw conclusions.
(Image: Ride Report)
Everybody who bikes in Portland has opinions about the best and worst streets to bike on. But there’s no clear way to combine those opinions into the sort of information that officials can actually use.
Enter the new mobile app that’s currently available only in Portland: Ride Report.
Launched as an iPhone app this week (with an Android version in the works), Ride Report provides an extremely simple way for users to answer a single question about each bike ride they take: Thumbs up or thumbs down?
Here’s a useful animation from the company that shows how the process works:

Using tens of thousands of quick updates like that, the company behind the app can then create something extremely useful: a citywide log of problem spots for biking.
When we reported about this effort in July, Knock Software CEO William Henderson described how this tool could combine with on-street experiments to create powerful arguments for better bike infrastructure.
“They could put this temporary bike lane in and say, ‘Look how much safer people feel overnight,'” Henderson said.
Advertisement
Henderson, a 2008 Reed graduate and former top mobile engineer for Square, founded Knock Software in 2013. The company had an App Store hit with Knock to Unlock and is now reinvesting its profits in a multi-pronged project that Henderson hopes will improve bike transportation by making it easier for governments to get feedback directly from a broader range of constituents.
He hopes you’ll be one of those constituents. If you’d like to help out, here’s the link.
Not in Portland? Sit tight. Knock says it plans to launch the Ride Report app in other cities next year.
NOTE: We love your comments and work hard to ensure they are welcoming of all perspectives. Disagreements are encouraged, but only if done with tact and respect. BikePortland is an inclusive company with no tolerance for discrimination or harassment including expressions of racism, sexism, homophobia, or xenophobia. If you see a mean or inappropriate comment, please contact us and we'll take a look at it right away. Also, if you comment frequently, please consider holding your thoughts so that others can step forward. Thank you — Jonathan