For over a decade, Strava’s data has been used by cities to understand pedestrian and cyclist activity.
FEB 11, 2025 Photos: Getty Images To the uninitiated, Strava can be tough to comprehend. In some ways, it resembles a pretty conventional social-media app, with a central feed that’s populated by user-generated text and photos. It’s also a workout aid , allowing its users to track their biometrics and performance across 50 different types of activities, including running and biking.
But at its core, Strava is really just a database of mapped movement. So it is unsurprising that for over a decade, its data has been used by not-for-profit agencies hoping to understand pedestrian and cyclist activity in their communities.
Strava Metro allows approved organizations that plan, own, or maintain active transportation infrastructure or seek to “positively influence planning processes,” in the company’s words, to access de-identified data from publicly posted activities on its platform.
The program traces its origins to a single request in 2013. At the time, Margi Bradway was managing the active transportation program for the Oregon Department of Transportation, responsible for making roads safer for cyclists and pedestrians. Herself a roadie, she knew a lot of her peers rode the region’s scenic Highway 101, but says the state only counted car trips.
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An Inc.com Featured Presentation“Strava was this hot new app,” she says. She and her cyclist friends all used it to track their rides, which made her wonder whether she could just ask the company for the activity data it […]
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