BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
Bike Citizens, the maker of the Finn smartphone handlebar band, has added UK city maps to its cycle navigation app for smartphones. 50 cities are now available as paid-for app add-ons. The Bike Citizens app is now available for 237 cities in Europe and Australia.
Bike Citizens was founded in Graz, Austria in 2011 by cycle messengers Daniel Kofler and Andreas Stückl. The company now employs 20 people.
The Bike Citizens app is available for iPhone and Android and is said to use the knowledge of bike couriers to suggest urban routes. A slider allows the user to state whether they want to be routed on or away from busy roads. Daily trips are tracked to generate data on cycling behaviour to create a heat map of the most common cycle routes. This data can be used to show transport planners where to develop new cycle infrastructure.
Bike Citizens is the producer of the Finn smartphone mount. This is simple-looking €15 band that fastens a smartphone to a handlebar, keeping it surprisingly stable (although not waterproof). Each band ships with a code for downloading maps and info for one city. Use this code to download a UK city to the app: BNI JGY EZD
