Gamification

Gamification is the use of elements related to games into non-game contexts. It means making people feeling the positive impacts of playing games from video games to board games. A lot of companies have used this technique to attract the attention to the products and services they sell in the last years. They have looked for improving user engagement, increase organizational productivity, flow, learning, crowdsourcing, employee recruitment and evaluation, ease of use, usefulness of systems, physical exercise, traffic violations, voter apathy and more. Yet the world of bikes has been used it to improve its use through marketing strategies.

The public bicycle system Bicing from Barcelona, implemented it through an app to accumulate points by riding bikes, achieving challenges or checking the stations anchors. Riders won awards thanks to these points. The Move Us project was launched by the public bus company in Madrid and works similarly as Bicing except from the fact that it focuses not only on bikers, but also on people in general.

Strava Metro uses gamification to help bikers to establish a track when they need to, plan bike lines and analyze the city traffic.

Bike and genre

Bicycles can be enjoyed by both, women and men. Nevertheless, the way both genres behave when riding use to be different. Studies say women tend to ride at lower speed without competing between them (at least at no professional level) and appreciate much more landscapes in routes, whereas men tend to be more competitive with more testosterone, ride at higher speed and do not put so much attention to sceneries.

At psychological level, women do not usually speak openly to men regarding common problems they face when biking. On the contrary, they feel more confident to talk about their issues to other women. Moreover, car drivers act differently in arguments with a bike ridden by a woman or a man. If a woman is biking and a dispute with a male car drive takes place, the car driver acts as a beast feeling he has the right to yield or insult the woman even if he is wrong and malicious in his reasoning (supposing he has one since sometimes he has nothing to clutch at straws). In contrast, if a man rides the bike, the male car driver does not show himself so aggressively as he innerly know he could loss in a fight. This animal behavior is another example of the patriarchal society we suffer.

Here I have exposed some reasons because women need women-gender spaces to share ideas and empower themselves. Feminism is a global movement which looks for women to have the same rights as men. Biking is just another field in which come out. As a result of it, changes have been producing. For example, the Iberian Congress was initially opened to both genres, but in the Zaragoza edition they decided to give a space only to women with the creation of the Cyclist Women Meeting. This meeting was repeated in the Valencia edition and it was agreed to differentiate it with an appropriate event by women to women. The Iberian Congress is not expected to count with the Cyclist Women Meeting anymore, which will be an independent event held in a different place and date.

Ciclointegración

Ciclointegración is the invented Spanish word for the integration of determined ways of transport. In a few words, it means that the weak and sustainable vehicles should be integrated into roads. By this I am referring to bicycles, skates, skateboards, scooters, etc. People who drive these should be treated as drivers since they drive vehicles and thus they should move on roads instead of sidewalks. Sidewalks should only belong to pedestrians.

Compare this idea with what is happening now. The vehicles I am talking about enjoy particular areas or lines sometimes stolen to walkers. So pedestrians feel city surface belonging to them is less and less. And do not forget, we all are pedestrian at first and then drivers. So pedestrian areas should be respected above all. Furthermore, potential crashes are avoided with ciclointegración for example between bicycles and people walking on sidewalks who are looking their mobiles or blind people.

Integration means do not create ghettos for green, cycle vehicles, better integrate them into roads. Moreover, thanks to this integration traffic is calmed as they move slower compared to cars and motorbikes. In turn, quality of life is increased, pollution is reduced and, in the long run, some intelligent people would probably stop driving cars because they would realize cars are not worth it.