Cyclomania: the national bike challenge
The idea for Cyclomania arose from the further development of the predecessor project “Velomittwoch”. Inspiration was also provided by a look at Germany and Austria, where similar initiatives to promote cycling already existed at the time, such as Stadtradeln in Germany or Österreich radelt in Austria. These findings were used to implement a comparable project in Switzerland. In contrast to “bike to work”, which is limited to the journey to work, Cyclomania encompasses the entire mobility behavior of the participants.
The aim was to create a bicycle promotion and awareness campaign aimed specifically at municipalities. This takes place every year in September. The campaign is not only intended to motivate people in a playful way to use bicycles more often instead of cars or public transport, but also to provide a valuable data basis for the targeted improvement of cycling infrastructure. The collection of this mobility data serves the cities and municipalities as a further component for the sustainable strengthening of the local cycling culture.
Collecting mobility data for municipalities
With the development of the mobile app (supplemented by an informative website), a central platform was created that enables mobility to be tracked exclusively via the app and allows users to collect points through playful challenges within municipalities and regions. Every year, 70 to 100 municipalities organize challenges. The distribution of participants is around one third in French-speaking Switzerland and two thirds in German-speaking Switzerland. Participation takes place exclusively via the app, as each ride is recorded and evaluated individually.
”We had to switch our collaboration to remote at the start of the 2020 pandemic. Nevertheless, together with Panter, we managed to successfully develop our website and app within a very short space of time. The collaboration worked very well under these special circumstances.
Anna SchulerProjektleiterin Cyclomania
The result is a sophisticated mobility app
Panter was responsible for the entire implementation of the mobile app and the website – from conception and UX/UI design to frontend and backend development to ongoing maintenance and further development. The website serves purely as an information channel that provides publicly accessible content. However, the central component of the project is the companion app, which tracks individual mobility behavior in a playful way and motivates users to actively participate through gamification elements.
The app was developed with React Native and communicates with the React-based website, which was implemented with NextJS, via a GraphQL API. An integration with Motiontag is used to track the movement data, while the mobility data is evaluated in collaboration with ASE AG, which creates heat maps and supports data analysis, among other things. The visual appearance was designed in collaboration with Kargo.
Record number of participants: Cyclomania has impressed since 2020
Since the launch of Cyclomania in 2020, participation has developed impressively. In the very first year, 6,000 participants took part. In 2023, this figure rose to 12,000, which corresponds to a doubling of participants compared to the start. This growth continued in 2024, when the number of participants rose to 15,000, an increase of 25% compared to the previous year. In total, several hundred municipalities have participated in the challenges since the start, which speaks for the broad acceptance and sustainable success of the project.
Feedback from users has also been overwhelmingly positive. The concept that offers the opportunity to collect valuable mobility data for the municipalities is particularly appreciated. This motivates many to participate. The data collected helps municipalities to make informed decisions, e.g. to place new bike counting stations at strategically important locations. They supplement existing counting systems and provide additional findings that serve as a basis for concrete measures such as the targeted expansion of cycle paths.
Serena Caflisch, Project Manager
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