Last night the Toronto Transit Commission offered free service starting at 7pm. This is typical of Toronto on New Year’s Eve, as it is with many other cities. I think it’s great thing to do and I love seeing so many people taking transit to get around. I took it everywhere last night.
Since I knew I would be doing a lot of walking, I charged up my Fitbit Flex and strapped it on around lunch time. Here is my New Year’s Eve according to Fitbit. I took 11,239 steps yesterday afternoon/evening.
Activity tracking and health monitoring devices have really taken off over the past year. And I absolutely do think they help motivate. But beyond an individual level, I also think this data could be really interesting in aggregate and overlaid with other data points, such as where people live, where they work, how they travel/commute, and so on.
Many have speculated that urban sprawl makes people fat since it privileges driving over walking. But with all the data that companies such as Fitbit and Nike are collecting, it would be interesting to see some hard data on how much more urbanites really walk compared to suburbanites.
One idea would be to use Walk Score and examine the correlation between the walkability of a person’s neighbourhood and the average number of steps they take everyday. Intuitively, it seems like there would be a strong one. But it would be cool to see it quantified. I’d happily share my data if somebody would like to take this on.
Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome to 2014.