Gauging Interest: Website for Organizing Group Rides
 

I've no intention of starting to run one myself, I was thinking about the number of routing sites that exist for cyclists and it occurred to me that there wasn’t anything similar for helping you to plan group rides with people in your area. This opportunity happens to coincide with a lull in my regular work, and I wanted to see if there was any interest from the BF community for something to that effect.

Thus far I've only hashed out the absolute basics that a first release would be likely to have:

• Create Group Rides, Time, Meeting Place, Route, Notes, Public/Private/Invite Only
• RSVP to Rides you're a member of
• Find Rides in a certain range around your location
• Basic user profiles, limited to authentication and what rides you're signed up for

As I'm certain I'm missing a few things, what would you consider the killer feature for you to use the site?

For me, it would have to be something like what you describe, built on top of something like bikeroutetoaster. Need to be able to plot the route, show profiles, and export gpx of the route easily for us 705 owners who like the map overlay.

Would be great if it could keep track of your rides over time as well, with data analysis features.

Google Sites might work for this. It looks like it has more capabilities than Google Groups.

I set up a google group a few years ago, for a weekly ride I help to lead. It replaced an informal email list for advance notice of upcoming rides. I create a simple web page for each week's ride, with location, map link, distance, start time, etc. The google group website makes that really easy. I add a link to the ride's page when I post the ride to the local Ride Line email list.

I expected that we would get responses from the group members for new route ideas, being an occasional ride leader, etc. But in reality, I get a few private emails thanking me for the ride, but the group is pretty quiet other than that. Most riders are happy just to ride, without designing routes or leading.

This ride has more information posted than most local rides, because I'm trying to help new riders decide if it's too hard (or too easy!) for them. But most local rides don't describe more than the starting time, location, approximate distance, and average speed.

None of the rides here have an RSVP.

The Ride Line:
There's a popular local google group strictly for ride announcement emails. Many local recurring rides post a reminder each week, and there's often informal 1-time rides posted. It's easy for the group subscribers to just send a simple email to the group's email address, and it gets forwarded to everyone on the list. If there's a question about the ride, a quick Reply email goes to the original ride poster. Riders don't need to check a web page for updates, just read their email.

http://bike.meetup.com/

Like this one?

That seems nice.

UNfortunately, it didn't ahve any in my area, so maybe instead of a universal meeting thing like this one, you could just have one run by, for instance, in NH, SABR (Seacoast Area Bike Routes) so there is more people aware of the rides in the places they can actually ride.

Not a bad idea. But I am fortunate to have a very active cycling club in my area and there are lots of rides posted on the club's website....so I would not be all that interested personally.

The local Tour Dallas has maybe 3,000 riders. In the past, there's been about 10 people on BF that participated. Now, as far as I can tell, this is a fairly popular bike forum, and it's hitting 0.3% of the biking population. I think that's the problem with a site like that. You really need the local group organized, then you can have a website for it (local bike clubs do that). But if you start with the website, participation is so low it's hard to get a group out of it.