The project addresses the most overlooked mobility crisis of our time. Around 80 million people worldwide rely on a wheelchair to get around, but according to studies, even in well mapped cities, less than 15% of surface quality data, crucial for wheelchair navigation, is available
For wheelchair users, surface conditions are not a question of comfort, but a serious health
risk: rough ground exposes wheelchair users to vibrations that cause chronic pain. 83% of
disabled people say planning trips around accessibility adds stress or anxiety, according to Euan’s Guide.
The initiative gives wheelchair users reliable, street-level information about whether a route is
actually passable. Built to reduce the everyday barriers wheelchair users face when navigating cities, it repurposes sensors already fitted to Bolt’s scooters to collect the surface data that mainstream maps have long been missing, and publishes it opensource, so it can be easily expanded to any city where scooters are operating.
The project is the first of its kind in the micromobility industry. To extend its impact beyond
Bolt, the company is creating a blueprint that can be adopted and built on across the wider mobility industry. Bolt’s scooters are equipped with accelerometers, gyroscopes, GPS receivers, and cameras recording information as it travels. The initiative found a way to translate this data into surface quality information. “Scooters will finally be useful to me,” says accessibility advocate Hendra Raud from Tallinn, Estonia. “Cobblestone makes your entire body ache and not having a ramp can mess up your entire schedule. It’s great to finally have a map of the world the way I actually experience it.”
While mainstream navigation apps can route users around steps, they cannot tell them whether a pavement is paved or cobblestone, or where the lowered kerb is. These are the details that determine if a journey is actually possible, and they are absent from every major map in use today. Despite advances in technology, the availability of surface-quality data remains surprisingly low worldwide – 0.2% in New York, 1% in London, 6% in Buenos Aires, 8% in Hamburg,12% in Madrid.
The project launched with a pilot in Tallinn, Estonia, with Bolt scooters covering 550 km across all eight city districts. 40.5 million accelerometer readings were captured and 66,088 surface ratings recorded, resulting in an overall increase in available surface quality data of 26%. Streets that looked navigable on screen were flagged by sensor data as impassable in reality. With 230,000 Bolt vehicles across 270 cities, the initiative is prepared to scale. “Accessibility has long been part of Bolt’s mission to make cities work better for everyone,” said Mare Heinluht, Diversity and Inclusion Manager at Bolt. “For someone using a wheelchair, a route is more than a line on a screen. The condition of the pavement, the presence of a curb ramp or the steepness of a slope can determine whether a journey is possible at all. Wheels4Wheels helps make that information more visible.”
