CycleStreets is launching a funding drive to enable routing improvements and a large number of feature requests to be undertaken.
Our key target is for £90k to enable funding to pay for two full-time development positions for 18 months, plus smaller miscellaneous funds. With this, we believe the project will then be self-sustaining.
CycleStreets is set up on a not-for-profit basis, and is free for people to use. However, this does not mean that it costs nothing to run. CycleStreets does not currently pay full salaries to the core developers, meaning that only limited time for improvements is available. We have to survive and so have other jobs that take up our time. With full-time development staff, CycleStreets could reach its full potential much more quickly, and will help support getting more volunteers to work on the project.
Although in the longer term, the open-source model of a development team is where we wish to be at, routing work and analysis is complex and requires often weeks of solid, concentrated work. This makes it difficult to get volunteers, as they are more likely only to be able to 'dip in' to the code; the latter is useful for a range of smaller improvements, but more limited in terms of our core competency of endeavouring to create world-class cycle routing.
Read more at: http://www.cyclestreets.net/funding/drive/
