BikeNetKit

Legal, privacy & credits

Last updated October 16, 2026

1. Publisher and contact

This site is published by Michael Szell.

Responsible
Michael Szell
Email
contact@bikenetkit.org

2. Privacy notice

This site sets no cookies, loads nothing from third parties, and stores no full IP addresses.

Controller

Michael Szell is the controller, reachable at contact@bikenetkit.org. This notice covers bikenetkit.org, tiles.bikenetkit.org and data.bikenetkit.org. The FAQ at faq.bikenetkit.org is hosted by GitHub Pages (GitHub, Inc., USA) and is covered by GitHub's privacy statement, not by this notice.

What is processed

Each request is logged with your IP address (last block zeroed, e.g. 203.0.113.0), date and time, the page requested, response status and size, the referrer if sent, and browser/OS. Error logs may briefly hold a full IP address, used only to fix faults, and deleted on the same schedule. Messages you send us are processed to reply.

Purposes and legal basis

We process data to run and secure the site, to compute aggregate usage statistics (from the truncated log, with GoAccess, on our own server, never shared or published), and to reply to messages. All of this rests on Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, our legitimate interest.

Recipients and retention

The site is hosted at OVH SAS (France, EU), a processor under Art. 28 GDPR, and its domain and DNS are handled by Ledl.net GmbH & Co. KG. There are no other recipients and no transfers outside the EU/EEA. Logs are kept for 14 days, statistics are kept indefinitely in anonymous form, and emails are kept as long as the matter requires.

Your rights

You can request access, correction, erasure, restriction or portability of your data, and you can object to processing (Art. 21 GDPR) — write to contact@bikenetkit.org. You can also complain to Datatilsynet, Carl Jacobsens Vej 35, 2500 Valby, Denmark, www.datatilsynet.dk. There is no profiling and no automated decision-making.

3. Cookies and local storage

This site sets no cookies, tracking pixels or third-party scripts. Usage statistics come from server logs, not from your device. These things live only in your browser:

  • Home city — this is stored locally as bnk:home-city. It is never sent to the server, and clearing site data removes it.
  • Location — this is used in-browser to find nearby cities, only if you allow it. It is never stored or sent.
  • Your place on the page — when you move between pages, the site remembers your scroll position and the state of the controls you were using, as sveltekit:scroll and sveltekit:snapshot. They hold no information about you, are never sent to the server, and are discarded when you close the tab.

4. Use and disclaimer

BikeNetKit's tools compute suggestions from OpenStreetMap data using published algorithms. The maps and figures are algorithmic outputs, not professional planning, engineering or road-safety advice, and inherit any gaps or errors in the underlying OpenStreetMap data.

5. Accessibility

We aim for WCAG 2.1 level AA. Semantic markup, keyboard-operable controls and visible focus indicators are part of the design system the site is built on. The animation at the top of the home page holds still when your system asks for reduced motion. This is a best-effort statement, not a formal compliance filing.

Known limitations

  • The interactive maps are drawn on a WebGL canvas, which screen readers cannot read. Each map has a “View as table” button that gives a written summary and its key results as tables: how the network builds up, and its most important parts. The tables summarize rather than list every segment; the full data is in the GeoJSON download.
  • The animation at the top of the home page has no pause button. To stop it, turn on your system’s reduced-motion setting.
  • Panning and zooming a map is designed for pointer input. Keyboard controls exist but are slower and less precise.
  • The cities map on the home page is a pointer shortcut. The search field beside it is the keyboard route to every city.
  • Some map information is carried by color and line width. Legends spell out the mapping, but not every layer has a color-blind-safe alternative.
  • Some secondary text, such as panel labels and captions, does not yet meet the AA contrast ratio.

Feedback

If something on this site is not usable for you, write to report@bikenetkit.org and say which page and what failed.

6. Data sources, licenses and funding

Map data

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL). The map background is built from OpenStreetMap data with Protomaps and served from our own server.

Tools and research

Each tool has its own code repository and publication, linked from its page on this site. Licenses, citation details and authorship live in those repositories, collected under github.com/BikeNetKit.

City data

City names, boundaries and network figures are derived from OpenStreetMap. Population figures and the country assignment come from the United Nations Statistics Division's Demographic Yearbook 2022, which the Division publishes without stating a license.

SortBikeNet data

SortBikeNet's as-built order, the sequence in which Paris actually built its bike network, is based on data from the cycling advocacy group Paris en Selle.

Cycling organizations

Links and names of local cycling organizations were collected from the members page of the European Cyclists Federation.

This website

The site's source code is published under the GNU AGPL-3.0. It is built with Svelte and SvelteKit, styled with Tailwind CSS, and uses MapLibre GL and PMTiles for the maps, Lucide for icons, and Bits UI for interface components.

Type is set in Public Sans and IBM Plex Mono (SIL Open Font License 1.1); the display face is Bespoke Sans, under the Indian Type Foundry's free font license. The license texts are served alongside the font files, and all fonts are self-hosted.

Visualization and site design by Moritz Stefaner / Truth & Beauty. Logo design by Andreas Brietzke.

Funding

We acknowledge funding from the Innovation Fund Denmark, the EU Horizon Project JUST STREETS (Grant agreement ID: 101104240), and from the Data Science section of IT University of Copenhagen. The funders and the hosting research group are shown on the home page.