The Technology Behind RideScore: Driving A 55% Increase In Active School Travel

INTRODUCTION

RideScore Active Schools is a technology enabled active travel program developed by the Sunshine Coast Council in partnership with WeRide Australia to make the daily journey to school safer, healthier, and more engaging for primary school children. Designed in response to declining physical activity levels among Australian children, the program encourages cycling and scooting to school by combining gamification with secure, privacy‑first technology.

By 2026, the program has been rolled out to 14 Sunshine Coast schools, engaging more than 1,600 students and becoming the largest cycling and scooting‑to‑school trial of its kind in Australia. Each participating child was equipped with a Bluetooth beacon attached to their bike or scooter, allowing school arrivals and departures to be automatically recorded at bike cages using smart reader technology. Trips were logged to a central platform, where students earned rewards for participation and parents received real‑time notifications, providing confidence their child had arrived safely.

Smile IT built, deployed and tested a scalable technology infrastructure for the RideScore program, supporting reliable operation across schools as the program expanded. Its impact has been significant, with an independent evaluation published in the Journal of Transport & Health recording:

• 55.2% increase in daily active school travel
• 88,000 km travelled by students
• 12.8 tonnes of CO2 emissions saved
• 7.8 extra minutes of daily physical activity per child

CHALLENGE

A strong technical foundation was critical to the program’s success. However, delivering this required overcoming several challenges. Smile IT was engaged by Sunshine Coast Council to complete an initial assessment, which identified the following issues:

• Privacy & Child Safety: requirements prohibited storing or processing any personally identifiable information at the reader level.
• Variable School Environments: created inconsistent Bluetooth radio behaviour and mobile network connectivity.
• Poor Radio Coverage: meant that mains power could not be installed, limiting viable deployment options.
• Power Interruptions: and harsh environmental exposure (heat, UV) posed ongoing risks to system uptime and data accuracy.
• Integration Complexity: the system needed to communicate with a cloud platform that was not originally designed for the hardware.
• Multi‑stakeholder Coordination: was required across Council, WeRide, schools, contractors, vendors, and the platform provider.
• School‑specific Approval: processes, security protocols and access restrictions added significant planning and deployment complexity.

SOLUTION

After uncovering the challenges, we began shaping a technology platform that could reliably deliver on the program’s two core functions:

1. Motivating children to ride to school.
2. Ensuring parents are notified their child has arrived safely in a timely manner.

The solution was built around two core technology elements:

1. Bluetooth beacons fixed to student’s bike
2. Readers mounted at the school bike cages.

The beacons emit a unique, anonymous signal, which the readers detect and interpret. This information is then securely sent to the cloud platform, where the student is matched to their beacon and a notification is sent to their parent.

To achieve this, we:

• Evaluated alternative reader technologies and conducted a market scan for long-term options.
• Selected industrial grade hardware familiar to our team and suited to outdoor, high temperature environments.
• Designed custom software for cloud platform.
• Completed desktop studies and RF assessments to determine reader placement at each school.
• Developed solar powered reader options for sites without viable mains power.
• Continuously improved the design as real-world issues emerged, introducing battery backup and better fault handling logic.

This approach resulted in a scalable reader system that underpins the program and is deployed across all participating Sunshine Coast schools.

TECHNOLOGY

The stack of technology used is as follows:

• KKM K3 Bluetooth Beacon
• Teltonika Router (RUTX11)
• Teltonika RMS
• Telstra 4G SIM
• Radio Antennas for Bluetooth, WiFi and LTE
• UV safe waterproof enclosures
• Solar power systems
• Software integrated with SunPay

Smile IT has been a trusted foundational partner for We Ride Australia and the Sunshine Coast Council in the technological development, delivery and maintenance of the RideScore Active Schools program.

 

~ STEPHEN HODGE, WERIDE AUSTRALIA DIRECTOR

PARTNERSHIP

The success of this program relied heavily on strong collaboration across multiple organisations. Smile IT worked closely with:

RESULTS

Expert consulting, deep technical capability, and strong project management combined to deliver a reader platform that now underpins the entire RideScore program. More than 20 reader systems were rolled out across 14 Sunshine Coast schools, with the full consult, design, and build completed in just four months. Subsequent deployments continued smoothly across multiple school terms.

The result is a scalable, reliable Bluetooth reader network that accurately logs trips, delivers timely parent notifications, and supports student engagement through gamification. Following the redesigned and improved deployment, the program achieved measurable success, independently validated and published in the Journal of Transport & Health.