Beat the Street
Town-wide gamified active travel intervention created by GP Dr William Bird (Intelligent Health Ltd) where residents tap RFID 'Beat Boxes' on lampposts while walking/cycling/wheeling between them within an hour windows to score team points. Runs as 6-week community-wide tournaments. 1.9M+ participants across UK and abroad. Multiple peer-reviewed pilot evaluations (Coombes & Jones 2018, Harris et al. 2023 in Health Promotion Practice).
Live leaderboards pit SCHOOLS against each other (top schools win sports/book vouchers) and pit community/workplace TEAMS (e.g, 27 community/workplace groups in Hammersmith 2024) against each other. Both a 'total points' leaderboard and an 'average points' leaderboard so big and small areas can both win. A deliberate fairness design absent from Pokemon GO-style apps.
Each school/workplace/community group is a single team. Pupils, parents and teachers all contribute taps to one shared total, so older students lap routes to push their school's average up, families coordinate weekend walks, and lunchtime 'top-up' runs are explicitly encouraged. Schools host strategy huddles; PTAs publish weekly ranking emails. Collaboration is the only way to climb the league.
Rare combination of (a) academic backing (peer-reviewed BMC/Health Promotion Practice papers) (b) at-scale public-health deployment in dozens of UK boroughs (c) clean inter-area (schools vs schools, wards vs wards) and intra-area (one shared team total) mechanic. Almost exactly the BelongHub pattern with hardware sensors. Under-mentioned in tech/community discourse because it's classified as 'public health' not 'civic tech'.
Others in the same family
Beat the Street (Intelligent Health)
Physical 'Beat Box' RFID sensors mounted on lampposts across a town. Walkers/cyclists/wheelers tap them with a card or phone app to earn points for themselves and their team. Each deployment is town-wide and time-boxed (~6 weeks). 5,000+ schools have participated; reached 2 million people in 200+ places.
Beat the Street
Free 6-week town-wide walking/cycling game where residents tap RFID 'Beat Boxes' on lampposts. A whole town's beat-the-street game pits schools, workplaces and community groups in that town against each other on dual leaderboards (total points and average points). Each game becomes a town/borough-wide health intervention commissioned by NHS ICBs, councils, or active-travel partners (e.g, Reading Borough Council, Hammersmith & Fulham, South Derbyshire, Wokingham). Over 1.9m participants across 5,000+ schools in 10 years.
Beat the Street
A whole-town real-life game turning lamp-posts into 'Beat Boxes' (RFID sensors). Players tap cards at boxes while walking/cycling to score points. Run as time-limited campaigns (4-6 weeks) covering an entire town or city zone. Over 2 million participants across 200 communities.
BetterPoints
Council-funded mobile app that auto-detects walking, cycling, bus, train, car-share trips and converts to BetterPoints redeemable at local retailers. Councils customize challenges per borough.
Beat the Street
Towns are turned into giant 6-week games. Contactless Beat Boxes on lamp-posts give points when players tap a card; teams (schools, workplaces, community groups) compete on live leaderboards. Over 1.9M players, 5,000+ schools, 116 towns.
Beat the Street
Free 6-7 week walking and cycling game played across a town. Contactless RFID Beat Boxes are mounted on lamp posts across the playing area; players (children, families, workplaces, voluntary groups) tap cards on boxes to score points. Over 1.9 million participants have played in 5,000+ schools to date.