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Baloo Uriza's Diary

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Metro Bike There! data progress report

Posted by Baloo Uriza on 11 February 2010 in English.

Metro's got some questions for us. I'm confident licensing back to them won't be an issue; but I'm wondering what to suggest for getting feedback back from us for their GIS system.

From: John Mermin
To: [email protected]
Cc: Matthew Hampton , Daniel Kaempff
Subject: FW: GIS data for Bike There!
Date: 02/10/2010 01:38:52 PM

Hi Paul,
We had our meeting to discuss the future regional bike mapping yesterday. When the Open streetmaps discussion came up the consensus seemed to be that we're supportive of creating a license to allow you to reproduce Bike There data. Metro hasn't done something like this before, so we need to research it a little bit. One of our staff will be contacting TriMet so learn about the licenses they've created for open-source smartphone applications.

We're also interested in exploring how open-source applications such as openstreetmap.org could add a feeature allowing map users to send in feedabck on the data (e.g. identify errors in our bike lane/trail data, suggesting suitable routes, recommend changes to existing suitabilty ratings, etc.)

We'll keep you posted on our progress. In the meantime, let me know if you have any further thoughts on these issues.

Thanks!
John

I asked John Mermin at Metro if they would be willing to share their data with the project, and below is the response I got. Expect much more complete bike data in Metro, Oregon soon.

From: John Mermin
To: Paul Johnson
Subject: RE: GIS data for Bike There!
Date: 02/04/2010 09:18:12 AM

Hi Paul,
Thanks for the message. It's very likely that the answer will be yes. I'm meeting with a few folks at Metro early next week, and one of the issues we'll be discusisng is Metro's role for providing bike data / maps for the region. Both myself and our cartographer are very supportive of sharing our data for open-source projects.

I should have more to say after our meeting on Tuesday.
Thanks!
John

I noticed that the City of Beaverton seems to have bad boundaries. For example, in the Marlene Village area, the boundaries are exactly the opposite of what they should be. Marlene Village and Nike's world headquarters are NOT part of Beaverton, but Murray and Walker are part of Beaverton. Right now, OSM indicates exactly the opposite.

Why is this a problem? Well, Beaverton's city government is criminally incompetent as determined by the local courts thanks to Nike suing the city over wrongful annexation, and there's no way in hell that Marlene Village has ever been, or will ever be part of Beaverton. This earned Beaverton a ruling that requires the city to give up all annexations since 1997 and puts their police accreditation, ability to run photo enforcement and collect property taxes in jeopardy, and gives them a moratorium against annexing further area until 2040. It also means that Beaverton's going to be gaining a LOT more holes soon.

What's the best way to solve this?

Location: Merlo Station, Marlene Village, Washington County, Oregon, 97077, United States

Shame on Wilf's Piano Bar and Restaurant for holding a function in Portland Union Station's lobby without Amtrak permission. No self-respecting Portlander should patronize this business after what they pulled tonight. Wilf's decided the perfect venue for a bunch of drunken attendees of "Computing In a Changing World" would be their next door neighbor's (Amtrak's) lobby. Portland Union is a major station.

Kudos to AmPol and the PPB for responding quickly to remove the tresspassers (even if you arrived the same time the train did).

Kudos to Amtrak for setting it right with double points and a drink coupon, and handling a completely crappy situation with understanding and a smile.

Location: Old Town, Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon, United States

Those who are in or planning to be in the Portland, Oregon area during the next few weeks should be aware of some upcoming closures of all lanes and ramps on the Stadium Freeway. The last two closures are already tagged on OSM, and I'm also taking this opportunity to do some much needed cleanup on the Stadium Freeway corridor in the map; if you have any known issues or GPX tracks for the Stadium Freeway, both would be appreciated (please use OpenStreetBugs or the GPX upload here).

This happens to be the very first repaving project for the Stadium Freeway, which was completed in 1964. Sam Baldock built 'em hardcore back then!

Location: Downtown, Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon, United States

¿Cómo manejan las calles y edificios que no fueron originalmente metro, pero ahora son? Parece que hay un pueblo cerca de una faultline que sufre graves de este fenómeno ( http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=en&tl=es&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.environmentalgraffiti.com%2Ffeatured%2Ftown-devoured-by-rock%2F10450 ). Este tiene legítimamente me confunde. Miré a este lugar esperando que me puedan resultar interesantes mapa versiones, pero descubrir hay un solo camino que aparece en OSM para que pueblo!

Location: Casas Nuevas, Setenil de las Bodegas, Sierra de Cádiz, Cádiz, Andalucía, 11692, España

Mapping a horizontal crevasse

Posted by Baloo Uriza on 5 August 2009 in English.

How do you handle streets and buildings that weren't originally underground, but now are? There appears to be a village near a faultline that suffers severely from this phenomenon ( http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/town-devoured-by-rock/10450 ). This one has me legitimately confused. I looked up this location hoping that I might find some interesting map renderings, but discover there's only a single road listed on OSM for that village!

Location: 36.864, -5.182

While I vehemently disagree with Portland City Council's move to name a street after someone who was not, nor is now, a relevant figure in the city (heck, César Chávez has verifiably never been closer to Portland than 30 miles, and then only incidentally), I guess it's some consolation that OSM managed to publish a zero-day street name change thanks to me.

Location linked is the intersection of Place Jeanne d'Arc and the newly renamed César Chávez Boulevard, a rare Portland intersection where neither street is named in English.

Location: Laurelhurst, Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon, United States

I'm currently using JOSM to work on a section of Salem, specifically around the mall I've pinpointed on the map link below. In JOSM, the validator catches "style for outer way "xxx" mismatches" for the multipolygon around the mall. Is the multipolygon wrong or is the validator wrong?

Location: Grant, Salem, Marion County, Oregon, 97311, United States

One of the things that you can do with a Garmin GPS is use waypoints as the basis to generate speed and proximity alerts (http://www.gpsbabel.org/htmldoc-development/fmt_garmin_gpi.html).

Anybody attempting to do this for themselves should make sure that using an automated means to warn you about enforcement measures is legal in your jurisdiction, first; I understand there are some states and countries that frown on or prohibit the practice I'm outlining. For the sake of this post, we'll assume that someone trying to do this either has no legal barrier from doing so, or understands the consequences and is taking an educated risk.

Rationale: In unfamiliar territory, it's often nice to have warning about speed limits and enforcement measures in advance, because speed limits often protect zones prone to congestion or sharp/blind curves or hills, and photo stoplight operations tend to be located at high-crash locations.

Here's some of the things I would like to do:

1) Take a given .osm, search for ways with maxspeed tags. Create waypoints at either end of the way with the name "Maximum@nn" where nn is the number equal to the maxspeed= tag, in the local unit of measure (ie, we don't care if it's km/h, mph, mach, warp, whatever). If two ways meet and have different maxspeed= tags, the lower of the two figures should be used. If one two ways meet and one has a maxspeed= tag and the other does not, the existing maxspeed= tag is used. Any spot where an enforcement relation is used to indicate a speed enforcement location should have a similar node created on the way at the enforcement location.

2) Take a given .osm, and look for relations indicating signal enforcement, similar to above. The node should be created at the traffic signal being enforced, named "Signal Enforcement."

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