Comments on: TransitCamp Bay Area 2 Report http://googlemapsbikethere.org/2008/09/13/transitcamp-bay-area-2-report/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=transitcamp-bay-area-2-report ...for a safer, healthier, happier world. :-) Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:02:33 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Aaron Antrim http://googlemapsbikethere.org/2008/09/13/transitcamp-bay-area-2-report/comment-page-1/#comment-1750 Aaron Antrim Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:33:06 +0000 http://googlemapsbikethere.org/?p=465#comment-1750 Thanks for the mention, Peter. I thought I'd take the opportunity to re-iterate that I think one of the best approaches <a href="http://googlemapsbikethere.org/" rel="nofollow">googlemapsbikethere.org</a> can take to make biking directions happen in more places on the web is to encourage the significant audience you've amassed here to gather data and develop tools. On Saturday, Tom was showing me how he downloads <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/" rel="nofollow">Open Street Map</a> data to his Garmin GPS unit, and uses <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Maplint" rel="nofollow">Maplint</a> to highlight some areas that need help. Then, he captures data for streets whose data is poor and uploads it back to OSM. And, more specific to bike infrastructure, Brandon Martin-Anderson noted that he has captured information on all the separated bikeways in Seattle and uploaded that info to OSM. And then, it's available to be used with <a href="http://graphserver.sourceforge.net/" rel="nofollow">Graphserver</a>. A lot of folks are interested in multi-modal trip planners. It's one of the most common requests the folks at <a href="http://www.trimet.org" rel="nofollow">TriMet</a> in Portland, OR, receive, for example. The best outcome for the long-term, I think, is for bike route information to be available a variety of different ways -- not just on Google Maps. Oh, I am curious what experience you have had reaching out to cycling advocacy groups. I wrote <a href="http://www.green-wheels.org/node/341" rel="nofollow">a letter</a> to the League of American Bicyclists in May suggesting that they should consider online information in assigning their bicycling city designations. Never heard anything back. You've done an incredible job of building an audience here. It would be great to see the scope of the mission broadened beyond getting Google to offer biking directions. Thanks for the mention, Peter. I thought I’d take the opportunity to re-iterate that I think one of the best approaches googlemapsbikethere.org can take to make biking directions happen in more places on the web is to encourage the significant audience you’ve amassed here to gather data and develop tools.

On Saturday, Tom was showing me how he downloads Open Street Map data to his Garmin GPS unit, and uses Maplint to highlight some areas that need help. Then, he captures data for streets whose data is poor and uploads it back to OSM.

And, more specific to bike infrastructure, Brandon Martin-Anderson noted that he has captured information on all the separated bikeways in Seattle and uploaded that info to OSM. And then, it’s available to be used with Graphserver.

A lot of folks are interested in multi-modal trip planners. It’s one of the most common requests the folks at TriMet in Portland, OR, receive, for example. The best outcome for the long-term, I think, is for bike route information to be available a variety of different ways — not just on Google Maps.

Oh, I am curious what experience you have had reaching out to cycling advocacy groups. I wrote a letter to the League of American Bicyclists in May suggesting that they should consider online information in assigning their bicycling city designations. Never heard anything back.

You’ve done an incredible job of building an audience here. It would be great to see the scope of the mission broadened beyond getting Google to offer biking directions.

]]> By: Tom Brown http://googlemapsbikethere.org/2008/09/13/transitcamp-bay-area-2-report/comment-page-1/#comment-1749 Tom Brown Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:49:05 +0000 http://googlemapsbikethere.org/?p=465#comment-1749 Sorry I didn't meet you Peter. I was one of the other guys from Google at TCBA2. I've been pretty happy using walking directions for bike planning. Most recently I took a trip near Crater Lake and walking directions sent me along lots of quiet National Forest roads. Thanks to the kml output of maps, gpsbabel, cloudmade's OSM Garmin maps, and my mapping eTrex I hardly needed to take out my paper maps. The only problems were that some paths were a little too sandy for street tires and the path coming south out of Mazama Campground appeared to be overgrown but we took Hwy 62 anyway. http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=106692828654034652183.0004557dcb99ee7ae894d&ll=43.319183,-122.159729&spn=0.937166,1.768799&z=9 Sorry I didn’t meet you Peter. I was one of the other guys from Google at TCBA2. I’ve been pretty happy using walking directions for bike planning. Most recently I took a trip near Crater Lake and walking directions sent me along lots of quiet National Forest roads. Thanks to the kml output of maps, gpsbabel, cloudmade’s OSM Garmin maps, and my mapping eTrex I hardly needed to take out my paper maps. The only problems were that some paths were a little too sandy for street tires and the path coming south out of Mazama Campground appeared to be overgrown but we took Hwy 62 anyway.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=106692828654034652183.0004557dcb99ee7ae894d&ll=43.319183,-122.159729&spn=0.937166,1.768799&z=9

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