Want to Help Bike Map Your Town?
Open Street Map
My buddy Richard at Cycleliscious has just written a tutorial for using the Open Street Map. He and I have recently chatted a few times about the differences of Google Bike maps, Mapquest, and Open Street Map, which is like a Wiki for bike maps.
More than once I have seen a section of the Dallas bike trail system that was missing in the Google Bike Map, so I sent an email to notify them and later I received a reply indicating they had updated their map. That’s about the extent of my contribution to helping map our trail system.
Richard’s tutorial walks you through understanding how Open Street Map works and also how you can contribute. If you are a bike trail and/or route mapping kind of person then drop by and read his tutorial. I’m still studying it myself and I plan to experiment some over the weekend.
-Chris
Thanks for getting the word out about this.
What I’ve noticed about Dallas / Ft Worth is trail data is missing completely, whereas my tutorial is focused on fixing already existing trail data. Adding it from scratch isn’t too difficult if you’re familiar with the trails, but there is a learning curve involved.
Google got their North American bike path information from the Rails to Trails Conservancy. I’ve asked Rails to Trails about contributing their path database to OpenStreetMap too — they’ve apparently talked about this in the past but haven’t made a decision yet.
Thanks for clarifying that. Ok, I know the trail in my own neighborhood very well, so I will start by getting it on the map (pun intended). I’ll see if I can get started tonight.
I have always wondered how to use the Google thing without pulling my hair out first. I also always like the old Dallas Bike Routes from the 80′s The great thing was the signs so if you didn’t know the neighborhood, they showed you the way to go. Maybe I map some of them in our neighborhood.