17 July 2012

Cycling data on Google Transit

| johnboy
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Over the weekend Simon Corbell pretty much announced that Canberra cycling data was going into the excellent google transit system.

Today Andrew Barr is getting in with the good news.

Acting ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr today announced that Canberra’s cycling community will now be able to plan their trips online with access to cycling maps on Transit for Google Maps.

Canberra is renowned for having excellent cycling facilities. This new feature will allow people to make better use of them and will also help people to combine bike and bus journeys.

The provision of cycle maps will allow people to plan trips on the 420 kilometres of on-road cycle lanes and 400 kilometres of off-road cycle paths located in the ACT. This supplements the bus travel and walking features that are already on offer to Canberrans, and cyclists will be able to plan customised point-to-point trips using the various cyclepaths available to help them get around the city.

I generally find even with well worn routes it’s worth seeing what the computer suggests, I’ve found some pedestrian paths I didn’t know about that way.

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johnboy said :

A real problem is that it doesn’t distinguish between paint on the side of the road and a real bike path.

It tries to. Light green is “dedicated lane” dark green “trail”. The problem is that the data has been mangled, places where the “trail” (got to love those wacky Americanisms) is adjacent to a road they seem to have been marked as dedicated lanes by mistake. The “trails” also don’t distinguish between footpaths (enough for 1 bike) or cycle paths or dirt tracks (not suitable for road bikes).

Just had a quick look, I think it will be a good resource in the future (once the errors are fixed).

It does demonstrate, clearly, that the off road cycling infrastructure in the city is dispersed and disconnected; restricting any longer distance travel across the city without having to battle traffic.

Perhaps this could be used an “evidence base” to assist in the allocation of funding for new cycling infrastructure; particularly if it was combined with some accurate population density mapping

A real problem is that it doesn’t distinguish between paint on the side of the road and a real bike path.

Jivrashia said :

… = Bicycle friendly roads

Had a good chuckle at that one.
Roads aren’t the problem.

Perhaps it means they’re tack free?

… = Bicycle friendly roads

Had a good chuckle at that one.
Roads aren’t the problem.

patrick_keogh2:49 pm 17 Jul 12

davo101 said :

Wow, a quick look at the bit of Canberra that I know shows an awfully large number of errors. Wonder if the problem was at this end or of it got a bit mashed being forced into Google format?

Well as I said at http://the-riotact.com/your-feedback-wanted-on-cycling-map/77464 about the Google Transit data:

“Their dataset is equally wrong. About 50% of the routes that it suggests are clearly silly. As a simple example the suggested route from my house in Kaleen to Mitchell takes me on a winding tour of the Gungahlin Cemetry! Another suggestion is long but otherwise OK and one goes 1500m out of the way because it doesn’t know about a section of path that the ACT Govt one does know.

I don’t know where they got their data from but it would make most sense if we had one correct dataset rather than the current situation where we have two or three (ACT Govt, OSM, Google) which are all wrong in different ways and where we will have to spend 3x the effort to get them updated.

Wow, a quick look at the bit of Canberra that I know shows an awfully large number of errors. Wonder if the problem was at this end or of it got a bit mashed being forced into Google format?

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