CycleStreets presentation to Cambridge Geek Night (3rd August 2010)

CycleStreets.net Martin Lucas-Smith www.cyclestreets.net twitter: @cyclestreets UK-wide cycle journey planner & photomap For Cyclists, By Cyclists

What is it? Cycle journey planner Online service Photomap Campaigning tool System of two parts:

CycleStreets: who? Simon Nuttall Routemaster Martin Lucas-Smith Webmaster … and various people helping out in various ways!

CycleStreets: history Cambridge-only cycle journey planner Originally written for Cambridge Cycling Campaign Launched June 2006 Google Map –based 5,000 lines drawn over satellite imagery Google doesn’t give you data: just cartography 47,000 journeys planned 15,000 photos added

CycleStreets: history Lots of requests for same thing in other places around the UK Result is CycleStreets We are using OpenStreetMap for our data We don’t have money for an OS license OpenCycleMap cartography Went to public beta in March 2009 About to break 200,000 journeys Little promotion being done yet Only word-of-mouth so far

CycleStreets: UK-wide

Journey Planner

Nominatim namefinder + postcodes

Gives Fastest, Quietest, Balanced, (+ shortest)

Code Not yet open sourced (i.e. public) but will be Keen to build a project team Routing system is all documented The ‘help’ pages contain all the geeky details! Community values CycleStreets is set up as a UK Not-For-Profit Good links with key cycling community people

Route feedback goes to OSM contacts

‘ Flyover in Google Earth’ feature

Routing documented

Routing Custom-written engine Imports all of Britain every two days Import process Takes 10 hours to work through all stages ‘ Cellular optimisation’ to get speed 80% of data is discarded or abstracted System runs on a single webserver – unlike Google ...

OpenStreetMap People go out with GPS devices On bikes, motorbikes and in cars When back, they use a tool to reduce ‘wobblyness’ of the GPS trace lines Add information collected on-street Road names, pub locations, etc., to each line Type of street, e.g. motorway / cycle lane / park path Attributes like can cycle / can walk ‘ Tagging’ the data Then upload to OpenStreetMap website Anyone can then download and use the data Lat/long data plus all the names and tags

OpenStreetMap Great project Crowd-sourced approach Like Wikipedia Does actually work! None of the licensing restrictions of OS data The world has moved on – OS needs to catch up Current licensing regime simply doesn’t work with the “mashup” model of the web OSM is not complete though Southern cities tend to have better coverage so far Websites like ours  more incentive to collect data

How our routing works: in brief We collapse matrix of OSM ‘tags’ into 40 ‘Provision Types’ like motorway Each has: Maximum achievable speed (tweaked subjectively) Quietness factor (also tweaked subjectively) Cycleable? (boolean) Walkable? (boolean) One-way? (boolean) Delay (seconds) These then mapped onto each line to create 6 scores (fastest/shortest/quietest + in reverse) Add hills, delays (soon turns), etc. Conversion table and Provision Types table:

Conversion from OSM

Provision Types – as used by the engine

Cellular optimisation Our method of reducing data volume by 80% Park: 4 nodes & 7 ways After: 3 nodes & 3 ways 8 9 9 A B C D A B C 4 10 6 3 6: BC 7: AD,BD 9: AC

Corrected and new data New data becomes routable within a day or so We import every few days, so we pick up new info What do we do with errors in the data? We receive a report “weird bit of this route” Report goes to OpenStreetMap people They can fix it or request a ground survey Our next nightly import happens Corrected/new data then routes correctly/better

OpenStreetMap Lots of different renderings We are using OpenCycleMap by Andy Allan Cloudmade serves ‘tiles’ which form a static background once a route has been planned – i.e. we just put this behind a line we have calculated

OpenCycleMap: cartography Problem: Map feels ‘too busy’ Red/green line hidden by background map OpenCycleMap designed for people to print/look at, not as a background layer for a routing system

Why don’t we use Google Maps? Google Maps very popular for websites Google doesn’t provide data Only gives a cartographic rendering of a map A picture of a map is useless for routing! We need both the cartography AND the underlying data So Gmaps no good for offering custom routing Also we wouldn’t be able to fix the data

OSM vs Google Maps Google often doesn’t have information needed by cyclists/walkers – park paths, cut-throughs, pubs! OSM Google maps

Photomap: cycling photos on map

Upload photo / video / Flickr import

Photomap: add categorisation data

Photomap: categorisation

Listings e.g. “All cycle parking problems in Cambridge”

Photos en route

Other features: RSS feed, Galleries, More photos near here, My journeys, Info about this area page, Search, XML interface etc.

http://cambridge.cyclestreets.net / journey/YorkStreet/

http://cambridge.cyclestreets.net/ journey/YorkStreet/DowningPlace/

Problems: incomplete data Data is incomplete in some areas (But we have no way of knowing!) Or data doesn’t join up or is mis-tagged But we know that Cambridge data is so good so bad routes there are due to the routing engine not the data Creates a chicken-and-egg problem for rolling out nationally

The joining-up problem Lack of tools to find where ways don’t join properly Bad joins cause many odd routes So we wrote our own ‘snooker ball’ views

The joining-up problem Cartographic rendering hides data errors

Recent expansion Lots of interest in the API: www.cyclestreets.net/api CyclingSorted.org www.londoncyclehire.org Journey Places (e.g. bike shop markers, etc.)

Please try CycleStreets and give feedback! Feedback in areas of the UK you know is very useful to us Using OSM data for real-life routing means data errors will be found quicker All feedback welcome! Link to us! Banners on promotion page:

Martin Lucas-Smith, www.CycleStreets.net Twitter: @cyclestreets [email_address]

CycleStreets presentation to Cambridge Geek Night (3rd August 2010)

by CycleStreets on Jan 14, 2011

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CycleStreets presentation to Cambridge Geek Night (3rd August 2010) Presentation Transcript