OpenStreetMap

Charles_Smothers's Diary

Recent diary entries

diverging diamond interchange

Posted by Charles_Smothers on 30 April 2012 in English.

I recently was visiting in the St. Louis, Missouri USA area.

I happened to be driving along Dorsett Road and realized that the traffic signs were directing me to cross under I 270 going the wrong way. But all the other traffic was doing likewise. I realized that I had just passed through a very unique intersection. When I got back to the hotel I looked it up.

It is a diverging diamond interchange completed recently. It is only the third or forth such intersection in USA. I checked osm and it still showed the original layout. So I fixed it. Its a pretty cool idea to relieve traffic congestion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diverging_diamond_interchange

http://www.270dorsettpage.com/

Location: Maryland Heights, Saint Louis County, Missouri, United States

I heard the podcast on FLOSS weekly (www.twit.tv) with guest Steve Coast.

This podcast is usually about Open Source Software. In episode 81, the creator of OSM, Steve Coast talked about OSM and about open source data. It certainly got me interested.

Using the yahoo satellite image and the www.openstreetmap.org web editor, I added two roads in my area which has been in service for over a year, but aren't on any maps, including the big commercial you-know-whos. Fun! But not satisfied.

I already had MotionX GPS lite on my iPhone, so I rode my bike on some more of the recently added roads in my area and created a gpx file. Now, using JOSM, I added those streets too. That was fun, but not still not satisfied.

There is a major bridge in Folsom, CA that has been in service since March, but all the nav software won't route me across it. I created a couple gpx files of it, spent a couple of hours getting it laid out in JOSM and recently uploaded it too. Now I just need to wait a day or so for the changes to propagate and see if it will route me across.

I keep finding little errors in the dataset that cause routing hiccups. The tutorials on the osm wiki are very helpful in finding out how to remedy these.

This new addiction is way better than sudoku puzzles!!

Location: Briggs Ranch, Folsom, Sacramento County, California, 95630, United States