OpenStreetMap

Cycle routes versus tracks.

Posted by cainmark on 23 April 2010 in English.

I've used my Motorola Droid's GPS and the app OSMTrack to log down all my cycle tracks in Huntsville, Alabama. OSMTrack is great as it logs down as my bicycle on a cycleway. This, while great, wasn't exactly what I thought it was.

As a newbie (really only active since March, though I've had an account longer), I made the mistake of thinking that the "Convert GPS Tracks to Ways" meant that it would lay down the route on the road I was cycling on. I tried to understand relations and it really wasn't until, well, today that I *finally* got it. It was really hard to wrap my head around.

Which made me realize that a lot of the cycle tracks I'd converted to ways aren't cycleways, just the bicycle road route I have cycled on. In some cases this is fine, as in the Indian Creek and Wade Mountain and Aldridge Creek greenways. But it makes it look like there are cycleways when where I was bicycling was legally on the road using the bike route. And I bicycle on a lot of roads that aren't on the normal bike routes as a full time bicycle commuter.

I've been able to separate and delete points, but not tracks. But I don't really wasn't to delete the tracks, I would like to converts the erroneous cycleways back to GPS tracks.

Is there a simple way to do this? I don't want to do my work all over, but I do want to make sure the bicycle information I have provided is accurate.

At least I know all my Bike Park, Bike Rack information is correct, and some information that apparently on the data I put on OSM show up on the Open CycleMap correctly.

Thanks for anyone's help!

Location: Terry Heights, Huntsville, Madison County, Alabama, 35804, United States

Discussion

Comment from mapsinE3 on 24 April 2010 at 07:00

It would be helpful if you gave us a link to the tracks in question We could then look at them and maybe advise what, if anything, is wrong, and how to fix it.

I am new to OSM, and use JOSM, having seen Steve Coast's excellent video tutorials.

There's a link to them on the JOSM page:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM

Basically, your GPS unit just shows the "track" as a series of nodes (points), you need to join these up into a "way", omitting unnecessary points (eg for a straight section of track) and then label the way as a cycleway. The videos will help you.

I played them (linux), then copied the flash files from /tmp for later replaying. JOSM was trivially easy to install, run and use.

Hope this helps.

Comment from 42429 on 24 April 2010 at 09:45

Congratulations on understanding the intention of relations!

A relation indicates a route that connects many ways, e.g. a bus route. One street (e.g. Main Street) can have many bus routes and one bus route can pass through many streets. So it is a good idea to create one relation for each bus route.

It is hard to create a route because you have to type ALL properties MANUALLY:
type = route
route = bus OR road OR bicycle OR scenic
ref = number
network = lcn (IF bicycle) or bus company (e.g. MTA)
name = makes it easier to find it again

If a relation is already created once, you can ADD new ways to it in the area where it ends by clicking the ==(four lines)Button on the right side of Potlatch and selecting the appropriate relation. Potlatch, the online editor, has a maximum limit of 24 relations, so you have to zoom in if there are more than 24 relations in one area.

As relations are the best way to show a bike route, I was able to delete the ways that are converted GPX tracks. By pressing the G button, you can see if the GPX tracks are still available, if not, you may upload them again.

We are depending on local knowledge and we appreciate every help because it is easier to clean up technical mistakes than to collect local data.

Thank you for your hard work on a bicycle cruising suburban streets in the hot South in order to improve OSM!

Yours, FK270673

Comment from cainmark on 24 April 2010 at 14:52

Thank you both for your help!

While all the information you provided in your comment, FK270673, is available in the wiki documentation, it's not as clear as you made it. If that could be in the beginner's wiki as you wrote it would have helped me in the beginning.

"I was able to delete the ways that are converted GPX tracks"

This is what I could not figure out how to do. Thank you for dong that, but how would I do that if I needed to (hopefully not) in the future?

Not hot in the South yet, but it (with humidity) will be here soon. It's been very nice mild Spring weather the past few weeks.

mapInE3, thank you for the video links. I like using Potlatch, but will look into JOSM when I have more time.

Comment from 42429 on 24 April 2010 at 20:27

Look at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Potlatch/Primer

To delete the whole way:
* Hold Shift and press Delete (or Backspace).

Button 13: Open relation editor,
Button 14: Add a tag

To restore an accidentally deleted way:
* Press 'U' (for "undelete").

Comment from cainmark on 24 April 2010 at 21:07

Thank you, don't know hwy I kept missing that when I looked at it before.

Comment from ToeBee on 25 April 2010 at 02:38

Yeah I was pretty confused when I first tried to add bicycle information for my city. I started out on opencyclemap "information" page which is clearly geared towards Britain. At first I thought lcn stood for "London Cycle Network" so I wasn't sure about using that for the bike paths here in the US. And relations were initially poorly explained.

I THINK I finally figured most of it out by bouncing around on the wiki looking at tag pages and whatnot but I'm still not sure on everything. The wiki has good general information and what I would call "abstract knowledge" about mapping in general but it would be helpful if there were some pages linked in the beginners guide with some concrete examples. "To map a new road in your neighborhood, follow these steps and use these tags" or "To map a bicycle path, do this"

As for opencyclemap, it is apparently experiencing server problems. My area won't even render at certain zoom levels and I'm pretty sure it hasn't updated with new data from OSM in several weeks. Hopefully they can get that sorted out soon.

Comment from ToeBee on 25 April 2010 at 02:47

Yeah I was pretty confused when I first tried to add bicycle information for my city. I started out on opencyclemap "information" page which is clearly geared towards Britain. At first I thought lcn stood for "London Cycle Network" so I wasn't sure about using that for the bike paths here in the US. And relations were poorly explained.

I THINK I finally figured most of it but I'm still not sure on everything. The wiki has good general information and what I would call "abstract knowledge" about mapping but it would be helpful if there were some pages linked in the beginners guide with some concrete examples. There is a "first basic road" page but it is pretty minimal and doesn't really explain how to tag things. I was confused at first by the "highway" tag as I thought this should only be applied to... well.. highways, not residential roads. And it would be nice to see some pages to explain these things for some common tasks - like mapping cycle routs/paths/lanes. I found some disjointed information here and there and had to piece it together myself.

As for opencyclemap, it is apparently experiencing server problems. My area won't even render at certain zoom levels and I'm pretty sure it hasn't updated with new data from OSM in several weeks. Hopefully they can get that sorted out soon.

Comment from ToeBee on 25 April 2010 at 02:51

oops. The server was being slow and I didn't think my first comment got posted!

Comment from cainmark on 25 April 2010 at 04:43

"At first I thought lcn stood for "London Cycle Network" so I wasn't sure about using that for the bike paths here in the US."

Heh. I had the same thought.

Log in to leave a comment