JOSM on my Mac randomly decides to quit drawing lines between points. I think it’s Java’s fault, not JOSM but eesh.

I noticed that Fort Rock, Oregon couldn’t easily be found on the map and started making some edits in that area, including Christmast Valley. When the area finally got rendered, someone had already changed one of my edits (tracks to footways)! If you know this area of the state, you know it’s remote. How strange to have someone else make an edit of the same are at the same time.

Speaking of remote, it’s this sort of area where TIGER really scares me. Take a look at the map vs the satellite and ask yourself if you’d really want to drive around with nothing but a GPS for direction.

I saw a presentation on OSM at SOTM.US. They measured the quality of OSM pre and post redaction by looking at the number of highway miles. It got me to wondering, can we get higher quality data by removing roads?

In the US, the “base map” was the now famous import of US census TIGER data. The Census bureau has mapped Forest Service logging roads and driveways, and they were imported as highway=residential. However, they quite often seem to be wrong. Consider some of the Oregon coast range, how much value a driveway adds or even where it belongs, and changing roads in the desert.

I suspect these roads were created then abandoned. The only way to know for sure is to go out there and survey them.

This got me to thinking that the map might actually be improved by removing ways. What do you think?

I’ve been going around Oregon and marking roads as tertiary. The TIGER import generally gave most roads highway=residential. I’ve been trying to mark tertiary roads as ones that have a painted centerline.

The Mapquest OSM view is nice for this since it shows tertiary roads at one higher zoom level than Mapnik. That lets me see a larger area at a time.

My usual workflow is to download an area, get Bing imagery and then mark the roads. Since it’s a real pain to select a road then add two tags (highway=tertiary and lanes=2), I added a button to JOSM. To do that, I’ve created an XML file with the following (forgive my markup)

<presets> <item name=”Mark Tiger Reviewed”> <key key=”tiger:reviewed”/> </item> <item name=”bridge”> <key key=”bridge” value=”yes”/> <key key=”layer” value=”1”/> </item> <item name=”Make Tertiary”> <key key=”highway” value=”tertiary”/> <key key=”lanes” value=”2”/> </item> </presets>

Use the Preferences–>Map Settings to include your XML file. Then go to Preferences–>Presets and add them to the toolbar as buttons. Voila. Now if only Java didn’t quit drawing ways between points randomly….

I really enjoy finding places where the roads have been relocated. It’s living history to see how problem areas have been fixed. This seems to happen a fair amount with the TIGER import in the US; I guess it’s hard for TIGER to know of every change over the years. Here’s a good example of smoothing out a sharp corner (view the Bing! imagery to see where the road used to go). Something for the future archeologists to find too. :)

osm.org/?lat=44.185771&lon=-123.249265&zoom=18&layers=M

I noticed several of the highways around Crater Lake, Oregon had disappeared. osm.org/?lat=42.559&lon=-122.813&zoom=11&layers=M

A quick look at the history of remaining points (‘h’ with Potlatch 1, no idea if there’s an easy way to do this elsewhere) showed the licensing redaction bot removed them. So I added the highways back using the remaining points. That was slow going work and it really didn’t make me feel like I’d added much. At least I was able to add a few extra details along the way (bridges).

Which reminds me, JOSM has an annoying habit of suddenly not adding ways between new points; the most recent tested version seems to be the worst yet.

Anyway, the whole experience made me wish the redaction bot just went back to the original TIGER import.

I noticed some highways have disappeared from near Crater Lake, Oregon. A quick look at the history of the remaining dots (I can get it easily with ‘h’ in Potlatch 1, no idea if it’s possible elsewhere) shows the licensing redaction bot removed them.

Anyway, I added them back (aside: anyone notice how JOSM eventually quits drawing lines between points? the current version is the worst yet) but it really made me sad, since it took a lot of time and really didn’t add anything. It would have been nice to just revert back to the original TIGER import.

Maybe the only good that came of this was adding a few more details (bridges) as I went.

Sigh.

I’ve heard some debate on the mailing lists about whether importing TIGER census maps into the US was a good idea. The con argument is people look at the map and figure it’s good enough. The pro side is it put a lot of useful data in place.

Unfortunately, the quality of the TIGER data needs some improvement. For one thing, the highway= tag does not cover much ground between residential and motorway. There are lots of preferred roads, especially away from the cities, and you can’t just look at a TIGER map and know which one to take.

I’ve been applying the highway=tertiary tag to lots of the backroads in Oregon. One thing I particularly like finding are roads that have been re-routed (which is a really neat thing to look for on old maps). Take a look at the underlying Bing! image and see how Seven Mile Hill Road used to take a bit of a meander to the south.

I’ve been spending some time adding tertiary roads to the map of Oregon. The new Mapquest Open layer works really well for finding areas in need since it includes tertiary roads at a higher zoom level than the Mapnik default.

It’s amazing at how many paved roads we have.

Central Oregon

Willamette Valley

Looking at the raw feed from the OSM diaries hasn’t been too useful to me because, well, I only speak English. It turns out that I can see the filtered entries by looking at osm.org/diary/en.

I’ve taken to alpine skiing over the last couple years and have started to map a few of the ski areas. The Bing! imagery is excellent, even way out in the mountains, and works really well for finding the chairlifts. So far, I’ve found * 49 Degrees North (WA) * Silver Mountain (ID) * Mt. Spokane (WA) * Hoodoo Ski Area (OR) * Mt. Bachelor (OR) * Timberline Lodge (OR) * Mt. Hood Meadows (OR) * Mt. Ashland (OR) * Mzaar (Lebanon !) A few of which I’ve been lucky enough to map with my GPS.

It looks like some other resorts actually have the forest mapped, which is pretty cool. Unfortunately, the current renderers, mainly Mapnik, don’t show the runs like osmarenderer did.

I see a lot of name= tags on the ski runs when there should be piste:name= tags. The effect on Mapnik is a floating name with no other distinguishing features.

It would be extra cool if the renderer would color code the runs for the locals. I didn’t realize this, but different areas of the world use different colors. Intermediate runs in the USA are blue but they are red in Europe (and JOSM).

In my experience, the project of the week for adding tennis courts brought in a lot of tennis courts and a lot of maplint. The leisure=pitch tag is missing from a surprising number of them. Perhaps this convention wasn't well explained by the project, perhaps the hierarchy is too confusing. Does a sports_centre have a recreation_ground with pitches?

Do you see similar results in your area?

Has anyone noticed that Apple's Magic Mouse does not play well with OSM? It seems to randomly zoom in and out and change my location, both in the slippy map and now in Potlatch.

Has anyone solved this problem?

Google is finally making their Map Maker available to the USA for the first time, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/add-your-local-knowledge-to-map-with.html.

Google says they'll post your changes quickly...after review. I'm curious as to whether their review is by a human or by software (e.g. 5 people changing a tag probably indicates something is wrong with the tag). I corrected their map once (missing onramp to the Fremont Bridge in Portland OR) and it took them four months to review it.

I'm left to ponder what this might mean for OSM. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have a memory of Linus T. being asked about Linux vs Windows. His answer was something to the effect of, we don't care about Windows because Linux will crush it eventually. So maybe this is good news, Google can do whatever they want, and eventually their "location" energy will run out and they'll go back to search results. ;) Or maybe this is good news because the goal of open mapping is to provide easier access to more map data. Win again.

I do think it is inconsistent of Google to claim that it simply giving the world access to its data--in this case they're creating it.

These are my ideas roughly sketched out tonight. What do you think?

It looks like someone (ODOT?) has changed some of the exit signs on I5 in Portland, OR. The signs used to name the city or area for the exit (for example, Tualatin). Now they just list the road name (Nyberg Street).

I suppose this could be a plus, as it's not always clear which city should be listed. I can remember seeing signs from I84 to I205 south that said "Salem". To get to Salem, you'd first pass though Gladstone, Oregon City, Wilsonville and Woodburn. Even worse, it wouldn't help if you wanted to head south of Salem to Eugene.

I've been plugging away at improving the roads in Vancouver Washington. First, I'm surprised at how big that area is. Second, I find a lot of the TIGER data is "off by one" or shifted/compressed compared to the aerial imagery.

I've found the combination of NAIP imagery and JOSM works quite well for this. JOSM lets me select several point for moving which is way more efficient than Potlatch. The detailed Yahoo! imagery is the best, but it's old and the level of detail drops off a lot outside the big cities.

(weak humor for Oregon folks)
I've been trying to correct the TIGER data around Eugene Oregon, particularly the southern areas of the city. I've come to the conclusion that TIGER is not a fan of the Ducks.

I am developing mixed feelings about how to map for OSM.

I've made traces of roads that don't appear in Yahoo! imagery with my GPS and uploaded them. However, the mailing lists have provided WMS imagery that can be used in JOSM to achieve the same result. Heck, it's usually better than the GPS track. It is also much less work to trace an area in JOSM than it is to go out there, traverse the roads, upload the track and trace an image from it.

There's a feel good component to "beating" Google/Bing/Yahoo with a new road. But it starts to feel like wasted effort when I can find imagery that is new enough.

Worse, manual effort seems like a waste when bulk data can be uploaded. For example, if Portland OR has data on which roads have bike lanes, it could probably be part of a bulk upload. Meanwhile, I'm pinging away tagging bike lanes as I find them. Ditto for hiking trails: why bother to add them by hand when someone might do a bulk upload from US Forest Service data?

Does anyone else have this feeling? Imagery rules over GPS? Freeing data for bulk upload or adding little bits by hand?

Mappers in the US should take a look at the NAIP (National Agriculture Imagery Program) imagery. Amazing detail and coverage. And it's pretty quick to load.

http://isse.cr.usgs.gov/ArcGIS/services/Combined/USGS_EDC_Ortho_NAIP/MapServer/WMSServer?request=GetMap&format=image/jpeg&service=WMS&version=1.1.0&layers=0&STYLES=default&

Here's a Point of Interest I almost never map: banks. Let's face it, everyone belongs to one or two banks and ignores the rest.

What are some obvious POI you forget?