Interesting article came to my attention thanks to a friend–a discussion of tools and a product called CalTopo that seems rather intriguing–multilayer topographical maps of backwoods areas (I am a hiker when I can get back to the States). I’m wondering who out there in the OSM realm has experience with it, and what you think of it:

The article URL is https://www.outsideonline.com/2229756/your-navigation-outdated-heres-how-fix-it

CalTopo is here: https://caltopo.com/

Motor vehicle traffic was banned in Ashgabat on Saturday, July 29, in an effort to promote use of bicycles. Since I have no bicycle, I walked up the median strip between the new extension of Mollanepes kocesi and Seydi kocesi in Ashgabat, and used Mapillary to geolocate the bus stops. It was a toasty 42 degrees Celsius (107 Fahrenheit) so I wore a hat and rehydrated on return. I also collected the names of all the buildings using Pocket Earth. No building numbers have appeared yet, however.

A local resident of Ashgabat’s 4th Microdistrict was kind enough to take a FieldPapers printout and mark it up to indicate with which street the buildings with numbers are associated, so that we can assign routable street addresses to the buildings. Just finished the first session of adding these data to the Ashgabat map. This resident also provided corrected boundaries for the microdistrict, so I moved them.

Today I spent about 4 hours cruising the Täze Köşi, Parahat 7, and Gaža neighborhoods of Ashgabat to collect GPS traces of new streets and to identify new schools, kindergartens, and other public buildings. As the onset of the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games looms (due to begin September 17) a final big push is underway to commission new construction, so there are large numbers of changes in the city every week. In addition to GPS traces on my Garmin Nuvi, I collected imagery using Mapillary and am presently uploading it. There is also a new headquarters building for Rysgal Bank, plus two buildings flanking that building that include a shopping center and supermarket. I mapped them, too, along with the alleys and parking lot serving them.

After a short break I put in another couple of hours driving. I buzzed up to Choganly to collect house numbers in the new development that was commissioned last week, plus finished off the search for street names in Gämi, at least for now–there are a few streets with no signs at all on them, so they will have to wait. I also checked out the new apartment buildings in Anew and added the alleys behind them, now that they have been occupied. I finished with a run down Kulyyew to collect GPS traces on the newly opened frontage roads between Bitarap and Baba Annanow. All in all it was a productive Saturday. The Mapillary upload will take a while.

The mystery building in the middle of Täze Köşi now has a sign, Saglyk Öýi, which identifies it as a clinic (what in Russian is called a поликлиника or in English an outpatient clinic). One more puzzle solved!

The streets of the redeveloped Gazha neighborhood of Ashgabat are paved and have started to open. I drove around the periphery of the development today on one of the main roads, and had to dodge a lot of construction equipment. In a few weeks when the last of heavy construction is done, perhaps I’ll be able to cover all streets in the new neighborhood and upload accurate GPS traces of all streets to tweak the preliminary mapping already in place. At the moment the images have not yet appeared on the Mapillary map but when processing of them is complete, they should appear here: https://www.mapillary.com/app/user/apm-wa?lat=37.9367744072687&lng=58.36269527352664&z=13.753345903054646

Flew up to Dashoguz on the 6:30 a.m. flight, spent most of the day on official business, and at the end of the day, took a half hour to collect street names in an unfamiliar section of town. Used Pocket Earth as it is the easiest smartphone tool for rapid collection of house numbers, street names, and POIs. Just finished uploading the fresh data and am ready to end a long day.

Ann and I explored the neighborhood around Duşanbe köçesi this afternoon as the new satellite imagery and map as drawn did not correlate. Collected some good ground-level imagery with Mapillary and good GPS traces with the Garmin navigator, and updated the map in that neighborhood. Also located (and added) the Border Service Institute and the mineral water sanitorium in Berzengi, location of both of which had been minor mysteries!

We keep adding bus stops, thanks to Mapillary, and at some point I hope somebody will help with including data on bus routes.

We finished with a visit to the Watutin (Vatutin) Cemetery, where we geolocated two significant monuments, to the composer Nury Halmamedow and the physician cum Sanskrit scholar Boris Smirnov, who translated the Mahabharata into Russian.

I am increasingly more impressed with Mapillary than with OpenStreetCam. It works with with ID, its base map is kept updated (OpenStreetCam’s is woefully out of date), and it does not try to force traces to align with existing highways in OSM, leading to greater accuracy.

Am seeking names for three monuments in Ashgabat traffic circles that do not appear to have name plaques. The traffic circles at the intersections of Atamyrat Nyyazow and Gorogly, Ataturk and 10 yyl Abadancylyk, and Galkynys and Beyik Saparmyrat Turkmenbasy are unidentified…but they must have names! I think I’ve identified all other monuments located in traffic circles in this city.

After the usual Saturday grocery shopping (at the newly reopened supermarket in the Bagtyyarlyk shopping center, which was closed for months for unknown reasons), I collected the names of the last monuments in traffic circles along Dowletmamed Andalyb kocesi for which no names had yet been collected. All the monuments are now named in OSM! They are (the occasional descriptions below come from the local newspaper):

Andalyb and … Hoja Ahmet Ýasawy: Šahyr binasy (Poet’s Monument) // 18 meters tall, depicts a blossom inside of which are an ink well and giant quill pen, symbols of poetic inspiration … Aga Berdiýew: Döredjilik binasy (Creativity Monument) // 20 meters tall, symbolic tongues of flame, 30 meters in diameter. … Magtymguly: Erkanalyk binasy (Open Spaces Monument) … Görogly: Alaw binasy (Flame Monument) // three steel columns reaching upwards in the shape of flames, representing a communal hearth, prosperity and sufficiency, evincing the Turkmen people’s deep respect for “dastarhan”, the tablecloth of abundance … Galkynyş: Öşüş binasy (Development Monument) … Atamyrat Nyýazow: Jebeslik binasy (Solidarity Monument) … Oguzhan: Dowamat binasy (Constance Monument) // Spherical construction of six columns in the shape of the moon, symbolizing the six sons of Oguz Han. … Ýunus Emre: Ebedilik binasy (Eternity Monument) … 10 ýyl Abadançylyk: Zemin binasy (Earth Monument)

Spent part of a lazy Saturday morning checking out map notes left by other mappers in Ashgabat, editing corrections into the map based on a) their suggestions, b) my verifications from ground truth.

Last week on the margins of the Turkmenistan Gas Congress held in Awaza I did some update mapping of the the Awaza resort zone, with extensive use of Mapillary to capture imagery. Since the zone is now off-limits to private automobiles it was a rare opportunity to capture bus stops, new hotels and facilities, and generally to upgrade the map. I also added several names of streets in downtown Turkmenbashy and edited the existing street names extensively to bring them into conformance with what is actually on street signs. Russian main name entries are now name:ru=* entries. I added two cemeteries, some street addresses, and edited a couple of streets based on GPS traces. The new expanded seaport, under construction by Gap Inşaat and due to be completed next year, has changed the coastline so I need to review recent satellite imagery and update that as well.

This weekend I added POIs to the new village of Bereketli Zaman, including the fire station and mosque, then added interpolation=* ways so the village should now be largely navigable by house number. It is a strictly cookie-cutter layout so deviation of the mapped house numbers from reality should be minimal.

Used Mapillary today for the first time to map the approach road to Taze Zaman, a new suburb of Ashgabat. It gobbled up all the memory of my iPhone 5 very quickly. The interface with ID is very cool and made editing very easy; on the negative side, I’d like an auto mode that doesn’t shoot the entire memory wad in only ten minutes. OpenStreetCam is much more memory efficient, though it lacks an interface with ID.

I used a road trip from Bayramaly to Ashgabat to collect GPS traces as well as several megabytes of imagery with OpenStreetCam on May 11, and today plowed through the data to update the M37 between Bayramaly and Ashgabat. In several places it remains under construction and signage is minimal to nonexistent. There is more work to be done but the roadway itself is largely done. We also found another couple of gas stations (always useful) and a good fish restaurant, the Seljuk Kafe-Otel!

Today we collected GPS traces for the new thoroughfare connecting Magtymguly sayoly to Gurban Soltan Eje sayoly through Old Koshi, which incorporates sections of Agzibirlik and Atabayew plus a new right of way connecting them. I used the Garmin GPS minus the map to collect the traces, and we used OpenStreetCam to collect imagery so we could correctly define the intersections, which were heavily modified. You can see the OpenStreetCam images here: http://openstreetcam.org/details/166018/6

The extension of Magtymguly şaýoly west to the traffic circle on Köşi köçesi has been opened so I collected GPS traces today, tweaked the path of the street under construction, and removed the construction=yes tag. Ann held the iPhone to collect OpenStreetCam data, which allowed us to add bus stops on the new section of street and verify location of traffic lights (stoplights) and intersections. osm.org/way/479294344

April 8 I drove around Parahat 7/4 and Parahat 7/5 collecting GPS traces to add the new residential streets and alleys that are now paved. Parts of these etraps are occupied already but many buildings remain under construction, and not all streets are open yet.

I traveled with the rest of the diplomatic corps to the new potash mine and processing plant near Garlyk, Lebap welayat. Used the Garmin GPS to collect railroad GPS traces to the last station, then Pocket Earth on my iPhone to collect GPS traces of the new road paved from there to the plant. Uploaded all traces yesterday and corrected the rail route, then added a new section of road. The GPS function on the iPhone drains the battery quickly so I used a backup battery nearly the entire trip. The rail car had a 220-volt outlet so I could keep the Garmin GPS charged. The traces are public so anybody can see/use them.

http://hiu-maps.net/hot/1.0.0/ashgabat-17oct2016-flipped/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png

I attended the unveiling of the monument to the late first president of Uzbekistan in Turkmenabat, Turkmenistan on March 7, and got a photo of the street sign attesting to renaming of Arkadag köçesi to Yslam Karimow köçesi. osm.org/way/451769822

http://hiu-maps.net/hot/1.0.0/ashgabat-17oct2016-flipped/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

This is the URL for use as a “Custom” layer when editing OSM for Ashgabat city, current as of 17 October 2016.

Это – URL (веб-адрес) для нового спутникового снимка г. Ашгабата от 17 октября 2016 г.