OpenStreetMap
I've spent a few hours over the past few weeks adding various streets in Bolton and some towns to the south of Bolton (Atherton/Leigh/Walkden/Little Hulton/Tyldesley etc). All the 'A' roads and motorways are there, but very few residential areas.
Unfortunately, this is one of the most densely populated areas of England, and at my current rate of progress it would probably take a few decades to complete! There are other mappers in the region also who are doing a sterling job at progressing this.
This area is also omitted from the Yahoo arial photograph, so really, unless we pay for more photography, it's going to require a few busy mappers armed with GPSs.
Any volunteers?
Discussion
Comment from SK53 on 6 September 2009 at 20:27
Here's my suggestion.
I would imagine there are still large areas of Bolton with roads and houses which exist on the New Popular Edition. For armchair mappers it's impossible to know where these might be. If you are visiting the area for mapping or otherwise it might be possible to annotate an existing OSM map with approximate dates and types of housing, and stick on the Bolton wiki page. Any areas which are predominantly pre-war can then be mapped from mapping by anyone who wants to. Local mappers can then focus on a smaller part of the whole area, although road names would still be missing. To do this you may need to map a few of the distributor roads in residential areas. In a way this is dividing it into Cake Slices.
Unfortunately lots of the towns in the vicinity of Manchester seem to be mapping blackspots. Bolton is not the worst: have a look at Oldham.
HTH and Best of luck.
Comment from wonka68 on 6 September 2009 at 21:03
Good idea. Actually, I understand that some more recent editions of OS are due out of copyright soon, and will probably become available to use in OSM.
Comment from RichardB on 7 September 2009 at 06:53
I would suggest not tracing from NPE. It's not vastly accurate, there are no road names, and much of it will have changed significantly; and it still needs to be visited by someone to get road names. A better idea would be organising a mapping party. Potentially get OSMers from all over the country to come to Bolton and map it.
Widening the net, there could be a mapping party series - with Bolton, Bury, Rochdale and Oldham being the focus for successive parties.
Comment from SK53 on 7 September 2009 at 10:12
RichardB, not all of us can match your herculean efforts mapping whole towns at a sweep (see ), and not everyone has a GPS.
The virtue of having something even if inaccurate is that it means that people without all the kit can contribute. I think huge blank spaces are intimidating to the newcomer, and often mean that they go somewhere else for maps. Adding road names is one of the simpler things someone can contribute.
I personally like to have an OSM derived map on my Garmin when I go somewhere new: which often means putting basic landuse in from landsat and roads and other features from NPE.
Realistically mapping parties won't happen until the Spring, and I think it would still be a challenge to hit all 4 areas (+possibly Tameside) next year.
Either way an indication of housing types etc. on the wiki is an assistance for planning any kind of mapping.
Comment from chillly on 7 September 2009 at 10:59
GPS units are available for loan, esp. for mapping parties.