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Video: Why Open Data Matters for Cycling: Visualizing a Cycling City

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Re: Video: Why Open Data Matters for Cycling: Visualizing a Cycling City

#21

Post by asdff »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #11
Melatonic wrote: post #9

Very cool! I need to use this more for Los Angeles. The city is known to be one of the worst cycling cities in the US (and many parts are quite awful). But given that it is such a huge behemoth of sprawl there are also some quite amazing bike paths and places to cycle if you know where to go. And the LACBC is doing amazing work on getting that expanded - one day somewhat soon there should be a bike path running the e…

LA is surprisingly progressive; it's (still, I believe) the only city in the US to outlaw harassment of a cyclist, though as always, good luck getting the police to do anything for you if you're on a bike. LA has a lot going for it in terms of biking for transport. Easy to navigate road system, the sprawl means bikes are an attractive alternative to walking, ditto for having pretty flat terrain.

The a lot of the flat part of the city is pretty much a false flat though. The road system if you avoid arterials (which I do, who likes getting forced off Western Ave into a fruit cart by a truck loaded 10 feet wide with scrap metal?), is a labrynth of weird ends and incomplete connections. For example there is no great north south road that I've found at least. I take van ness but it ends in a three way intersection at third, so I do some other weird maneuvers to find another road like serrano to take a little further, then that peters out in a similar fashion so I have to find another decent non arterial that doesn't dead end or do anything else weird, then I have to consider how I am crossing the 10, etc.

Biking in LA is great if you live in like Playa del Rey, Santa Monica, Burbank, Pasadena, or even Altadena, but in a lot of places it needs a ton of work to be seen as anything but a deathtrap in a lot of people's eyes. To say nothing of the rampant bike theft. I've lost one so far, knocking on wood.

Re: Video: Why Open Data Matters for Cycling: Visualizing a Cycling City

#22

Post by schimmy_changa »

julvo wrote: post #2

Tangential, but I wish there was open traffic data with high coverage for planning low-traffic cycling routes. Looked at openly available aerial images, but the resolution is not high enough to detect traffic

Huh- I hope someone at google looking for a 20% time project is looking at this thread… with their traffic data this wouldn’t be too hard! The “open” part might be the hardest part for that engineer to achieve though. I guess it’s not unprecedented for Google to open up something like this, especially if using static data.

Re: Video: Why Open Data Matters for Cycling: Visualizing a Cycling City

#23

Post by loeg »

0des wrote: post #7
loeg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strava global heatmap is pretty good if you trust other cyclists' judgment: https://www.strava.com/heatmap .

The lingering issue I have with that is that at first glance you see some cool routes, but then you get there and realize it was clearly a route for mountainbikers. I commute via track bike, which couldn't be any more ill-suited for the terrain. Given that my bike and style of riding is more suited for flat smooth pavement, I generally just ride with traffic as the routes are better maintained and it is easier to kno…

I scope out unfamiliar routes with Google Streetview.

Re: Video: Why Open Data Matters for Cycling: Visualizing a Cycling City

#24

Post by loeg »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #10
loeg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strava global heatmap is pretty good if you trust other cyclists' judgment: https://www.strava.com/heatmap .

Strava heatmap is terrible. It is heavily biased toward experienced (and often very fit/quick) recreational/sport/fitness cyclists. I'm a very experienced cyclist and I don't upload my 'transportation' rides. It's not worth it. So all the data from me riding a particular route twice, five times a week - as well as my preferred routes to various activities, shopping, etc - doesn't make it into strava. My fun / trainin…

I agree the data has limitations, but disagree that it is ultimately "terrible."

Re: Video: Why Open Data Matters for Cycling: Visualizing a Cycling City

#25

Post by ghaff »

dspillett wrote: post #12
CalRobert wrote: post #3

This is really cool! Though a writeup would be nice instead of a 50 minute video. OpenCycleMap is really a gem - it's why I bought the house I did (among other reasons). Thunderforest puts together some nice bike layers in their map tiles too. Related, there's some free courses on how to do Urban Mobility Visualizations (those cool 3d renders architects and urban planners make) at urbanmobilitycourses.eu, well worth…

> Though a writeup would be nice instead of a 50 minute video. It looks like it is a recording of something that was intended as a live seminar¹ so a conscious decision was made to make and present it this way. Though transcript would be useful, that could take time to produce². If you have an abundance of time, perhaps you could volunteer? [1] one that might have been in a hall somewhere but was pushed into homes by…

ML transcripts are good for extracting snippets from an interview. If I’m publishing an actual transcript it’s not worth my time to clean up a non-human transcription.

Re: Video: Why Open Data Matters for Cycling: Visualizing a Cycling City

#26

Post by adamjb »

julvo wrote: post #2

Tangential, but I wish there was open traffic data with high coverage for planning low-traffic cycling routes. Looked at openly available aerial images, but the resolution is not high enough to detect traffic

cycle.travel incorporates real traffic data as part of its routing

Re: Video: Why Open Data Matters for Cycling: Visualizing a Cycling City

#27

Post by 0des »

loeg wrote: post #23
0des wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lingering issue I have with that is that at first glance you see some cool routes, but then you get there and realize it was clearly a route for mountainbikers. I commute via track bike, which couldn't be any more ill-suited for the terrain. Given that my bike and style of riding is more suited for flat smooth pavement, I generally just ride with traffic as the routes are better maintained and it is easier to kno…

I scope out unfamiliar routes with Google Streetview.

I'm unable to use Google applications, however that does sound very useful. The mapping application I have access to works however I am limited to what I can plan ahead of time as I don't have a device that does that type of thing.
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