As previously announced, we are working with the UK’s Department for Transport to make advanced cycling data attributes available for incorporation into OpenStreetMap. Rather than organising this along the lines of a bulk import, we are taking advantage of new technologies in Potlatch 2 and have commissioned Andy Allan, creator of OpenCycleMap, to develop new features to […]
Merging tool for external data for OpenStreetMap
Back in July we wrote about our work to assist the DfT with the opening up of their cycling data, a dataset featured in the Telegraph this weekend. Over the summer, much progress has been made. Andy Allan, who is perhaps best known for his excellent OpenCycleMap project, has been working for us to create […]
Detailed cycling attribute data for better cycle routing
We're aiming with CycleStreets to provide the highest possible quality cycle routing, to give people trust in routes they plan. We've heard from many users how our routing is helping them give the confidence to use a bike for their journeys, and from people who've discovered cut-throughs and safer, easier routes for their existing journeys. […]
Hiring soon – to work on routing engine challenges
CycleStreets will shortly be hiring a full-time core developer to work on our routing engine and website. The aim is to enable us to implement improvements to the routing and implement lots of feature requests a lot more quickly. This is possible thanks to a series of contracts and grants we've recently obtained, some of which […]
Improving cycle journey planning in Scotland – with Cycling Scotland
We're pleased to announce that we are working with Cycling Scotland to enhance cycle journey planning in Scotland! Cycling Scotland, the organisation charged with getting more Scots on their bikes, runs a range of initiatives such as Bikeability Scotland, the freshnlo Pedal for Scotland bike ride, cycle instructor training and more. They are keen to […]
CycleStreets – review of the year
Today is our second birthday – CycleStreets was launched on 20th March 2009. The last year has seen a huge amount of development work, leading to new features, speed improvements, and more. However, the next six months will be even busier as the project really ramps up! In the first year, CycleStreets planned 67,000 routes. […]
Routing engine work in progress
Over the last month or two we've been working heavily to rewrite the way the system imports and interprets OpenStreetMap data. This work is intended mainly to make the system give better routes, but also to make things clearer for OpenStreetMap mappers as to how we interpret the data, as well as make the code […]
CycleStreets: Our Story – presentation to Net2Camb event
We really enjoyed the January Net2Camb Meetup event, where one of our lead developers, Martin, gave a talk 'Our Story'. Thanks to Claire for organising the event and everyone who came! It was particularly enjoyable as it was a rare opportunity to talk about the business and competition aspects of CycleStreets, about the challenges we face, […]
Dogfooding in London
Dogfooding, for those who haven't come across the term, is programmers' jargon for 'trying out your own product', i.e. eating your own dogfood! While cycling around in London recently I made use of two great cut-throughs, thanks to our iPhone app and the great mapping done by OpenStreetMap folk. These are the kind of cut-throughs for […]
Technote: Versioned routing database
A techy post, since we've not had one for a while! Over the weekend we rolled out some new infrastructure that has taken most of Simon's time for the last month. And thanks to donations and grants that we received, we now have a machine that works primarily to churn out imports without slowing down […]