TY - JOUR
T1 - Using OpenStreetMap to inventory bicycle infrastructure
T2 - A comparison with open data from cities
AU - Ferster, Colin
AU - Fischer, Jaimy
AU - Manaugh, Kevin
AU - Nelson, Trisalyn
AU - Winters, Meghan
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Award #365011 and #377333). The work by the BikeMaps.org team members was funded by a grant from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). Meghan Winters is supported by a Scholar Award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. We also acknowledge partners at Vancouver Island Health Authority, the City of Victoria, the Capital Regional District, the City of Kelowna, and the Halifax Regional Municipality for informing the design of this study protocol and sharing spatial data on bicycling infrastructure.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2020/1/2
Y1 - 2020/1/2
N2 - ABSTARCT: With rapid growth in bicycling, timely and spatially rich bicycling infrastructure data are essential for understanding determinants of ridership, equity of access, and potential for future developments. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative global map that was built by volunteers and is promising for active transportation research. In this article, we use OSM to inventory bicycling infrastructure in six Canadian cities, compare it to municipal open data, and provide guidance for practitioners using OSM data. We conducted an evaluation of OSM and open data, overall and for four categories of bicycle infrastructure: cycle tracks; on-street bicycle lanes; paths (bicycle only or multiuse); and local street bikeways. We found that the concordance in terms of total length of OSM infrastructure to open data infrastructure very high in two of the six cities (< ±2%), and reasonably high in all cities (maximum difference ±30%). Concordance for infrastructure categories was highest for on-street bicycle lanes, which were the most common, and easily identifiable type of bicycle infrastructure in the OSM data, and lowest for cycle tracks and local street bikeways, both of which are new or relatively rare infrastructure types in some Canadian cities. In some cases, OSM was more detailed and timely than open data. A challenge in OSM is consistent tagging of bicycle infrastructure types. We encourage practitioners to consider OSM data for multicity studies, but to be mindful of potential inconsistencies in attribution and local definitions. We also recommend users of OSM to publish data queries for repeatability.
AB - ABSTARCT: With rapid growth in bicycling, timely and spatially rich bicycling infrastructure data are essential for understanding determinants of ridership, equity of access, and potential for future developments. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative global map that was built by volunteers and is promising for active transportation research. In this article, we use OSM to inventory bicycling infrastructure in six Canadian cities, compare it to municipal open data, and provide guidance for practitioners using OSM data. We conducted an evaluation of OSM and open data, overall and for four categories of bicycle infrastructure: cycle tracks; on-street bicycle lanes; paths (bicycle only or multiuse); and local street bikeways. We found that the concordance in terms of total length of OSM infrastructure to open data infrastructure very high in two of the six cities (< ±2%), and reasonably high in all cities (maximum difference ±30%). Concordance for infrastructure categories was highest for on-street bicycle lanes, which were the most common, and easily identifiable type of bicycle infrastructure in the OSM data, and lowest for cycle tracks and local street bikeways, both of which are new or relatively rare infrastructure types in some Canadian cities. In some cases, OSM was more detailed and timely than open data. A challenge in OSM is consistent tagging of bicycle infrastructure types. We encourage practitioners to consider OSM data for multicity studies, but to be mindful of potential inconsistencies in attribution and local definitions. We also recommend users of OSM to publish data queries for repeatability.
KW - Bicycling
KW - OpenStreetMap
KW - citizen science
KW - data quality
KW - infrastructure
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85061995080&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85061995080&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/15568318.2018.1519746
DO - 10.1080/15568318.2018.1519746
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85061995080
SN - 1556-8318
VL - 14
SP - 64
EP - 73
JO - International Journal of Sustainable Transportation
JF - International Journal of Sustainable Transportation
IS - 1
ER -