[OSM-newbies] Public transport maps

[Lucio Chiappetti]

I got notice of the "Open Street Map" project from the press (yes ... 
paper newspapers :-)) and I wonder whether it could be useful for the 
purpose described below.

I'm a member of a Public Transport Users Committee, which in the near 
future is going to present a contribution to a meeting on metropolitan 
cities sponsored by some local city councillors.

The material I'm looking for (and which I would like to include in a latex 
beamer presentation) is the following :

   a) (coarse) maps of a number of large cities in Europe. At least Milan,
      Paris, London, Munich and Frankfurt.
   b) maps of urban public transport lines, with particular regard on
      railways, i.e. underground / metro / U-Bahn and local commuter
      railways, RER, S-Bahn
   c) maps of the metropolitan area administrative boundaries

Ideally all the material should be on the same scale, or be scalable to a 
common scale. Also the material (b) and (c) should possibly be available 
in a "vector" form instead of an image ... what I intend to do is overlay 
the administrative boundaries and the metro/rail routes onto the main maps 
(a), and compare different cities by overlay.

So far I've been able to deal with the main maps (a), using xv to capture 
some Google maps in gif/jpg, and using gimp to adjust them to a coarse 
common scale, but it seems very difficult to find the (b) and (c) 
material.

Does the Open Street Map project have the material described above 
available for retrieval in some documented format ?

I am no GIS expert at all, and do not have familiarity with GIS formats, 
nor much familiarity with "display" image formats like gif, jpg, png 
(except for some occasional use of xv or gimp) however I'm a "programming 
astrophysicist". In astronomy we use routinely our own FITS binary format 
for images and tables (I'm actually a member of the International 
Astronomical Union FITS Working Group), and that includes a 
potentially-sophisticated WCS (World Coordinate System) which should 
support most common cartographic projections. Also I do not think I'd need 
very accurate projections for the purposes illustrated above. So I believe 
I could deal with data in a documented format ... having data for several 
cities in an uniform format, whatever it be, will already be very useful !

Can you please point me to links where I can find the necessary 
information ?

I have now subscribed to the "newbies" list in digest mode. If you think 
your reply is suitable to appear on the list according to its policy, I 
will see it in the daily digest. If you intend to reply to my personal 
work address (lucio AT lambrate.inaf.it , preferred e-mail address), note 
that for the first time you might incur in some of our antispam filters 
(after that I'll whitelist your address). An alternate address can be used
(Lucio.Chiappetti AT rcm.inet.it), but I check it rather seldom.

I thank in advance everybody who will reply.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy)
For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do not blame ME, I did NOT vote Berlusconi.
------------------------------------------------------------------------