[Talk-GB] New datasets being released by the DfT

[Andy Allan]

Some of you might have seen mention of new datasets being released
(today, apparently, but I can't find them yet) by the DfT

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/8844733/Publishing-road-works-cycle-routes-and-car-parking-data-will-finally-get-Britain-moving.html

Obviously my main interest is in the cycling infrastructure data, but
I can see car parking being useful for OSM too. I've only been
involved with the cycling data.

For once, there's actually been a lot of planning behind-the-scenes on
how to make this data as useful as possible, including which steps
would make it more useful to combine into OSM - to me, clearly the
best way to keep the data up-to-date in the long term. That's a big
step forward from the "throw it over the wall" approach of most
government open-data releases, and I hope appropriate credit goes to
the right people when it's all finally fully public.

I've been working on some features in Potlatch 2 so that we can
inspect, consider and merge the cycling data attributes into OSM on a
street-by-street basis. Cyclestreets made a blog post about this
yesterday, including some screenshots. I'm working on setting up a
demonstration so that we can get feedback on both the data and the new
p2 features.

http://www.cyclestreets.net/blog/2011/10/24/osm-merging-tool/

Until then, this is just a heads-up to say we don't need to worry
about either bulk-importing the cycling data (boo, hiss etc), nor
about converting it from whatever format it is published on
data.gov.uk in, since converting it to a useful OSM-based format,
unencumbered by OS toids etc, is already being done. Also, it's a
heads-up to say I might be asking for volunteers soon to start picking
though the dataset and using it to improve the detail of our cycling
information.

If anyone has any questions, I'll do my best to answer!

Cheers,
Andy