[Talk-us] USBRS WikiProject seeks volunteers

[stevea]

OSM's USBRS WikiProject (see 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_U.S._Bicycle_Route_System) 
seeks volunteers to help map new proposed United States Bicycle 
Routes.  Please see the Proposed Routes section of that wiki, a 
reference and status report for the project.  Right now,

USBR 10 in Washington state
USBR 11 in Virginia
USBR 30 in Wisconsin
USBRs 35, 36 and 50 in Indiana
USBR 66 in California, New Mexico and Oklahoma
USBR 76 in Wyoming and
USBR 90 in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana

are emerging proposed routes.  Very helpful would be additional 
experienced OSM volunteers, comfortable editing OSM relations, to 
create and/or improve the proposed bicycle routes in these areas, 
largely by adding route members to a new relation from a soft-copy 
map or text description of the proposed route.

If you wish to help build our national bicycle network in OSM, please 
contact Kerry Irons of the Adventure Cycling Association, a long-time 
contributor to these talk-us pages.  Kerry will match you with a 
route, and email-introduce you to a statewide USBR coordinator -- 
your primary contact -- who provides route data for you to enter into 
OSM.  Meanwhile, the wiki page offers any necessary OSM technical 
guidance, as well as acts as a progress reporting mechanism. 
Volunteer stevea in California (steveaOSM at softworkers.com) is acting 
OSM coach and wiki maintainer on the project, please cc: him on your 
USBR coordinator emails.

It is important to communicate your intentions, progress and 
completions via email or preferably wiki.  The project has 
established process and enjoys new growth by asking widely for 
additional volunteers, so please pay attention to the many moving 
parts by keeping the communication flowing where it needs to.  (Get 
route data from a state USBR coordinator, update your progress in the 
wiki or send email to stevea to do so).  USBRS is nearly 10,000 
kilometers and has momentum to grow to 20,000 in the medium-term 
future.  Help out by adopting a route near you!

Though this work isn't difficult, each route might take a few hours 
of effort starting with a few emails.  After you add a proposed route 
to OSM, one reward is to see the dashed red lines of a proposed USBR 
blossom in Cycle Map layer.  Other rewards happen for on-the-ground 
participants (cities, counties, state DOTs, the public, stakeholders, 
bicycle coalition groups...), who see the newly proposed route in our 
plastic, widely available map.  This encourages consensus of the 
proposed route to emerge in a geographically friendly way, 
facilitating harmonious progress towards AASHTO approval.  Then, once 
a route is approved by AASHTO, its "state=proposed" tag is simply 
deleted in OSM.

To begin your contributions to this OSM WikiProject, email Kerry on 
irons54vortex at gmail (dot) com.  Put "USBR mapping in OSM" in the 
Subject line and tell him where you like to map.  Thank you!

(Kerry and I worked on this volunteer solicitation together -- it 
very much comes from not just him but from both of us.)

SteveA
California