[Talk-us] Fwd: USBRS WikiProject seeks volunteer mappers

[Mike N]

On 6/3/2014 5:34 AM, Simon Poole wrote:
> Route USBR 10 nicely illustrates my point about GIGO. It starts of in
> untouched TIGER country and continues. Implying that nothing has been
> surveyed along the route, clearly requiring large amounts of clean up
> before even thinking about adding the roads to a route relation (well at
> least if you don't want the relation to break n-times when somebody
> actually does the clean up).
>

  As a counterpoint to GIGO: the only clean road at the start point is 
part of the preliminary bike route.   Cleanup is a known science - many 
US and state route relations were added before a geometry review.   Bike 
routes would break no more than existing routes that are being cleaned 
up by MapRoulette.

 > Further the area not being surveyed implies that all the value add that
 > we can offer a cyclist is not there (surface, lanes, shoulders etc).

  Blocking bike routes until "everything is surveyed" is not realistic - 
we'd need to map every parking spot with a potential car door zone, 
every storm drain that may cause a road hazard, as well as every road 
width in addition to the surface, lanes and shoulders.   Blocking bike 
routes only ensures that TIGER deserts remain as deserts for any number 
of years until someone randomly happens to take interest, if ever. 
Having a bike route will motivate people to start with armchair 
improvements and follow with incremental improvements to the roads that 
the bike route cover.