[OSM-talk] Announcing CycleStreets

David Earl david at frankieandshadow.com
Mon Mar 23 12:59:06 GMT 2009


I am pleased to announce on behalf of my colleagues Simon Nuttall and 
Martin Lucas-Smith the public availability of CycleStreets, cycle 
journey planner and photomap for the UK(*). Now in public beta, this is 
the result of more than a year's work and is available at

                        http://www.cyclestreets.net

I've mentioned Cambridge Cycling Campaign's journey planner on this list 
before. CycleStreets is a national development of the idea, arising from 
the number of enquiries we got about it from other places and the 
developments within the Department for Transport (where we weren't 
convinced they really understood cyclists needs; this project is 
developed by cyclists for cyclists).

The project will be formally incorporated as a company limited by 
guarantee shortly, and has been made possible by financial support from 
some local authorities.

Previously the Cambridge-only system was based on Google maps, but it 
has now been completely rewritten to use OSM data (not least to free us 
of the copyright limitations). Much of the work on in the past few 
months has been about making it efficient. One of the key features, both 
in the old and new systems is the ability to choose routes based on 
preference for shortest, fastest or quietest route by bike.

There's help and about pages so I won't say more here. Can you direct 
feedback about specific problems in the beta test to the feedback pages 
there rather than on this list so it can be addressed properly.

David

(*) I mention it on this list even though it is UK data only because 
it's a nice example of OSM in practice. There's no particular reason it 
couldn't work elsewhere, but would require serious server investment and 
funding to do so - but local authorities may well be interested in 
making such an investment as they have been here.




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