[Geodata] Re: Stop signs, traffic lights, and other street intersection data

John P. Linderman jpl at research.att.com
Thu Jul 8 17:49:31 EDT 2010


The best should never be the enemy of the good, but some of the
intersections I drive through are "no turn from 6am - 9am" or,
even worse, "no turn from 2:30 to 4:30 on school days".
I don't really have a clear concept of what a "school day" is.
Is it Monday through Friday, or Monday through Friday when school
is in session" or something else?  Or how about speed limits that
depend on the presence of children?  It would be helpful to know
as much as possible (and no more :-), about driving restrictions.
By far the most numerous turn restrictions do not depend on
time or unpredictable circumstances.  But it would be great
to know that other circumstances might apply.  Ultimately,
something like the actual GPS track logs of large numbers of
drivers (thanks, wiki.openstreetmap.org) might enable us to
determine local conventions even when they are not published,
but something as simple as "universal" versus "circumstantial"
would be useful. -- jpl

> Thanks for the tip, Alex.  I've contacted my local city government and it
> appears I'll be able to get data on traffic signals, stop signs, and turn
> restriction signs.  I don't really have any reason to horde the data all to
> myself, so I'll probably contribute it to OpenStreetMaps (assuming I get the
> data in the end).
> 
> I just started nosing around in OpenStreetMaps yesterday, so I'm pretty
> green on how to go about adding this data when I get it.  Do I add a traffic
> light tag to an existing road?  Would I create a point for each light / sign
> and associate with the road?  Can a point be associated with more than one
> road?
> 
> - Eric
> 
> On 07/05/2010 Alex Wrote:
> > On 07/04/2010 03:30 PM, Eric Palakovich Carr wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I need data on street intersections in the USA.  In particular, what
> street
> >> lights, stop signs, or other entities exist at the intersection that
> affect
> >> how traffic moves through it.  The data should also indicate what streets
> >> that hit the intersection are affected by the entity.
> >>
> >> Does a data set like this exist?
> 
> > Fairly unlikely that such a data exists(the most likely sources are the
> > paid ones available for GPS units like Teleatlas or Google who may or
> > may not sell licenses). Some of this exists in openstreetmap but it is
> > by no means comprehensive and quality probably varies by location.
> 
> > You may also find a mix of data from States, Counties and Cities but
> > that is still somewhat rare.
> 
> > Someday, with 'your' help OpenStreeMap will be great for this...
> 
> > Thanks,
> > Alex



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