[postgis-users] Interest in open-source road data

[Paul Ramsey]

Useful? Sure. Successful? I don't see how. Collecting and making those 
corrections will take alot of man hours. Unless you make it your 
personal mission to give away a new and improved Tiger, I do not see how 
you can either (a) get any reasonable quantity of it fixed or (b) be 
able to make any kind of quality control statements about the integrity 
of your enhanced data set.

Michael Graff wrote:
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> I've considered taking the TIGER 2000 data (or, more likely, the 2002
> data when it becomes available) and turning it into an open source
> road database, with additional characteristics such as one-way street
> data, traffic type data, speeds, etc.  The only source for that sort
> of data currently are commercial sources, who want a whole lot of
> money.  I understand why, of course -- they're highly accurate.
> 
> The plan is to begin to populate the line segments in TIGER with this
> additional information, keeping track of its source, and to change the
> naming method to include an "official" and/or "primary" name for road
> segments.  There are a lot of roads that are both I-80 and US Highway
> 6, for instance, but where they share a line I-80 is probably the more
> important.  TIGER often misses this.
> 
> I'd start with data for the US roads, but would like to spread it to a
> worldwide database, when there is interest for such.
> 
> The "funding" plan would be fully free for non-commercial use.
> Commercial use would involve some (fairly small) fee, used to maintain
> the database itself and to perhaps eventually turn this into a
> non-profit organization and hire some real people to maintain it.
> 
> The question is, do people here (and I'm starting small :) think this
> sort of thing would be useful and successful?
> 


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      | Paul Ramsey
      | Refractions Research
      | Email: pramsey at refractions.net
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