Importing Google Earth KMZ Shapefiles

General talk
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My local town has made a lot of data available with the express desire for people to make their own maps.

http://www.northamptonma.gov/opd/GIS_and_Maps/GIS_Shapefiles/

My first goal is to update my local area network of bike/foot paths that have been completed in the last few months. There is one file provided that would be the perfect place to start:

Bicycle network Google Earth file (10 February 2009): http://www.northamptonma.gov/opd/uploads/listWidget/3339/bikeways.shp.kmz

The only problem is that I do not want to directly load all data that is in the file. It contains the master plan for the complete network of trails and roadway bike lanes. Not all of these features are complete, but a large portion of the old rail beds have been converted to paved pathways and a few major roadways have been repainted with bike lanes on each side.

I would like to use this data as a base to draw out and label the paths that have been completed to date. What is the best way to go about getting this data converted from a Google Earth shapefile to OSM data that I can use to create the completed pathways?

Any information or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

-malsbury

2

A quick browse did not reveil any licensing information for the data. Maybe it’s best to specifically ask if their data is compatible with the CC-by-SA 2.0 license which we have now.

If the license is no problem then you might want to use the shapefiles because there is a shp2osm converter available somewhere in the osm svn repository.

Edit: Oh and maybe you want to talk to OSM user Dave Hansen, who has imported the tiger data into osm. He will certainly be able to give you advice on how to proceed with the import.

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@malsbury:

You hould also have a look at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import for more info about Imports …