Updating trails from shapefile for entire state of Florida

The state of Florida maintains a great shapefile documenting all greenways and trails in the state. Most of these are missing from openStreetMap right now. I was planning on doing a bulk update and it looks like there’s a bunch of documentation on how to do that. Have any of you done a bulk update with GIS files before? If so, any tips or suggestions on things not well covered in the documentation?

Rua,
I’ve done a number of imports, mostly buildings and addresses. The first step is to announce it to the community, which you are doing here. Two other places to announce it are on the talk-us mailing list, https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us and also on Slack, Sign up at https://osmus-slack.herokuapp.com/. Next you need to created an import page on the wiki. You can read more about what’s required on the import guidelines page at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Guidelines (I think this is the document you were refering to)

I don’t know the state of trail mapping in Florida, but I know in Washington State that we have an active community. The problem will be conflating with the existing trail data. OSM has the advantage of access to Strava heatmaps which means our tails may be better than what an agency produces. The other area I’d worry about is how current is the data. You don’t want to add a trail that isn’t being actively used.

You could use the import to engage mappers in your area. Invite them to be involved in the planning and execution steps of the import. It will lead to a better quality import and start to build a local community.

Best,
Clifford aka Glassman

It’s very difficult to properly automate a bulk import of ways into OpenStreetMap. Anything added must be connected to existing features at all crossings, and bridges and tunnels identified. So the work will mostly consist of adding or extending any trails not already present in OpenStreetMap. It might be a good candidate for a MapRoulette challenge in which anyone can help by adding each new trail one at a time.

OpenStreetMap is famous for many communications channels and different people hang out in each. It would be good to touch base with other places also before importing anything -

Slack https://osmus-slack.herokuapp.com/ try the ‘#general’ or ‘#imports’ channel
Talk-us https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Imports-us https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/imports-us

Thanks Glassman and MikeN. Very helpful. That doc on import guidelines is what I was thinking of. Checking with those other communities is next on my list.

Florida is an interesting state from the perspective of trails and greenways. There’s a state agency responsible for documenting and keeping up-to-date locations for all existing and planned trails and greenways in the state. They update these data often. There also seems to be very little OSM mapping of these trails especially in the North and Central part of Florida where it’s more rural. Since they’re in rural, lower income areas and aren’t in major national parks or forest they’re also rarely captured in the Strava heatmaps.

I’ll check into that MapRoulette challenge idea. Seems like an interesting alternative to a bulk update.

You could perhaps consider providing a set of basemap tiles generated from this data, which people can then use in their favoured editing software as a background. I’ve done this with US Forest Service data and Clifford (Glassman) has produced a similar set of tiles.

That makes sense @Richard. With just tiles from those trail and greenway routes and the aerial photo view it’s pretty easy to see the routes.

Rua,
I am happy to help you put up a basemap of the trails for others to add to OSM. As @Richard mentioned, tracing in trails is often preferred to bulk imports. When tracing in trails I can usually see the path on the ground, but the official trail path may be off. If you can point me to the data, it could be added to the Mapbox tile server for use in iD, JOSM and Potlatch2? (Not sure about Potlatch)

Are you from a rural part of Florida? We need more people in rural areas. I live in a small town in Washington. Not many active mappers in the area. Although I’m trying to change that.

Good idea. That could make tracing them quick enough to be doable. Here’s the link https://opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/599c121c60684f57bfadb4b72247d217_3.zip

I grew up in Florida but live in NC now. I work for a conservation partnership that includes non-profit groups, state agencies, federal agencies, communities, etc. that work in Florida. Many of them are in rural areas and I’m working on getting them active in mapping.

Rua, I am also in Florida (South of Titusville) and hike a lot so use the My Trails package from https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/ so might take a look.

As far as trail mapping Florida, am also doing so as can, so far used https://www.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/map.do?lt=20.703508&ln=-44.014125&z=3&k=1&act=&q=florida but this thread adds to my interests so am taking a look.

Send me an email, perhaps we can work together
Will

@Rua,
Thanks for the PM. I just downloaded the data from the State of Florida. It will take some time to get it converted to a form that can be displayed and encode some of the information the state provides. Those are name(s), surface and use. The names are easy, I’ll just include all the names separated by a " - ". Surface and use will take more time.

Here’s a link to the metadata - if you see anything that stands out and you want included, just let me know. https://www.arcgis.com/sharing/rest/content/items/599c121c60684f57bfadb4b72247d217/info/metadata/metadata.xml?format=default&output=html

The iD team is working on being able to add overlays. This should help. Users will be able to add overlays, like this one, and still be able to see satellite imagery. Hopefully they will be done before I get this up on Mapbox.

Clifford

@Glassman
Also adding treks to OSM traces for FL

https://www.openstreetmap.org/traces

set as public but don’t know (not sure) how they interface w/ OSM maps

http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

when d/l an update

@zstatman - when you add traces to OSM, they become available for others to trace from. They are not part of the OSM Planet, instead are in a separate repository. GPS traces can be turned on in the iD or JOSM editor.

Thanks G