[Open-transport] OTD Handbook update

Tue Oct 9 20:34:47 UTC 2012

My take: biking should be part of the transportation initiatives. As said,
some of my contact here in Canada/U.S targets bike for open data. It tend
to be easier for than to grow bike use than transit ridership (because it's
costly to support more ridership). So making biking easier is a natural fit
and I feel that more and more would like to rely on good bike-related data.

The 3 items I've heard the most until now:
- Bike lane/bike friendly road network. Organizations like Google do gather
this data but do not make it open... so useless for other uses
- Bike parking/spots. More and more cities even have some "boxes" to store
the bike. Sometimes it's privately owns, so it's more difficult to get the
data... but private companies providing bike boxes won't be against
figuring in a dataset which will bring them some potential customers (but
the maintenace is harder)
- Bike sharing system. The Montreal's system (Bixi) is available in several
other places (Washington, London, etc.) so the same apps usually cover
those cities, but it's not standard enough to have some third party (think
Google again) to integrate this data in their apps.

I don't have much experience in participating to this kind of document
either ;) My way of doing: read the open data handbook (the original one)
to give an idea of the level of detail expected, the relevant stuff to put
there. Then, read the current draft and thing where you could fit the bike
data. It would be great if some other people like Pieter could confirm that
bike is in the scope before actually writing something... but with Google
Docs, it's quite easy to undo some changes...

Cheers

Steph

On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Mati Kalwill <matias.kalwill at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hello everyone!
>
> First of all an introduction, my name is Mati Kalwill. I joined the list
> around a month ago but hadn't had the chance to become active on the
> conversation just yet. So Stéphane's comment on his last message is the
> perfect cue to join in :)
>
> I'm the founder of a youth-lead international group called La Vida en Bici<http://lavidaenbici.com>,
> based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We are small in number but very active
> and have achieved considerable impact for the limited resources and time we
> have been around. Our first international initiative, Bikestorming<http://bikestomring.org>,
> is under very active development. Building, using, sharing and promoting
> Open Data in transport is a key part of it.
>
> Since I'm new to the group, I'd like to ask you guys what you think would
> be possible ways to contribute to the Open Data Group in terms of cycling
> data. I should tell you that as of now, we are both looking into existing
> examples of Open Data on urban cycling, as well as the development of new,
> non-existing standards. We call this the Open Bicycle Data Initiative.
>
> Part of our work has been the development of a collaborative map, as a
> knowledge-sharing initiative between experienced and upcoming urban
> cyclists: http://lavidaenbici.com/mapa
>
> Also, our local government has an Open Data initiative wich we have
> contributed to. You'll notice that 4 out of the 9 Transport data sets
> relate to bicycles ;)
> http://data.buenosaires.gob.ar/group/transporte-y-movilidad
>
> As I mentioned above, do let me know what you'd consider possible ways of
> contribuiting to the hand-book. We haven't worked on a collaborative
> writting like this before, so some pointers on how to get started would be
> great.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mati Kalwill
> Founder, Director La Vida en Bici <http://lavidaenbici.com> &
> Bikestorming.org
>
> On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 3:19 PM, Stéphane Guidoin <stephane at opennorth.ca>wrote:
>
>> Ok, I've added some elements about traffic here and there. I think it
>> would be worth explaning somewhere that until now, most of the experiences
>> which took place were in the domain of public transportation/transit...
>> thus a biais in terms of coverage of the topic but other fields should also
>> be covered.
>>
>> I also raised a question in the docs but it could be discussed on the
>> mailing list: should be cover "active" transportation like biking, walking,
>> etc. From some discussion that I have with cities willing to publish some
>> data, many are considering bike parking data, bike sharing schemes and so
>> on. Some elements about walkability/accessibility are also raised.
>>
>> Steph
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 5:26 AM, Pieter Colpaert <pieter at irail.be> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> It's pretty clear that we won't get our deadline of the first of
>>> October. Let's procrastinate a bit and move all deadlines 1 month. This
>>> means the OTD Handbook could get published the first of December.
>>>
>>> More updates:
>>>  * We've got new contributors!
>>>  * I got a legal IP office to write the from a legal perspective section
>>>  * iRail (my Belgian organisation) is going to sponsor a graphic
>>> designer who will take care of the graphic design (for those who have
>>> met her in Helsinki: Miet)
>>>
>>> We still need:
>>>  * More text! For those who have added their name in the document, can
>>> you give me an estimate of when it will be done?
>>>  * A copywriter! I want the text to sound like it has been written by
>>> one person, in grammatically correct English (that may be a problem for
>>> all non-native speakers, especially myself). Is someone willing to step
>>> forward and do this? Or should I search funding for this and hire a
>>> professional copywriter?
>>>  * Funding for printing the book and sending it to everyone. A rough
>>> estimate is €30 per book (all costs included), let's print and
>>> distribute 500 copies, meaning we need €15000 for this. If we cannot
>>> find this funding it will, evidentially, become an online book only.
>>>
>>> Kind regards,
>>>
>>> Pieter
>>> --
>>> iRail vzw/asbl
>>> +32 (0) 486/747122
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> open-transport mailing list
>>> open-transport at lists.okfn.org
>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-transport
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Stéphane Guidoin
>> Director, Transportation
>> Open North
>> 514-862-0084
>> http://opennorth.ca
>> Twitter: @opennorth / @hoedic
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> open-transport mailing list
>> open-transport at lists.okfn.org
>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-transport
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> *
> *
> **
>
> Mati Kalwill
> LA VIDA EN BICI, Director
> matias.kalwill at gmail.com
> (+54911) 6 480 0992 - (+5411) 4778 1063
> Seguinos en Twitter <http://twitter.com/lavidaenbici>, Facebook<http://facebook.com/lavidaenbici>
> www.lavidaenbici.com
>
>

-- 
Stéphane Guidoin
Director, Transportation
Open North
514-862-0084
http://opennorth.ca
Twitter: @opennorth / @hoedic
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