CycleStreets blog

We’ve recently completed a switch over of the whole CycleStreets system to upgraded hosting. Our previous primary server has been extremely reliable and, having just checked, I find it has been up for 795 days, and has only been rebooted once in the last two-and-a-half years.

The new primary server is needed to support expansion of the journey planner, to handle the growing amount of data we manage in the CycleStreets system and to provide increased reliability of our services,  as well as for our new project, Cyclescape. We now also have additional redundancy.

The switchover has turned out to be a rather more complex procedure than expected as there are quite a number of different components that are required to make CycleStreets all work smoothly. This recent switchover it has helped to tighten up a number of areas. This will make future switchovers easier to handle, and a major benefit has been a restructuring of our documentation.

We have tighted up how we handle file permissions and this means that developers no longer need sudo access to rollout code onto the live server. The structure we’ve got for that feels a lot cleaner and has improved the security of the system.

The hardest part of all this was the moment of switchover itself. As the system is live and being used to generate thousands of routes per day we aimed to have as little downtime as possible. The data on both systems was synchronised before turning off the live server and switching over the DNS. This was done in the small hours and because of careful prepartion was completed in about 15 minutes. When the new server became live it was impossible to tell that anything had changed. Only a few things were missed out in the switchover – the automatic tweeting of our photo-of-the-day, and the updating of a missed DNS record – but both of these are now fixed.

The system does feel more responsive now, and we’ve noticed that some of our scripts run twice as quick as previously.

We are very grateful to our hosts, Mythic Beasts, for their continued support and technical advice.

Funding for this upgrade has been partly helped by a grant from Cycling Scotland and from donations.

We're aiming with CycleStreets to provide the highest possible quality cycle routing, to give people trust in routes they plan. We've heard from many users how our routing is helping them give the confidence to use a bike for their journeys, and from people who've discovered cut-throughs and safer, easier routes for their existing journeys.

Increasing the quality of the routes found by CycleStreets means using more sources of good quality data. For instance, a cycle lane can improve a planned cycle journey, but not if the cycle lane is too narrow. On the other hand if the cycle lane is wide and has a good surface, it can be better than a shorter route on a busier road.

The information that CycleStreets uses to base its route recommendations comes primarily from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project. Over time that data has become more detailed in both depth and breadth, and it continues to do so.

Over the last 18 months, the UK's Department for Transport (DfT) has undertaken a GPS-based survey of cycling infrastructure in towns and cities around England. This has been used for a related project, the Transport Direct multi-modal journey planner.

The DfT is keen to see this data used more widely and we've been talking to them about using it in our routing, by making it available as open data that could be merged into OpenStreetMap.

We're delighted now to announce that we're helping the DfT with its laudable objective to make this data more widely available. We’re working with its contractor, CycleCity Guides, who are well-known for producing a wide range of Local Authority cycle maps. The release of this data is one of a number of other datasets that the Cabinet Office has recently announced will be made available.

Rather than merely dump the data on data.gov.uk, the DfT is going a step further to help it be used, a development it should be highly commended for.

Respecting the way the way the OpenStreetMap community works, the DfT is planning to:

• Make the data available in a fully OSM-compatible format, aligned to OSM geometry with converted attributes.
• Simultaneously publish a dataset aligned to Ordnance Survey's (OS) Open data
• Use a standard, OSM-compatible license (the Open Government License), with the data unencumbered by OS derivative data issues.

This data, which has mostly been collected by surveyors on bicycles, has the potential to significantly improve the quality of routing in some areas of England. We are well aware, however, that data collected by other agencies can undermine the work of OSM volunteers in the area if not handled sensitively, and so we've stressed that automated, bulk imports would not be accepted by the OSM community.

Instead, useful data needs two things if it is to be used in OSM. Number one is a way of inspecting and accepting/rejecting the data on a street-by-street basis via the simplest and quickest means possible. Secondly encouraging routing engines and renderers to use the data. Therefore:

• Funding we've obtained will pay for a month or two of solid work on Potlatch 2, the default editor on the OSM website. We've engaged Andy Allan, one of Potlatch 2's core developers, for this. The funding will lead, amongst other improvements, to a generic tool to enable donated data to be merged in (or rejected), street-by-street via manual inspection and approval. A range of general usability improvements (such as those in the P2 buglist) will also be funded.
• We'll be implementing support for many more advanced routing attributes, which Andy and hopefully other OSMers will be helping with. This will demonstrate the difference that really detailed data can make to the quality of cycle routes found by engines like CycleStreets when the community merges in (by inspection) this type of data.
• A range of other improvements will also be made, for instance, changes to our feedback system so that errors in OpenStreetMap, found as a result of people using the routing, can be more easily discussed and fixed in OSM.

We hope the OSM community will react positively to these developments.

With community support, this data should help get lots more useful data into OSM and help it become a superbly detailed dataset ever more quickly.

We've been particularly impressed at the way that our contacts at the DfT have been open to learning about the way the OSM community works. We particularly hope that the success of this project will act as a demonstration and lead to more trailblazing open data initiatives where government learns from existing communities to 'do open data the right way'.

We’re pleased to announce that our bid, for a comprehensive online campaigning toolkit to assist cycle campaign groups around the UK, is a winner in the GeoVation contest!

It brings £27,000 for the development of a toolkit which, in the words of one supporter, should be “a hugely important step forward for all cycle campaigning groups”.

Our bid was one of 155 ideas submitted to the GeoVation challenge, on the theme of “How can we improve transport in Britain?”. Our bid was shortlisted, and we attended the GeoVation Camp in March to help develop the proposal amongst a total of 30 ideas invited. We were one of the final ten proposals, and took part in a Dragon’s Den -style pitch on Wednesday.

We were delighted to be picked as one of the winners who share the £150k pot of funding.

   

Photos by Ordnance Survey, licenced CC BY-NC 2.0

Martin Lucas-Smith, who presented the bid alongside CycleStreets’ routemaster, Simon Nuttall, said:

“We were delighted to be picked by the Ordnance Survey’s judges as one of the winners. The £27,000 of funding will enable us to get this much-needed project off the ground.

“As a member of one of the many local cycle campaign groups who will benefit, I’m all too aware of the large number of issues on the street network that need improvement, and the difficulty of managing this deluge of problems.

“The new system will help campaigners around the country convert these problem reports into prioritised, well-evidenced solution proposals. It should help them work more productively with local councils to see changes implemented.”

We’d like to thank all the groups who provided quotes of support for our bid, including the CTC, Cyclenation, London Cycling Campaign, and a variety of groups around the country. We’re working to provide you with a really great, useful and user-friendly system that will save a lot of time and effort.

Some of the things the new system will be able to do are:

• Enable members of the public and campaigners easily to pinpoint where cycling is difficult
• Help groups prioritise what to work on
• Pull in planning application data automatically, so that potential issues needing attention are readily accessible
• Automatically notify and involve people who cycle through an area – who therefore have an interest in seeing issues fixed
• Make geographical data such as collision data and accessibility analysis easily available, to provide context
• Enable simpler and more focussed discussion based on specific issues, groups of issues, or themes
• Enable best practice to be ‘pulled-in’ to discussions, by providing off-the-shelf examples shared from elsewhere in the UK
• Enable groups to include LA contacts in these discussions if they wish
• Enable groups to assemble ‘solution’ resources so that problems can be resolved on the ground
• Give groups a variety of ways of publishing their activity on their website easily.