Mapping Biking Routes to Downtown Tacoma

transcript

Mapping Biking Routes

to Downtown Tacoma

Michael Stoddard

City of Tacoma

WAURISA 2009

Bike to Work Week (May 11 – 15)

Part of National Bike Month

How can we encourage people

who work in downtown Tacoma

to bike to work?

A map can answer

important questions:

Where are the safest routes

(to downtown)?

Where are the easy to

moderately difficult routes

(to downtown)?

Intended audience:

beginners

Not experienced bicyclists

Might have safety concerns

Not in top shape

Existing maps ...

Do they answer our questions?

Completed Trails

Completed Bike Lanes

Planned Trails

Planned Bike Lanes

Planned Connections

Streets

Completed Trails

These maps are great.

They illustrate:

Where you can bike

Where you can’t bike

Where you will be able to bike

But how can I get downtown?

So how can we map

safe routes that aren’t too hard?

Ask the bicyclists

The Tacoma Wheelmen's

Bicycle Club

Tacoma Wheelmen’s Mission

Founded in 1888, TWBC serves "to promote and develop safe bicycling for recreation, health and alternate transportation."

How can we capture the knowledge and experience of the Wheelmen?

a. GPSb. Drawing on paper maps

c.Bikely!

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Process

1. Tacoma Wheelmen draw routes in bikely

2. Export routes to KML

3. Convert routes from KML to shapefile

Process

4. Compose map with shapefiles, print

5. Meet with Wheelmen, mark up map

6. Edit map

8. Edit map

4. Compose map with shapefiles, print

existing bike

bike routes from

the Tacoma

Wheelmen

Notes from Jaime Crawford’s cartography workshop

When composing a map, you must know:

The purpose

The intended audience

The final format: size, medium

We know the purpose and intended

audience of the Tacoma bike map.

But what’s the final format?

Paper map of

to-be-determined size

Then it changed to ...

PDF map of

to-be-determined size

on a website to be named

Then it changed to ...

A bandana!

How do I design a map

for a bandana?

Cartography: labels, colors, features

Road names only (no suffixes, prefixes, ...)

Font: Arial Narrow

Color palette from Portland Bike Map

Bike routes

Existing trails

Bike lanes/trails

Æü Park and rides

Limit the features displayed on the map

The final product

The future

Mobility Master Plan

Presentation available on slideshare:

http://www.slideshare.net/mstoddard

Contact me:

mstoddard@cityoftacoma.org

Mapping Biking Routes to Downtown Tacoma

Technology