Help Us Make OpenStreetMap Better for Biking

OpenStreetMap is the Wikipedia of maps, a globally crowdsourced mapping project maintained by individual contributors, groups, and corporations like Lyft. OSM maps are used pretty much everywhere.

Here are some of the biggest challenges that remain for using OSM for bicycling. We invite you to roll up your sleeves and take them on:

Challenge #1: Get current city bike map data into OSM

City bike maps are constantly evolving and bicycle=designated and highway=cycleway, are often out of sync with the complete city bike map. There needs to be a process that consumes city bike map data, probably from ArcGIS, and makes sure that OSM is accurate — following OSM's import guidelines and with proper community consultation.

Challenge #2: Accurate naming conventions for trails

Trails often have inconsistent and inaccurate names. Sometimes these are colloquialisms. Other times, they are imprecise relative to a city’s formal naming convention. There needs to be a process that standardizes these.

Challenge #3: Develop accepted naming conventions for unnamed geometries like park trails, sidewalks, alleys, and crossings

Bicycle routing often occurs on unnamed facilities like trails that go through parks, sidewalks that parallel streets, and alleys. These facilities are not formally named in the real world. A system for naming these needs to be developed and, if accepted by the OSM community, applied following OSM's mechanical editing guidelines and community approval.

If you take these on and need some limited grant funding to pay for servers, etc., please drop us a line, tell us what you’re working on, and send us a link to your proof-of-concept.

All work should follow OSM's organized editing guidelines and community approval processes.