I met Professor Johan Joubert at the University of Pretoria today. He explained that they're using OSM to predict traffic flows in Gauteng. They can then use the simulator to predict the impact that the Gautrain and the new toll roads will have. The simulator can also help to predict the feasibility of new public transport initiatives. And although they do not make the decisions, their results have some influence.
So they find our data quite useful especially when a new road is added within days after opening. But they do however need multilane roads to be tagged as such. So I showed them that they can use Josm to find all the 'M' roads without 'lane' tags. Configuring Bing under Josm took a little bit of effort (WMS url := bing:bing). I think what will speed up the process even further is if they could select a road and hit a key combination like <Ctrl>2 to set the number of lanes to two. Is that possible in Josm ? Their simulations are also being used in town planing, e.g. where to zone what landuse areas. So there is a growing demand to improve OSM, particularly in the smaller municipalities. So, although you don't hear it every day, your efforts are being appreciated. Johan says he impressed a lot of people with how well open source and open data is working together. Regards, Nic _______________________________________________ Talk-ZA mailing list Talk-ZA@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-za
