Hi all, Steven is correct that more intergovernmental relationships must be established in order to publish a public domain centerline dataset that is more useful than TIGER for routing and geocoding applications. Keep in mind that some State DOTs, as is the case here in NC, are only mandated to collect and maintain centerline information for primary and secondary highway routes, but not for streets that are under the jurisdiction of municipalities or are private roads. County government E911 organizations also have some street centerline maintenance jurisdiction as well. We have faced this problem for years, and in NC we have begun the work of trying to integrate local street data from our 100 counties and various municipalities with our State DOT dataset. It will no doubt be a multi-year process, because everyone has their own schema and not everyone is willing to embrace change immediately, or as enthusiastically as we would like :)
If the FGDC framework schema for transportation was not quite as "intricate" as it is, there might be a possibility of using it. However, many of our local governments have made it clear that starting to collect and maintain all the FGDC framework specified information does not meet their business needs and that they don't have the resources or any intent to do it. The NC Geographic Information Coordinating Council's Working Group for Roads and Transportation has it on their radar to begin examining options for updating the existing "suggested best practices" for an NC Road Centerline Standard, which does not currently include all the desirable turn restrictions, one-way streets, and speed limit, etc. attributes. Right now we're working on phase 1, which is a basic repository for sharing of updates to centerline datasets from all NC jurisdictions who wish to participate. http://www.ncgicc.org/Portals/3/documents/centerline-standard.pdf http://www.ncgicc. org/Committees/StatewideMappingAdvisoryCommitteeSMAC/WorkingGroups/RoadsTransportation/tabid/162/Default. aspx It is too early to tell what the final results for NC will be, but hopefully in a couple of years we may have a statewide public domain street centerline dataset that we can use for routing and geocoding. This will be quite a challenge in itself. Multiply what we are trying to do by 50 states and you'll see why this remains such a tough nut to crack. Funding to support the necessary schema alignment changes in all the local gov data custodian's data will have to come from somewhere. The Exchange Network community has a number of existing schema transformation / data mapping tools that I would like to see leveraged to create transformational web services so that the local governments would not have to modify their back-end street databases. This would work if they all collected the necessary attributes under some other nomenclature. Unfortunately, many do not collect all the necessary attributes. Convincing them all to start maintaining a minimum common subset of attributes will take some serious funding. We haven't been able to find that yet. Getting that nonexistent funding routed (ok, bad pun) to the NC local governments and attaching appropriate (but not excessively burdensome) performance and governance processes will also be quite an exercise in herding cats for someone to deal with. What we're trying to do in NC won't be a quick or easy process, but if a Federal Agency (Census, FHWA?) wants to send some pilot project funding our way, we are certainly willing to put it to good use and to work with them. Best Regards, Julia Harrell GIS Coordinator, NC DENR NCGICC WGRT member [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >David et al, > >I've mostly lurked on this list, but this a good opportunity for me to >de-lurk and offer some clarification... > >The Census Bureau uses the transportation geography in support of its >central mission, which is the constitutionally-mandated census and >demographic profiles, -not transportation applications. Thus, it's very >difficult for the Census Bureau to justify the added expense of >collecting turn restrictions, speed limits, and so forth. > >On the other hand, state DOT's and USDOT have far more need for those >attributes that support routing and network connectivity. So, your >second line of questioning, with regard to helping to create the >intergovernmental relationships necessary to add on to the TIGER >geography may be a better focus for discussions on this list. Where does >it make sense for USDOT (and state DOT's) to team up with Census to add >this level of attribution? How would this process be governed and how >would the governance process insure that the missions of both Census and >DOT were met? Lastly, how can this list be used to generate and advance >the kind of collaborative partnerships that could enhance TIGER and >other national data resources? > >Hope this helps brings the discussion into sharper focus, > >Steven _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
