User:Stevea

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I am currently focused on Santa_Cruz_County,_California (especially City of Santa Cruz) and other San_Francisco_Bay_Area,_California areas (including Monterey Bay and Monterey County as well as Santa Clara County / Silicon Valley South_Bay_(SF),_California) in California, United States. I am active in the "Central Coast" area of California as well, north of Santa Barbara, including collaboration with user:j03lar50n on portions of San Luis Obispo County. This particular focus extends to southern and farther northern California with the US Forest Service Region 5 federal National Forest and Wilderness boundary import (see below). And as I grew up in San Diego, I keep an eye on what is happening in OSM there, too. You can reach me via OSM missive here.

I collaborated with user:Srmixter, user:Apo42 and user:DanHomerick to refine the September 2009 OSM uploads, sourced from public data published by the Santa Cruz County GIS Department (SCCGIS) and CaSIL data for state parks from University of California Davis. This includes developing better tags and strategies for uploading public data for especially parks (leisure=park, leisure=nature_reserve, leisure=common) and park-like areas (natural=wood, landuse=forest). We endeavor to publish a set of "lessons learned" to the OSM community about what worked for us during these uploads and what we could have done better. This might turn into guidelines/checklists for anybody who might perform a wide area (city, county, state) data upload, especially regarding the harmonization of zoning attributes in public data with leisure and landuse tags in OSM. In 2014, these data were updated with newer (November 2013) data from SCCGIS. Over several upload_version=*s, these remain relatively updated into 2022, though as of 2024 are a bit stalled...we'll get there.

I developed a proposal that might (if approved by the OSM community) make its way into renderers (initially mapnik via a style sheet) to show park and other similar landuse=* boundaries with multiple colored dashing depending on jurisdiction and/or admin_level. This would be similar to how boundary=national_park creates a dashed-green boundary, but with different colors (of dashing?) for different levels of jurisdiction, from local playgrounds to national parks, or even UN World Heritage sites. There are many complex overlapping park boundaries of various levels of jurisdiction in California, especially in the far northern state. The intent is to communicate these in a way that the OSM community both accepts and finds pleasing to the eye so that even map consumers uninitiated with the sometimes subtle semiotics of cartographic jurisdiction can visually parse complex park (overlaps with protected area) boundaries with ease.

A Mapping Party at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) campus is in an off-again state, partly as finding the right venue (McHenry Atrium was once proposed) seems challenging. The campus is slightly under-done in OSM. I collaborate(d) with staff, faculty, interns and contractors at UCSC to facilitate multiple projects there, consulting on the continuing improvement of OSM as the "base map" of maps used on UCSC's mapping web site. There is a MapCraft "cake" of UCSC showing the campus perhaps 80% complete, depending on the "slice." An import of building footprints from UCSC-sourced architectural .dwg data began in 2014, but is stalled because of difficulties in translating the data (via .dxf and then to .shp?) to .osm format. Please contact me if you can help complete this technical hurdle.

I am the author of a local bicycle network numbering protocol for Santa_Cruz_County,_California known as CycleNet, now a proposal before the Santa_Cruz_County,_California Regional Transportation Commission (SCCRTC). Continuing work includes coordination with the SCCRTC, Caltrans District 5, and Adventure Cycling Association on using OSM to develop both existing and proposed local, statewide and national (AASHTO-approved USBR) bicycle routes. In mid-2013, part of this lengthy clean-up and collaboration resulted in OSM accurately displaying both actual and proposed USBR national bicycle routes in the USA. I also significantly rewrote and keep updated OSM's United_States/Bicycle_Networks and WikiProject_U.S._Bicycle_Route_System wiki pages. I spoke in Washington, DC at SOTM-US on these topics in April, 2014.

In mid-2012, I began coordinating with user:adelman to improve local mountain biking trails, especially in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park and Soquel Demonstration State Forest. This work is now substantially complete.

In late 2012, user:Srmixter and I started a slow and careful import of (official California) Farm Mapping data for Monterey County into OSM. As of February 2013, that import is now complete, and as of August 2013, appears to be fully rendered in mapnik/Standard.

In early 2013, I began harmonizing Region 5 (California) US Forest Service boundaries for National Forests, their included wilderness areas and inholdings with a newly-published federal data set. Los Padres National Forest was the first completed result, then completed were Angeles, Cleveland and San Bernardino National Forests and their wildernesses. I expect to update the remainder of USFS and federal wildernesses in California; see progress at US_Forest_Service_Data#Pacific_Southwest_Region_5_.28California.29.

In late 2014 I began to discuss on talk-us ("Rail westerly") getting rail infrastructure in the USA "more correct" in OSM so it better renders in OpenRailwayMap (ORM). This has evolved into a WikiProject, as well as resulting in much improved rail in California with the development of California Rail. However, much remains to do, including more complete yards, better collection of both subdivisions and passenger routes into relations and keeping up with newer rail projects now under construction (BART Silicon Valley extension, California High Speed Rail...) reaching completion. Amtrak routes (and USA rail generally) continue to improve with the collaboration I enjoy with many other OSM volunteers who contribute infrastructure, routing improvements and renderer support. A 2016 campaign/initiative known as Map Your Train Ride! helped improve OSM community by tapping newer and intermediate volunteers (students, commuters...) by improving public_transport routes from version 1 to version 2 with the addition of more exact platform locations at passenger rail stations. Work that evolved into a version 2 MapRoulette Challenge to add train platforms is largely completed! Development on better syntax for a newer v3 challenge continues (smarter "around" syntax to produce a transportation-related JSON container). Thanks to all who responded to that v2 MapRoulette Challenge: MANY platforms were added!

2015 saw my OSM activities continue as bicycle, rail, national forests, hiking and equestrian trails, local parks, admin_level=* tagging in the USA and other sub-projects grew and developed rapidly. In 2016 I gave a Lightning Talk on USA Rail to Build Community (at 25:30 - 30:30) at SOTM-US Seattle. In January 2017 I was honored to be named OSM's Mapper of the Month! 2018 saw the number of state United_States/Railroads wikis grow to over 20, completing all western states in the USA. In 2019 I continued my contributions and now do so into the 2020s, including co-authoring a Proposed_features/Park_boundary proposal. As I write this in early 2024, '24 and there's so much more. OSM: what a fantastic, multi-faceted project!


Babel user information
en-N This user has a native understanding of English.
es-3 Esta persona tiene un conocimiento avanzado del español.
fr-2 Cet utilisateur dispose de connaissances intermédiaires en français.
pl-1 Ten użytkownik posługuje się językiem polskim na poziomie podstawowym.
hu-1 Ez a szerkesztő alapszinten beszéli a magyar nyelvet.
Users by language
Flag of California.svg This user hails from California
Flag of the United States.svg This user hails from the USA
Hiker Stevea
is a hiker.
Bike Stevea
is a bicyclist.
JOSM Stevea submits data to OpenStreetMap using JOSM.
iD Stevea submits data to OpenStreetMap using iD.
Train This user maps along railway lines and while travelling by train. For more information see OpenRailwayMap.
Public-images-osm logo.svg I support OSM by being a member of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. Are you?

This user uses or has experience with a Garmin GPSmap 60CSx and is quite willing to answer questions on it from OSM users.