As if underscoring how much spare time I have, I’ve tinkered over the past few weeks with some data that the city has put out about planned road construction this summer. A copy of the PDF listing the projects is on The Gazette’s site. They used it to create a searchable database of the projects, which intern Megan Martin introduced in Friday’s paper. My approach (which began before I knew my paper’s online department had a similar idea) was to just dump the data into Google Maps and see what kind of overall map emerged. It involved a lot of cutting and pasting and a lot of tweaking, but I just finished it now.
View Montreal construction 2009 in a larger map
A few caveats about the map:
- It only lists projects that are planned, not emergency repairs or secret spy operations
- It only lists projects that are in the city of Montreal, not those in on-island demerged suburbs
It doesn’t list highway projects, which are controlled by the province (the Bonaventure Expressway project is the exception)UPDATE: I’ve added some highway projects from the MTQ site- It only lists road reconstruction (orange, red) and water main/sewer work (blue) done by the city, not work on buried electrical cables (Hydro-Québec), gas lines (Gaz Métropolitain), cable lines (Videotron), phone lines (Bell) or other things that might require public and private companies tearing up the asphalt
- There are no start and end dates listed, and many of these projects are carried over from last year – some might not even get started before the snow starts falling again.
In case you want to play with the data, improve on it, do a mashup or plaster it all over your wall, you can download the KML file here.
Hi guy,
You need to fix the MIME-type for kml in your hosting control panel. Otherwise, clicking on the link only gives the text of the file, and not an actual downloadable kml file, like this one: http://mexicometro.org/Mexico-Metro.kml
If you need any help, contact me by email.
RIchard
OK OK, it’s fixed.
=*( Kill me now please.
Ktnx
There doesn’t seem to even be a square inch without color on that map!
Ahhh…. Election year, eh!