August 25, 2003
location finding and street furniture
Sean McGrath has written about adding 4 character alphanumeric codes on speed signs for finding your location (via Jon Udell).
This is something the collaborative cartographers have been thinking a lot about - finding your location without GPS or centralised mobile phone networks. In London, we're not blessed with many helpful markings. This is partly because each council, and each utility, has their own systems for markings, and they can't believe anyone could find a use for their internal systems, let alone financing resources to make it public. They also feel threatened, both that they're losing a money-making opportunity, or that they can never change their marking systems (even though the Royal Mail does this with postcodes all the time).
We have one glimmer of hope - the one London-wide authority with power: Transport for London.
Recently, street furniture spotters have noticed little yellow signs appearing on bus stops.
These appear to be a four character alphanumeric encoding... of something. I'm tempted to write to both the street management and bus departments of TfL to see if we can get this database out in the open. It's not perfect - it's London only, and only bus stops (and therefore roads that buses travel on), but such markings could really help grassroots mapping.
Let me know if there aren't any round you in London, and if you have any theories on the encoding scheme. Maybe even sit on a double decker and note down all the codes along a bus route... I'll stop now :)
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