MapInfo Pro

This map highlights cycling counts within the West Midlands (UK) against OS Terrain 50 contours (which gives you an idea around the topography of the region, if the contour lines are close together the gradient is steep and if they are far apart, it’s gentle).

I produced this map to look at the level of cycling around the conurbation and analyse as to why it was greater in some areas as opposed to others. Using the census’ travel to work data, it can be suggested that people that live in ‘hilly’ areas tend not to use their bikes to commute whereas data from apps like Strava suggest that people who cycle for leisure actively look to incorporate undulating areas as part of their routes.

This map was then used to address as to why cycling levels were low in some areas by aligning some public health and socio-demographic data as well as the cycling potential index. Once we managed to ascertain the various reasons as to why people weren’t cycling in these areas, a program was developed and rolled out to encourage participation in order to improve health and air quality, lower congestion and help people save money – an all-round benefit to society as a whole.

Datasets utilised within this map;

Average Annual Daily Flow (Department for Transport)

Terrain 50 (Ordnance Survey)

1:250 000 Scale Colour Raster (Ordnance Survey)

Hi Gurj,

Thanks for posting! Very Nice Cycling Map!

Hello Gurj,

Nicely done! Are you in the @MUGUKI MapInfo UK and Ireland? ? I'll bet they would like to see this presented at one of their meetings.

Is the DfT data available to the general public?

Thanks for sharing this.

Tom Probert

Hi Tom and thanks for the feedback - it's much appreciated.

Yes the DfT data is freely available at the link below.

https://www.dft.gov.uk/traffic-counts/download.php

What I’ve done since then is use the DfT data to produce a map to highlight the volume of heavy good vehicles (HGVs) that use the roads in and around Oldbury (West Midlands) ahead of the M5 motorway works that started this summer. 

I used FME (MapInfo users may recall this via Universal Translator) to get the individual DfT count points aligned to the Integrated Transport Network (ITN) via a ‘nearest neighbour’ workbench so that the points appear as lines on the actual roads. 

I also thematically mapped the businesses in the locality (blue dots by number of employees) that had an element of logistics involved so that I could visualise the current demand placed on the road network by large vehicles as well as the origin or destination of that demand.

It’s just an example of how you can take the same data source and visualise it in a different way to suit your audience.

I wasn’t sure if @MUGUKI were still meeting as I’ve not had any correspondence for a while though I know that there is a MapInfo Pro user group meeting in London next Wednesday (8th Nov). Happy to present it whenever all the same!

Thanks again Tom,

Gurj

Wow these are some really cool maps Gurj! I love how you've used combination of data-sets to provide intelligence - it's for a great cause as well, particularly in light of what we've learnt this week with CO2 levels and world temperature - the more we can do to encourage people to ditch cars and bike, the better!

Gurj...I think you mean to reference the map displaying the "topography" not "topology." Topology refers to the juxtaposition of objects in space and in geographic terms the relationship of objects in Cartesian space as an example. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology.

Doh! Thanks Joe, noted and amended...