Delaware – WikiMapping Meetings

Wilmapco is the Metropolitan Planning Organization that serves New Castle County, DE and Cecil County, MD. I drove there after a bike map meeting in Wilmington.  The first thing I saw in the parking lot was a bike in the bike rack.  The next thing I saw was a bike parking sign by the building entrance.  Walking inside, I saw copies of the East Coast Greenway Guide to Maryland and Delaware in the information rack.  I was meeting with Heather Dunnigan, who used WikiMapping while working on the Newark Delaware Bicycle Plan.  She’s integral to improving bicycle infrastructure in Delaware, including the development of the East Coast Greenway.

Heather gave me a new perspective on WikiMapping. She said that comments were a combination of  “See. Click. Fix. + long range planning.”  Cyclists were impressed that some of their comments could be addressed quickly.  Also, Heather uses MapInfo, so she wasn’t getting all of the attribute data exported via the kmls.  I can convert this data pretty quickly, so I said I’d export it.

When I left Wilmapco, I set a destination in WikiMapping for the town of New Castle.  I wanted to check out the Industrial Track Trail that is now part of the East Coast Greenway.  And I wanted to test the WikiMapping routing feature.  It’s working, and I noted some small improvements we can make. John set it up so that I can see my location in WikiMapping as I travel along the route.

There are limitations to a web browser, but I’m really excited about John’s ability to utilize browser capabilities to their fullest extent.