WARSAW, Oct 12 — The European Cycling Federation is seeking to establish a comprehensive database of all cycling infrastructure in the world. The idea is to consolidate all existing data on a collaborative platform such as OpenStreetMap.

For the ECF, it’s high time to compile all data relating to cycling infrastructure all around the world, in order to make a robust, universal and comprehensive database. The best way to do this would be to use OpenStreetMap, a collaborative tool often referred to as the "Wikipedia of maps.”

OpenStreetMap is a collaborative online mapping project. It helps users build a whole series of geographic databases that are free and open. In theory, anyone can add, modify and extract data from this platform. As such, the aim would be to combine the data of cycling infrastructure of different countries in order to have a global view on what’s available to cyclists today.

Some local efforts are already moving in this direction, such as in Warsaw, Poland, where the city shares its data through OpenStreetMap. London is preparing to do the same. Another project, CycloFix, is already mapping all the relevant bike paths and points of interest in the Brussels area, in Belgium. GrowBike is another ambitious project that presents data on the bicycle networks of some 60 major cities around the world, including Paris. Finally, in France, the Ministry of Transport is already putting all the data on bike lanes and bike parking facilities online. All this data, provided by local authorities, can be exported and then used, notably via OpenStreetMap.

All these initiatives could one day be grouped into a single database, approved by all. In any case, this particularly ambitious project requires new data, which is currently unknown. However, individuals around the world could provide countless practical information, from lane widths to surface materials, directly on OpenStreetMap. — ETX Studio