Raise the Hammer

Wow. What a great website. There's a few minor glitches with shop/restaurant names not being right or in the wrong location, but most of the info is accurate and with walking/cycling times included. This is a great tool.

Interesting little tool, although given its simplicity I have to wonder how much funding went into it. I feel like I could have whipped it up in a few hours. I'm curious about their data sources - there's definitely some gaps, for example, searching for "Arts, Crafts and Galleries" fails to turn up the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

The "Add or edit destination" link is just an email link, which again makes me wonder if it was originally intended as a way to actually let you add locations to the map, but got dropped due to time or budget constraints. If so, that's really unfortunate, as that's an absolutely key feature.

Ultimately I don't really see how this really brings anything to the table that is better than just using Google - in fact, I get better results with Google anyways:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sour...

The only thing I don't get with that Google search is the blue 2km proximity overlay.

I hate to be negative, but I have quite a lot of Google mapping and geocoding experience, and there are so many possibilities here that are unexplored.

I think the idea is to submit your edits or additions to a human who will verify and add/correct as necessary - as long as someone actually monitors and takes action on that email address, it will probably result in a better map in the long run than an automated one...

Sorry to rain on the parade, but as nifty as this website is it will not make much difference to the number of people walking.

That's because perceived safety and the willingness to walk depends largely on how drivers are behaving.

So if you don't somehow take back the roads, be it with reduced speed limits or traffic calming, education or something else, websites like this are doomed to be marginalized.

Herman Turkstra has an amazing opinion piece in the Spec today:

My car is my friend, and your enemy Want a safe neighbourhood? Practise traffic management http://www.thespec.com/Opinions/article/...

you're right Ted. I typed in my home address and was thrilled to see how much is nearby. Not that I didn't know already, but I've got most everything I need within the 1-km radius.

I found myself looking at the Goldlion Bakery and saying "gee, it's only a 15 minute walk. Why do I always drive there?? Oh yea, it's on Cannon St. Why would I walk that street unless someone put a gun to my head or unless I loved being up close and personal with the grill of a speeding transport truck."

I'm not very optimistic that we're heading in the right direction with any gusto when I hear city staff talk about scrapping the scramble intersection near the farmers market because it might slow down traffic west of Bay on York. Heaven forbid. If that happened, I might actually walk on York instead of using Vic Park, Napier St to get downtown.

And while you're at it, don't just leave the car behind. Forget that pesky internet. Why use it and make the dot-commers richer when smoke signals will do?

If the site is the product of a minimal budget, or in-house staff who don't normally do this kind of thing finding time in their busy schedule to work on it, or volunteers, then bravo: you did a great job. It looks nice and functions pretty well, and it's an interesting idea.

But if this was contracted out to professionals, and more than a few thousand dollars went into it, I think Environment Hamilton would have been better served by a different contractor.

I'm not sure it's right to try comparing a Google application to one developed by EH. Having said that, I much prefer the look of the EH one over Google. And the walking/cycling distance and times are a great feature. That's the whole point of this site isn't it?

What kind of a loser would need or use something like this?

A complete waste of tax dollars. If these are the things that people at Environment Hamilton or Environment Canada are spending their time on then I know where we can make our cuts to the municipal and fed budgets.

You're like a seagull Capitalist, leaving a repulsive trail of splat everywhere you go. Except at least seagulls eat garbage.

Jason, the EH one IS google, in that it uses the google maps interface. It was probably quite easy for them to whip this up.

Now for something really useful, using google maps to get directions, choose "by public transit" rather than by car. the full HSR schedule is then used to map out your trip, including which bus to take and where to transfer. Hamilton is one of only a few cities in Canada that have done this. Not even Toronto has it.

excellent stuff A robot. It's got to be easier to navigate than the HSR trip planning tool.
Thanks for pointing out that option.

Janitor,

I stand by made statement. This is nothing but a government make-work project for people who have nothing better to do.

By the way, I don't eat garbage. Usually Italian. Chinese on special occasions.