Spatial Databases

final project

Cambridge Bikeways Geodatabase
GIS3160_FinalProject.pdf (3.58 mb)

The aim of this project is to design a geodatabase that stores and manages information about municipal bicycle paths and lanes. The geodatase schema is based upon the Bicycle Facilities Map of the City of Cambridge, MA, located on the Cambridge bike programs website.

Although the geodatabase was designed to conform to the bikeways of Cambridge, it can be applied to any city or town that wishes to manage their bikeways in relation to municipal streets.

This geodatabase allows a city or town to answer the following questions:

How many of each type of bikeway exist?
Which are the planned and completed bikeways?
Which roads are optimal for potential bikeways?
Are there any abandoned rail lines that could accommodate a bikeway?
On which type of roads (Federal CFCC code) do bikeways currently exist?
What type of accidents exist on roads (ACCD_TYPE table), and on which type of roads do they exist?
Do any bikeways exist in the “no bike zone” areas in the city?

Case Study
The geodatase also has an ArcToolbox "model" that imports new street linework, and validates it against the existing bikeways layer to check for topological inconsistencies.

Cambridge's newly-developed Lafayette Square was used to prove the effectiveness of the model. As a result of the city's effort to create pedestrian-friendly "livable spaces", the throughway of Main Street to Massachusetts Avenue had been blocked off in a traffic-calming effort to establish the pedestrian square and to re-route cars in a slower, more controlled access to Mass Ave. The (old) bikeway linework still showed the Main Street bike path running through the pedestrian square of the (new) street linework. Since one of the geodatabase's topology rules requires a bike lane to be on top of a street, a topological inconsistency was identified. A city's GIS technician would then know to edit the bikeway linework to conform the changes in the new street linework.