This project extended the existing Cyclopath and Cycloplan bicycle routing and planning system. The primary goal of this project was to develop a statewide bicycle map. The map was intended to serve multiple purposes, including: Giving people throughout Minnesota easy access to bicycle routing information, thus making it easier for them to utilize bicycling as transportation; Supporting long-distance bicycle travel and bicycle travel outside of urban areas; Compiling disparate sets of bikeways data - from different sources and in different formats - into a single, unified dataset and tool; Serving as a collaborative tool for public participation and inter-agency cooperation. We achieved these goals by working closely with relevant stakeholders - both end users and planners - over the life of this project. The result is a version of Cyclopath that: Enables bicycle routing for the entire state of Minnesota; Features a significantly simplified and improved end-user interface; Adds useful new features for transportation planners.
This project addressed several MnDOT critical issues and strategic directions: easing congestion and improving mobility by making multi-modal transit options more easily accessible. It did so by extending the Cyclopath bicycle route-finding system to support multi-modal routes that combine cycling and transit. This required extensions to the route-finding algorithm - to combine biking and transit appropriately - and user interface - to let users express modal preferences and enhance the visual presentation of routes, e.g., to mark mode shifts. We used the Graphserver open-source software to as the routing engine; by building on existing software, we reduced development effort. We conducted interviews with a number of multimodal transit users to guide the design of the user interface.
