Identify partner-contact at MORPC

[PhilNorman2]

Initial MORPC contact is Cheri Mansperger. Will be meeting with her on July 20th 2022.

[PhilNorman2]

Met with Cheri Mansperger at MORPC on July 20th and shared OpenColumbus Project Presentation

• Cheri shared link MORPC sidewalk inventory. It shows both sidewalks and absence of sidewalks. She is going to send me a link to access the raw data.
• Cheri is going to find us a contact in the planning department that she thinks would be better for us to work with. So waiting on that for now.

[PhilNorman2]

On 7/21/22 received a message from Cheri Mansperger containing a download link to the MORPC sidewalk dataset. I downloaded this in the GeoJSON format.

[PhilNorman2]

On 7/22/22 received the following message from Cheri Mansperger indicating that the MORPC planning team will review our project but did not see any immediate opportunities. Cheri also had suggestions for others to reach out to and indicated she would work with us on any help we need with the MORPC sidewalk inventory:

I hope you find our sidewalk data useful for your project. That layer is editing by City of Columbus, MORPC and a few other jurisdictions. Our goal is a high level, regionally comprehensive layer. As I mentioned, we do not make use of OSM as we have better local data.

Our work tends to have a more regional approach and our capacity to deal with detailed data like curb cuts is limited and would be very small project specific. One suggestion – if you have not already – is to talk to public service people at City of Columbus or COTA (or other local jurisdictions) about your project. They may be able to use the detailed data you are creating. There are also many jurisdictions in Franklin County who do not have GIS staff and might have small sidewalk accessibility projects they would like to investigate. This is out of my area of focus, so I do not have any specific contacts.

I passed along the info you sent me and a recap our conversation to a few other people at MORPC, who handle projects related to multi-model transportation. They said they will review and keep your group in mind, if the project and or opportunity arises to partner with OpenColumbus.I hope you find our sidewalk data useful for your project. That layer is editing by City of Columbus, MORPC and a few other jurisdictions. Our goal is a high level, regionally comprehensive layer. As I mentioned, we do not make use of OSM as we have better local data.

Our work tends to have a more regional approach and our capacity to deal with detailed data like curb cuts is limited and would be very small project specific. One suggestion – if you have not already – is to talk to public service people at City of Columbus or COTA (or other local jurisdictions) about your project. They may be able to use the detailed data you are creating. There are also many jurisdictions in Franklin County who do not have GIS staff and might have small sidewalk accessibility projects they would like to investigate. This is out of my area of focus, so I do not have any specific contacts.

I passed along the info you sent me and a recap our conversation to a few other people at MORPC, who handle projects related to multi-model transportation. They said they will review and keep your group in mind, if the project and or opportunity arises to partner with OpenColumbus.

[PhilNorman2]

Based on this message I will close this task. Cheri Mansperger, cmansperger@morpc.org, will be our MORPC contact for any analysis we do with the sidewalk inventory.