mapping motor racing venues
TRANSCRIPT
Mapping Motor Sports VenuesPast & Present
Indianapolis 500, 1911
• 7/22/1894 - Paris to Rouen
• 11/28/1895 - Chicago->Evanston->Chicago
• 9/7/1896 - Narragansett Park, Rhode Island
"Auto racing began 5 minutes after the second car was built”
- Henry Ford
First two - public roadsNarragansett Park - first closed circuit, oval race. existing horse track
Winning Duryea from the 1895 Times-Herald Race
Thanksgiving day, snowed the night beforewon at an average speed of 7 mph, 8 hourswinning car spent an hour in a blacksmith shop while J. Frank Duryea forged a replacement for a broken steering linkwikipedia page on this race is problematic
History & Taxonomy• Road Courses
• originally on public roads
• largely moved to closed, “permanent”, road courses in the early 50s
• airport courses
• kart specific variants
a series of accidents, some fatal, in the late 40s/early 50s triggered the move to closed circuitsheyday of airport courses in the US was the early-mid 1950s, when the SCCA ran many races on SAC bomber bases
Watkins Glen
haybales for crash barriersterrible accident in 1951 on Franklin Street during the race
History & Taxonomy• Oval tracks
• repurposed horse tracks
• late 1900s - purpose built ovals start to appear
• Brooklands in the UK - 1907
• Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the US - 1909
Mapquest OpenAerial
representing dual use in OHM needs relations no relation type for horse tracks right now that i’m aware of
History & Taxonomy
• Oval tracks
• for a brief period - 1910s & 20s - board tracks
• small ovals for karts & midgets
• “ovals” are not actually oval
locating board tracks can be a particular challenge
Polo Grounds
1/5 mile board oval 6/5/1948, 6/8/19481/4 mile dirt 1940-19421/4 mile paved 8/28/1958-9/12/1959
Fiat Lingott
• From wikipedia - uploaded by Dgtmedia - CC BY 3.0
Ingleside Track
San Francisco, horse track starting 1895auto racing track 1900-1905, 1907-1911became a housing development in 1912now Urbano Drive
History & Taxonomy
• Drag strips
• post WWII
• paved - (1/8, 1/4, 1/2 mile, 1000 feet)
• sand drags (300 feet)
Mapquest OpenAerial
1000 feet - usually a 1/4 mile track that was shortened due to insufficient shutdown area1/2 mile rare, but happened - Riverside International Raceway in Orange County CA 1960sthis example - Dragstrip at former Indianapolis Raceway Park, now Lucas Oil raceway
History & Taxonomy• Drag strips
Mapquest OpenAerial
This example - Lebanon Valley Dragway (& Lebanon Valley Dragway)
History & Taxonomy• Off road
• Motocross
• generally stable enough to map
• Rally cross
• may not be stable enough to map - needs research
Mapquest OpenAerial
example - motocross track at Canyon Speedway, Peoria, Arizona
History & Taxonomy
• Multi purpose complexes
• combinations of ovals, dragstrips, road courses
• complexes that include separate facilities for alternative motorsports
Mapquest OpenAerial
Example - IRP/Lucas Oil Raceway zoomed out a bit
History & Taxonomy
Bing Imagery
Miller Motorsports Park, Toole Utah
Tagging Race Tracks• highway=raceway
• oneway=yes sometimes appropriate
• leisure=track is for non-motorized tracks
• if track is out of service, but traces are visible, use the disused: namespace in OSM (disused:highway=raceway)
Tagging Race Tracks• relation type proposal - type=circuit
• valuable for multi configuration complexes
• in use, could use some elaboration
• start/finish variations
• circuit={road, oval, dragstrip}
circuit= would facilitate searching
Tagging Race Tracks• type=circuit relation
• use forward/backward roles to indication direction of ways
• can divide road course into segments and use traditional names
• turns frequently have both names and numbers - how to represent?
Lime Rock names:no-name straightwest bendthe left-handerbig bendthe uphill (aka climbing turn)the downhill (aka diving turn)
Tagging Race Tracks• temporary circuits
• public roads or airports
• no well defined way to do this in OSM
• event data - really should use separate non-OSM DB
• in OHM, just outline the circuit on top of the OSM features and use standard tagging
Tagging Race Tracks• Pit lanes
• generally hot areas - recommend highway=raceway, name=Pit Lane
• Return roads of dragstrips
• not hot, recommend highway=service, service=driveway, name=Return Road
Tagging Race Tracks• Paddock space
• highway=service, service={driveway,parking_aisle}
• amenity=parking
• access=permissive
• name=A Paddock (or whatever the name is)
Tagging Race Tracks
• If the boundary of the property can be discerned (frequently possible)
• leisure=sport_centre, sport=motor
• name=Name of facility/track
• address, website, etc.
Open Historical Map• Uses modified OSM stack
• Uses OSM tags, but with some subtle modifications
• don’t use disused: tag space
• instead, depend on start_date and end_date
• Overpass recently installed
stuff in disused generally doesn’t render with current carto stylesheetsOverpass facilitates selective queries & mashups Still debugging setup; don’t have automagic update in place yetSimple temporal queries currently being considered for addition to Overpass
Open Historical Map
• Currently somewhat sparsely populated
• Potential to be locally densely populated
• Currently no good mechanism for direct references to OSM objects
Watkins Glen• 4 different courses since 1948
• 4 variations of current course
http://www.na-motorsports.com/test/Watkins.html
leaflet/jquery widgetbecause tagging is consistent, same overpass query can fetch both OHM and OSM racetrack dataalso pulls years from start_date & end_date for the labelsneed to use historic aerials or topos
Thompson Speedway• 2 ovals (1 defunct, 1 current)
• 5 distinct road courses (1 current)
• 2 variations of current road course
http://www.na-motorsports.com/test/Thompson.html
site of first closed circuit road race in the US post WWII
St Johns Grand Prix
• Temporary course on airport runway
• St Johns Industrial Airpark, St Johns, Arizona
http://www.na-motorsports.com/test/StJohns.html
in this case, used hand drawn maps supplied by race promotor
Bee Line Dragway
• inactive dragstrip north of Mesa, Arizona
• in OSM,
• disused:highway=raceway
http://www.na-motorsports.com/test/BeeLine.html
Palmer Motorsports Park
• Brand spanking new road course in south central Massachusetts
• highway=construction
• construction=raceway
Open Tagging Issues
• Dates of operation can be more complex than start_date & end_date
• New York State Fairgrounds 1 mile oval
• 9/10/1903, 1905, 9/18/1909-9/16/1911, 9/1919-9/01/1941, 1946, 9/10/1949-present
bigger, open question of temporal representations within OHM
Open Tagging Issues• interactions of surface with dates of operation
• Pine Bowl Speedway (Poestenkill NY)
• clay - 7/1/1950-1951
• paved - 1952-1963
• it is reported that for a short period, the track was paved in the corners but not the straights due to a lack of funding
Sources• Various histories of old venues
• History of America’s Speedways
• National Speedway Directory
• fairly new Ghost Tracks category of books
• lots online
double check everything
Sources
• Local race historians
• Facebook (!?)
• Two groups devoted to old racing circuits
• Historic aerials & topo maps
Paul Norman’s github project to list historical image sources
Sources
note that for USGS topos, there appears to a standard width road which is narrower than a typical racetrack.Johnston County Speedway, NC
Sources
Sources & Certainty• Need to look at sources the same way any
good historian does
• Need confirmation
• primary vs secondary
• recollections of participants long afterwards are secondary, not primary
• participants may have grudges/axes to grind
Sources & Certainty• Commonly
reproduced map of the 1895 Chicago race
• Made 50 years after the race
• Not a primary source
map has a numeric key, but the keyed notes are hard to findroads north of the river in downtown Chicago don’t line up wellcurrently trying to reconstruct the correct course, using 1893 Rand McNally map of Chicago and written accounts
Documentation
• Need to document why we put things into OHM
• Where do the dates and names come from?
• Where was the track traced from?
• http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Historical_Map/Projects
Info• OSM/OHM handle: nfgusedautoparts
• Ghost Tracks code:
• github.com/OpenHistoricalMap/examples
• www.na-motorsports.com/test/