Transportation Data - Need Help - no MP_Type Field

[n2stitch]

I've just finished processing the Tiger road data, following the steps of the tutorial (download, combine, add to database, process with postgis, export shape file).  I get the shape file, a rather large one, but when I try to open it in GPSMapedit there is no MP_Type column to use to specify types.

Any clue what I did wrong?  HELP!

Lalita

[-Oz-]

Are you sure you're opening one that's been processed?

Try this: import from one folder and then do the export to another folder to make sure that you get a processed file.

[n2stitch]

I'm pretty darn sure I'm opening the processed file because the unprocessed file is all_lines.shp and the processed file is transportation.shp.

I'll try as you suggest though and see what happens.

If I don't get success with something (water, roads, etc) soon, I'll leave this to the people that actually understand it. 

Lalita

[-Oz-]

You are correct; all_lines.shp is the unprocessed version.

Were there any errors when you ran the process script?

[n2stitch]

None that I recall.  Right now my poor abacus computer is taking a break from water data.  I was able to identify several duplicates in the files I had, and eliminated them.  I still had duplicate data, but needed some of the other data in each file so kept them.  I'm getting ready to export the shapefiles from postgis - hopefully it works.

I'll re-try the transportation files over the weekend.

[n2stitch]

Dan, I looked closer at the tutorial and you are missing the step to modify the database to add the mp_type information.  Once I did that step, and exported the shape file, it worked fine.

That being said, I don't like some of the road types assigned - apparently the government calls a lot of the rural highways "residential streets" so they are very thin and grey.  Also, there appears to be segments of some roads missing - not sure if they didn't have a type assigned, so were deleted, or just didn't exist.

Lalita

[-Oz-]

I thought that was built into the NHD queries.

Each file has two lines:

Code Select Expand

ALTER TABLE nhd_flowline ADD COLUMN mp_type character varying(50);
ALTER TABLE nhd_flowline ALTER COLUMN mp_type SET STORAGE EXTENDED;

That should add the MP_TYPE column.

The segments of road missing are likely not missing, zoom in further; its the way the tiger data is formatted.

And the problem with the roads is that everything is pretty much a highway or a street; there aren't arterial streets or anything.

[n2stitch]

You have a transportation query file, but have it named transportation.shp instead of transportation.shp.txt.  Also, if you compare the steps of the NHD data section in your tutorial to the transportation section, you'll see the step to use the transportation.shp.txt to alter the table is missing.  But, but using the NHD section of the tutorial as a guide, I was able to finish the transportation.

Would you like me to edit the transportation section, adding what I think is missing, and send it to you for your review?

Thank you so much for offering all these tools, it's making what seemed nigh on impossible, not. :-)

Also, any chance you can write a set of queries to add the mp_type column for some LULC shape files?

Lalita

[-Oz-]

Yes if you edit it and email it to services @ gpsfiledepot.com (remove the spaces around the @) I can update accordingly.