Toronto Poster Columns Layer
Turns the City of Toronto's two street-furniture postering datasets —
Poster Structure
(834 poster columns) and
Poster Board
(1,662 poster boards on transit shelters) — into map-tile layers that
OpenStreetMap mappers can add to the JOSM and iD editors as a reference
overlay, plus a gap page listing where OSM disagrees with the City. These are
Toronto's community postering spots: the places you can pin a flyer.
Live layer and how to add it: https://skfd.github.io/toronto-poster-columns-layer/
It is a clone of guelph-hydrants-layer
(live): the same
download -> slim -> compare -> vector -> raster -> site -> publish pipeline,
the same Overpass, link-gate and publish rules. What differs follows from the
data:
- download is CKAN, not ArcGIS paging: each package is asked for its
resource list (
package_show), the WGS84 GeoJSON is picked out by name, and
the two files are merged into one layer with a kind (column or
shelter_board). A file under its floor (750 / 1,500) stops the run;
- compare accepts two OSM tagging families and reports position only;
- raster draws two shapes in two colours, hollow for points the City lists as
temporarily removed.
It was built because only 3 of the City's columns were tagged
advertising=column in OSM on 2026-10-24, and street-imagery detection can't
fill the gap: Mapillary has no class for these, Osmose has no check for them in
Canada, and Panoramax detects only faces, plates and road signs. City open data
is the only source. (Looking past the one tag, OSM turned out to have far more
of the columns than that: see the first run below.)
What it produces
- Vector tiles (MVT, z12-19) — interactive in iD; click a point to
read its
kind, id, site_id, asset_type, city_status, address,
fronting and from_street.
- Raster tiles (PNG, z15-17) — an orange circle per poster column
and a blue square per shelter board, white edged, 5 px in radius at z17. A
point the City lists as Temporarily Removed (94 columns, 28 boards) is
hollow.
- A landing page with copy-paste "add this layer" instructions for both
editors, and the postering-rules caveat below.
- A gap-review page (
/gaps/) on an interactive map and a filterable
table (each row and popup links to OSM, iD and JOSM; the JOSM button needs
JOSM running with Preferences → Remote Control enabled), and its
history page (/gaps/history.html) charting the counts,
one point per weekly run.
- An import-chunks page (
/import/): the points missing from OSM cut
into JOSM-ready chunks, one .osm file and one changeset each. See
"Import chunks" below.
Where you may post: the caveat
Toronto's sign by-law,
Municipal Code Chapter 693,
keeps posters off City property except on "kiosks", structures the City has
designated for posting, and sets size, fixing and time limits for those
(§ 693-5.2 and 5.3). The poster columns are those structures. It is
unconfirmed whether the public may post on the shelter boards. The landing
page says exactly that and no more.
The brief cited "art. IV"; in the consolidation of 2024-06-03, Article 4 is
Temporary Signs and postering is Article 5 (Posters and Community Posters),
so the page cites § 693-5.2 and 5.3.
No ref, on purpose
The City's ID (PO-… for columns, SH-… for shelters), SITEID and
BARCODE are asset numbers. A mapper standing at a column cannot check any of
them, so none belongs in OSM's ref. id and site_id are in the vector
tiles and on the gap page so a row can be named, and the landing page says not
to copy them.
The gap page
Overpass is asked for everything in the Toronto bounding box that could be a
postering spot (nwr, out center):
nwr["advertising"];
nwr["tourism"="information"]["information"="board"];
nwr["board_type"="notice"];
Either tagging family counts. A City point is matched by any nearby
advertising=* (except no) or an information/notice board, and the
checker does not nag about which was used. City and OSM points are paired by
distance: every pair within FAR_M (30 m) is a candidate, and the closest
pair is settled first, one to one. Then, per City point:
| Status | Meaning | What to do |
|---|
missing | nothing accepted within 30 m | add it, once you have seen it |
far | its OSM feature is 10-30 m away | check which point is right |
duplicate | a second postering-type OSM feature within 30 m, after a nearer one took this point | one of the two may be surplus |
osm_only | a postering-type OSM feature more than 30 m from every City point | probably a private board -- a look, not a fix |
Postering-type means advertising = column, pillar, poster_box or
board, or board_type=notice. Any accepted feature can answer for a City
point, but only a postering-type one is reported when it is left over: an
unpaired billboard or history plaque is simply something else, and listing the
city's ~540 billboards as "OSM only" would bury the handful worth a look.
Each gap row carries the matched feature's advertising / tourism /
information / board_type / operator / name, so the page shows what
matched without judging it.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
