My @sotm presentation "Client Side Transport Maps on OpenStreetMap.org" is available online. I've put the video and a lightly-edited transcript up on our company blog:

https://www.thunderforest.com/blog/sotm-2026-client-side-transport-maps/

Has anyone else tried converting a Mapnik style to Maplibre? Any similar or unusual challenges that you ran into? Tell me more!

Big thanks to the organisers of the conference, it was as always great fun to attend and to present there.

#thunderforest #maplibre #sotm2026

I'm at St. Pancras on the way to Paris for State of the Map 2026! 🚉

I'll be presenting tomorrow afternoon (Friday 16:45) "Client-Side Transport Maps on OpenStreetMap.org" - come along to learn more about my real-world experiences with converting map styles to Maplibre!

https://2026.stateofthemap.org/sessions/GCP9RW/

#sotm2026 #thunderforest

Some git things that I've learned in the last 3 months, having used git for over 17 years 😆 :

`git commit --amend` - with staged changes. Instead of running `git rebase -i HEAD~2`. Found this by accident.

`git branch --merged` - lists merged branches that are ready to be deleted.

`git worktree` - I think I'd heard of these before, but I've started using them for real. Very useful for some of our Thunderforest stylesheets when variations (e.g. dark mode) live on long-lived branches.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@_Davidsmith/116483228365521545

If you want to learn more about how we worked with David on the custom cartography used in Pedometer++ (including the Dark Mode that we created for him), we've got an interview with him on our website:

https://www.thunderforest.com/customers/pedometer/

"I really appreciate that you do things in a way that is trying to make my life easier." - that's exactly what we aim for! 😃

#thunderforest #cartography

We've been working hard on our latest vector style - Transport! Our familiar global transportation map is now available in our Vector Styles API, for use with your #maplibre projects.

https://www.thunderforest.com/maps/transport/preview/vector-styles-api/

It's our most complex client-side style so far, but I'm very pleased with how it's turned out.

Feedback is always welcome!

#thunderforest

Yesterday I rolled up my sleeves and fixed an edge case with bus stop zones in our Transport Map.

https://www.thunderforest.com/maps/transport/

Some eagle-eyed mappers had noticed that occasionally these zones were missing or incomplete, and this had been puzzling me for a long time. In the end the fix was a small change to the SQL code that gathers the stops into zones. They are all working now!

I'm always happy to hear feedback on our maps, thanks to everyone who got in touch.

#cartography #thunderforest

Solar for Schools is raising another community energy bond (can be held in an IFISA for tax advantages) to install more solar panels on schools in the UK.

They've raised £1.6m out of their £2m target so far, in the last 8 days since they launched the bond offer.

https://bsky.app/profile/ethexuk.bsky.social/post/3m4px5m3qcc2o

https://www.ethex.org.uk/invest/solar-for-schools-xiv

#CommunityEnergy #Solar #RenewableEnergy

There was lots of interest from people there about how the core of OpenStreetMap works, what sort of hardware, software, and team is needed to keep the whole project going.

I think there could be a talk on that topic in the future 😃

It would also be great to get more people from the #FOSS4G community directly involved in core #OpenStreetMap projects, there's such a similarity between the two groups in so many different ways.

I had a great time at the #FOSS4GUK conference in Leeds this week, lots of interesting talks. My first FOSS4G event since 2013 - how did that time pass so quickly?

The biggest difference since then is that OpenStreetMap is just 100% accepted as a thing, no doubts or novelty etc. Whether that's to demo client-side routing or default data source in QGIS or even training AI models.

Nice to meet so many new people, and some familiar faces too.

I'm looking forward to the 2026 conference already!

I merged four pull requests for openstreetmap-website today - all small behind the scenes stuff, but I'm getting back into the swing of things after a very long summer break.

I've also had my talk proposal for #sotmeu approved, so I'm looking forward to that in November!

#OpenStreetMap

"Mastodon Exit Interview" https://v.cx/2025/04/mastodon-exit-interview

It's an interesting read. I've learned something worth knowing about direct messages here on Mastodon!

I've got a few domains on gandi.net, but their prices are a bit steep nowadays. What's your favourite alternative?

I just need a good registrar, my DNS is hosted elsewhere.

"Drax argues that burning wood is carbon neutral because when trees are cut down for fuel, new trees can be planted that effectively re-absorb the carbon dioxide released."

And the fairy magic that powers the chainsaws, timber trucks, trans-Atlantic lumber ships and railway locomotives to move millions of tons of wood from North America to Drax all run on wishes and good deeds, so thankfully they are carbon neutral too.

🤷‍♂️

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyplj7dkw2o

I know frequent update cycles are important for OSM mapper's motivation - nobody is inspired by making edits to OpenStreetMap and then waiting months or years to see the map update!

We've thought about increasing our diff update frequency further - we could probably reduce it to somewhere around the 10-20 minutes mark without any further upgrades. However, various levels of internal caching mean that few people would really see a difference, so I think hourly is frequent enough for now.

At Thunderforest we're now processing OpenStreetMap data updates every 60 minutes! 🌍

We recently upgraded our vector tile generation servers - new hardware, and updated versions of osm2pgsql, GEOS, PostgreSQL and PostGIS. We can now process the diff updates from OpenStreetMap with 10x the throughput compared to 2024, so we've moved from four-hourly cycles to updating every hour.

These updates are available in all our APIs - Vector Sources, Vector Styles and Map Tiles - https://www.thunderforest.com/

My LRUG talk from earlier this year "Things I've learned maintaining OpenStreetMap" has made it on to Hacker News - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41923400

I'm interested to see whether it resonates with other developers!

#openstreetmap

I'm going to the OpenStreetMap 20th birthday party in London on Saturday - see you there?

https://osmcal.org/event/2976/

When I was preparing the presentation I wanted some stats, and when I saw them I had to double-check some of the numbers! From July 2023 to end of June 2024 we had:

* 669 opened pull requests
* 571 merged pull requests
* 35 developers (17 new this year)
* 192 people discussing issues (94 new this year)
* 137 new translators
* A new maintainer
* A new issue triager

... leading to a whole bunch of new and improved features.

It's been quite an impressive last 12 months!

Last week I was due to give a presentation on openstreetmap-website development at the State of the Map Europe conference in Łódź 🇵🇱

Unfortunately I got ill on the morning of the second day!

So I've made a home recording of my presentation. Although it's a poor substitute for doing it live, I hope it's still interesting to watch:

"What's New With Our Website"

https://vimeo.com/990974285

As it says at the end, comments and questions are welcome!

#SotMEU #OpenStreetMap

I think I would say "Landmark running gives glimmer of hope to future generations", but clearly the BBC doesn't see it that way.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxwwzmn12g9o

Update: They've changed the headline - it was originally "Landmark supreme court ruling could threaten future UK oil drilling", currently "Key oil project must count full climate impact - court"