Featured Maps

The 86th Major League Baseball All-Star Game is being held in Cincinnati this month. As part of this high-profile event, MLB officials and officials on both sides of the river worked together to promote “Baseball Across The Region” and to engage greater Cincinnati in this major event.

This NKYmapLAB project looks at the impacts of baseball across the region. These include the regional projected and preliminary economic impacts of the All-Star Game and an overview of the history of baseball in Northern Kentucky. The MLB All-Star Game could have an economic impact of approximately $65 million dollars for greater Cincinnati (source: MLB.com, WCPO.com).

It also highlights investments made in local baseball fields, new multi-modal transportation options with the arrival of RedBike, and the Covington Urban Guide Map (designed and printed by COV | 200) that identifies activities and destination options for out-of-town visitors.

Finally, it illustrates a very visual kick-off to the actual game. An official baseball “will travel throughout the region highlighting the treasured neighborhoods, schools, businesses and community attractions across Reds Country to generate excitement and enthusiasm…”

The ball will complete its journey by crossing the Roebling Suspension Bridge, and arriving at the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame & Museum, becoming an official part of Reds baseball history.

This is a Road Index map of Campbell County. This map includes streets, cities, parks and hydrologic features.

This map shows all bridge structures in Kenton County tying them to recommended road projects from the 2014 Kenton County Transportation Plan.

Current conditions information comes from the Federal Highway Administration’s National Bridge Inventory (NBI) and rates the bridges based on a combination of their characteristics. The bridge’s icon size illustrates its relative Average Daily Traffic count (ADT) and its color shows its sufficiency rating. Bridges without ADT information or sufficiency ratings are either not part of the NBI or represent a railroad line.

This map shows the importance of bridges, not just those crossing the Ohio River but also those crossing the county. Bridges are found along almost every High-, Medium-, and Low-Priority transportation projects identified in the Kenton County Transportation Plan. As such, they represent long-term infrastructure investments for our community and need to be considered part of almost every major transportation project.

Two specific categories of bridges are also identified on the map: structurally deficient (SD) and functionally obsolete (FO). As these terms are used on this map, structurally deficient bridges present one or more structural defects that require attention. This does not indicate the severity of the defect, just that there is a defect present on the bridge deck, substructure, or superstructure.

As the term is used on this map, functionally obsolete bridges present as outdated by their design. This could include deficient lanes for traffic flow, deficient break-down lanes, low clearance among others. Functionally obsolete does not indicate deficiencies of a structural nature. (fhwa.dot.gov)

Note: the Brent Spence Bridge has been studied and analyzed by engineers, architects, consultants, and technical committees for the past couple decades. This map does not attempt to build upon those studies but offers a brief examination of the structure. It is not a focus of this map.

Map showing the urban trails of Fort Thomas, KY.

Map showing Highland Hills Park in the city of Fort Thomas, KY.

This is an index map of Kenton County roads. The map shows the cities, roads, and hydrologic features of Kenton County.

The overall goal of this analysis is to further examine traffic flow and traffic congestion along the KY 536 Corridor (western portion). Traffic counts and turn analysis studies have been completed to better understand the traffic flow patterns in this area, but those studies are much more technical, and typically completed for the engineering industry. This analysis is qualitative, and provides a more basic understanding of traffic flow to everyday users of this corridor, and residents of this community.

Project Methodology

NKYmapLAB used an automated screen capture service to record traffic conditions at six locations along the KY 536 corridor, in 1-hour increments (on the 1/2 hour). Traffic flow/congestion information was collected from 5:30am to 10:30pm, daily, for two consecutive weeks. Typically, traffic congestion is not a problem overnight in this area. Although traffic information was collected for the overnight period, it was not included in the analysis charts.

The traffic conditions were recorded from Google Maps, using their Traffic service. The advantage of using Google Traffic Maps is that it shows real-time traffic conditions, not a predictive model of traffic, or historic projection. Google Maps achieves real-time traffic conditions by analyzing the GPS-determined locations transmitted to them by a large number of cell phone users. By calculating the speed of users along a stretch of road, Google is able to generate a live traffic map. Google processes the incoming raw data about cell phone device locations, and then excludes anomalies such as a postal vehicle which makes frequent stops. When a threshold of users in a particular area is noted, the overlay along roads and highways on the Google map changes color.

The traffic map colors show the speed of traffic. The colors indicate traffic flow: Green means there are no traffic delays; Orange means there’s a medium amount of traffic; Red means there are traffic delays; The more red, the slower the speed of traffic on the road.

This map shows an analysis of walk-time and drive-time distances to parks throughout Kenton County. For the purposes of this study, a park was included in the analysis only if it is a publicly-accessible location with active recreation opportunities. Athletic facilities at schools, privately-owned recreation facilities, and ‘greenspace parks’ without active recreation facilities were not considered for this analysis.

The walk- time analysis assumed an average walking speed of 3.1 miles per hour, a commonly-accepted preferred walking speed. More information on that value can be found here at Wikipedia. The analysis looked at walk times of five, ten, 15, and 20 minutes, where a 5-minute walk covers about ¼ mile, and a 20-minute walk would cover about 1 mile (at 3.1 mph).

The drive-time analysis map uses posted speed limit values to determine how much distance could be covered in a set amount of time. Using speed limits, the drive time (in seconds) of each street was calculated. The analysis then looked at drive times of one, two, three, four, and five minutes to see how far a driver could get within each of those time limits.

Both analyses then calculated the number of households that were located inside each walk-time and drive-time interval and presented that as a percent of the total households in Kenton County.

All walk-time and drive-time analyses were conducted using a specialized GIS tool called Network Analyst—a detailed analytic tool that allows users to study service areas, drive times, routing, and barriers in a designated area using their own local data.

This map shows Kenton County’s sidewalk network, its coverage, and its missing links; the focus is to show the community’s walkability.

The image below represents the poster sized map of this project. There is also a companion Story Map, complete with interactive maps, narrative text, images and multimedia content.

In general terms according to Wikipedia, walkability “is a measure of how friendly an area is to walking. Walkability has many health, environmental, and economic benefits. Factors influencing walkability include the presence or absence and quality of footpaths, sidewalks or other pedestrian rights of way, traffic and road conditions, land use patterns, building accessibility, and safety, among others.

As the term is used here, walkability focuses on points of interest (churches, schools, shopping centers, city buildings, libraries, parks, and dining locations)that are within 50 feet of a sidewalk. The 50-foot distance is measured from the nearest sidewalk to the property line of the point of interest.

LINK-GIS built and maintains a sidewalk data layer as a part of its massive geographic information system. Kenton County today includes over 770 miles of sidewalks.