Roads

lindbrook

2023-03-01

Overview

In 1992, Rusty Dodson and Waldo Tobler digitized John Snow’s cholera map. Unfortunately, they did not include the names of roads (e.g., Broad Street) in their data set. While not strictly necessary for analysis or visualization, having the names can be useful so I appended the actual street names from the map to the roads data set.

Roads data

Before discussing the details, some discussion of the structure of roads is warranted. The data contain 1241 pairs of x-y coordinates that define the endpoints of straight line segments used to describe some 528 numerically identified “streets”.

head(roads)
>   street n        x        y id      name        lon      lat
> 1      1 2 16.73800 18.69600  1 Map Frame -0.1332322 51.51669
> 2      1 2 17.66000 18.71200  2 Map Frame -0.1324437 51.51670
> 3      2 2 14.46200 18.65500  3 Map Frame -0.1350414 51.51668
> 4      2 2 16.73800 18.69600  4 Map Frame -0.1332322 51.51669
> 5      3 2 12.79388 18.61613  5 Map Frame -0.1363508 51.51667
> 6      3 2 14.46200 18.65500  6 Map Frame -0.1350414 51.51668

nrow(roads)
> [1] 1241

length(unique(roads$street))
> [1] 528

The correspondence between these 528 “streets” and streets in the real world is not one-to-one. Excluding the 50 “streets” used to draw the map’s frame, the remaining 478 “streets” actually describe 206 real world roads (e.g., Oxford Street, Regent Street).

This discrepancy emerges because real world streets are approximated using straight line segments. In fact 40% of the “real world” roads are composed of multiple “street” segments: for example, Oxford Street consists of 26 line segments and Broad Street consists of 6.

# Map Border "Streets" #

top <- c(1:12, 14)
right <- c(37, 62, 74, 142, 147, 205, 240, 248, 280, 360, 405, 419, 465)
bottom <- c(483, seq(487, 495, 2), 498, 500, seq(503, 519, 2))
left <- c(31, 79, 114, 285, 348, 397, 469)
border <- sort(c(bottom, left, top, right))

length(border)
> [1] 50

Road names

The primary source for road names is Snow’s map (a high resolution version is available here. While great effort was made to correctly record and cross-reference names, there may still be errors. Error reports and suggestions for amendments are welcome.

Some roads on the map do not have a name. In those cases, I attach unique labels like “Unknown-C”.

Some names appear multiple times even though they lie at different locations. For these, I use Roman numerals to distinguish them (e.g., “King Street (I)” and “King Street (II)”).1

Queen Street (I) and Marlborough Mews

There is one apparent coding error in Dodson and Tobler’s road data. Queen Street (I) extends too far: the water pump #5 is clearly located on Marlborough Mews (see map, cited above) but ends up on Queen Street (I).

I amend this by moving the end point of Queen Street (I) westward so that the street only runs in a north-south direction. I do so by reassigning the segment that runs east-west to be part of Marlborough Mews.

snow.streets <- HistData::Snow.streets
snow.streets$id <- seq_len(nrow(snow.streets))

# Data frame of road names
road.data <- read.csv("~/Documents/Data IV/Snow/road3b.csv",
  stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

roads <- merge(snow.streets, road.data, by = "street", all.x = TRUE)
roads[is.na(roads$name), "name"] <- "Map Frame"

roads[roads$id == 277, "street"] <- 116
roads[roads$id == 277, "name"] <- "Marlborough Mews"
roads[roads$id == 277, c("x", "y")] <- roads[roads$id == 276, c("x", "y")]
roads[roads$name == "Queen Street (I)", "n"] <- 4
roads[roads$name == "Marlborough Mews", "n"] <- 3
roads <- roads[order(roads$id), ]

Finding roads by name, “street” number, or segment ID.

To help locate and visualize streets and road segments (including the map frame segments), you can use streetNameLocator(), streetNumberLocator(), or segmentLocator().

Note that streetNameLocator() uses the names from the roads data set and tries to corrects for case and for extra spaces: streetNameLocator("Oxford Street") and streetNameLocator("oxford street").

segmentLocator() provides more granular analysis. It uses individual road segments as the unit of observation.

List of road names

There are 206 “valid” road names; 207, if we include “Map Frame”:

                                                                    
1   Adam and Eve Court                 Maidenhead Court             
2   Air Street                         Margaret Court               
3   Albany Street                      Margaret Street              
4   Albemarle Street                   Market Court                 
5   Allens Court                       Market Place                 
6   Angel Court                        Market Row                   
7   Archer Street                      Market Street (I)            
8   Argyll Place                       Market Street (II)           
9   Argyll Street                      Marlborough Court            
10  Arundel Place                      Marlborough Mews             
11  Arundel Street                     Marlborough Row              
12  Batemans Buildings                 Marshall Street              
13  Beak Street                        Marylebone Street            
14  Bentinck Street                    Masons Arms Yard             
15  Berners Street                     Meards Court/Street          
16  Berwick Street                     Mill Street                  
17  Black Lion Court                   Nags Head Yard               
18  Blenheim Mews                      Naylors Yard                 
19  Blenheim Street                    New Bond Street              
20  Boyle Street                       New Burlington Mews          
21  Brewer Street                      New Burlington Street        
22  Bridle Street                      New Street                   
23  Broad Street                       New Street/Husband Street    
24  Bruton Street                      Newman Street                
25  Bull Yard                          Noel Street                  
26  Burlington Arcade                  Norris's Place               
27  Burlington Gardens                 North Coventry Street        
28  Cambridge Street                   Old Burlington Mews          
29  Carlisle Street                    Old Burlington Street        
30  Carnaby Court                      Old Compton Street           
31  Carnaby Street                     Orchard Place                
32  Castle Street East                 Oxendon Street               
33  Catherine Wheel Yard               Oxford Street                
34  Chapel Place                       Panton Street                
35  Charles Street                     Perrys Place                 
36  Church Street                      Peter Street                 
37  Clifford Street                    Pews Place                   
38  Coach & Horses Yard                Phoenix Yard                 
39  Cock Court                         Picadilly                    
40  Conduit Street                     Plough Yard                  
41  Cork Mews                          Poland Street                
42  Cork Street                        Pollen Street                
43  Coventry Street                    Portland Mews                
44  Cross Street                       Portland Street              
45  Crown Court                        Princes Street (I)           
46  Dean Street                        Princes Street (II)          
47  Dover Street                       Princes Street (III)         
48  Duck Lane/Ham Square               Princes Street/Hanover Square
49  Dufours Place                      Pulteney Court (I)           
50  Edward Street                      Pulteney Court (II)          
51  Falconberg Court                   Queen Street (I)             
52  Falconberg Mews                    Queen Street (II)            
53  Fouberts Place                     Queen Street (III)           
54  Francis Street                     Queens Head Court            
55  Frith Street                       Rathbone Place               
56  George Court (I)                   Regent Street                
57  George Court (II)                  Regents Quadrant             
58  George Place (?)                   Richmond Buildings/Mews      
59  George Street                      Richmond Street              
60  George Yard                        Rupert Street                
61  Glasshouse Street                  Sackville Street             
62  Golden Place                       Saville Row                  
63  Golden Square                      Sherrard Street              
64  Grafton Street                     Ship Yard                    
65  Great Castle Street                Sidney Alley                 
66  Great Chapel Street                Silver Street                
67  Great Crown Court                  Smiths Court/Yard            
68  Great Marlborough Street           Soho Square                  
69  Great Pulteney Street              South Row                    
70  Great Windmill Street              St Anns Court                
71  Greek Street                       St Anns Place                
72  Green Dragon Yard                  St James Workhouse           
73  Greens Court                       St James's Market            
74  Ham Yard                           Sutton Street                
75  Hanover Street                     Swallow Place                
76  Hanway Street                      Swallow Street               
77  Haymarket                          Tent Court                   
78  Heddon Court                       Tichborne Street             
79  Heddon Street                      Titchfield Street            
80  Hollen Street                      Turks Head Yard              
81  Hopkins Street                     Tyler Court                  
82  Jermyn Street                      Tyler Street                 
83  John Street                        Tylers Court                 
84  Kemps Court                        Unknown-A1                   
85  King Street (I)                    Unknown-A2                   
86  King Street (II)                   Unknown-B                    
87  Kings Arms Yard                    Unknown-C                    
88  Leicester Street (I)               Upper James Street           
89  Leicester Street (II)              Upper John Street            
90  Lisle Street                       Upper Rupert Street          
91  Little Argyll Street               Vigo Street                  
92  Little Chapel Street               Vine Street                  
93  Little Crown Court                 Walkers Court                
94  Little Dean Street                 Wardour Mews                 
95  Little Marlborough Street          Wardour Street               
96  Little Pulteney Street             Warwick Street               
97  Little Windmill Street             Wellington Mews              
98  Lower James Street                 Wells Street                 
99  Lower John Street                  West Street                  
100 Lowndes Court                      Whitcomb Court               
101 Macclesfield Street                White Bear Yard              
102 Macclesfield Street/Gerrard Street William and Mary Yard        
103 Maddox Street                      Winsley Street               

Coordinate unit

The original map is 14.5 x 15.5 inches with a stated nominal scale of 30 inches per mile.

Dodson and Tobler write that “The scale of the source map is approx. 1:2000. Coordinate units are meters.” By my estimate, one unit on the map is approximately 177 feet or 54 meters per unit.2

Notes


  1. Streets with the same name were not an unusual occurrence. See Judith Flanders. 2012. The Victorian City: everyday life in Dickens’ London. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 57-58.↩︎

  2. According to Dodson and Tobler’s data, the length of Carnaby Street from its intersection with Great Marlborough to its intersection with Cross Street is 2.61 units. According to Google Maps, the approximate analog of that segment is the distance along parts of Great Marlborough Street and Carnaby Street between 19-21 Great Marlborough Street and 43 Carnaby Street (at Ganton Street): 463 ft. This translates into approximately 177 feet/unit or 54 meters/unit.↩︎