u/Astreon_dev

I've been sending Freedom of Information requests to London councils asking for their motorcycle parking bay data, then uploading the missing bays to OpenStreetMap.

So far: 240 from Camden (open data), 69 from Tower Hamlets (FOI), 313 from Lambeth (FOI), 171 from RBKC (FOI, with BNG coordinates converted via pyproj). Plus 4 from personal surveys. Total: 797 bays added.

The process: download council data, run a gap-finder script comparing council bays against Overpass, geocode any streets without GPS coordinates via Nominatim, spot-check 6 random bays on Google Maps, then upload via JOSM.

Spot-check accuracy has been 94-100% across all four boroughs. Council data is surprisingly reliable since they use it for enforcement.

The data powers a free motorcycle parking finder at parkmoto.london, but more importantly it's all on OSM for anyone to use.

Still waiting on FOI responses from Islington and Southwark. Happy to share the FOI template if anyone wants to try this approach for other data types.

Got tired of circling around looking for legal parking, so I built something.

ParkMoto (parkmoto.london) shows every motorcycle parking bay in London on one map. Green dots are free, yellow are paid. Tap a bay to get directions via Google Maps or Waze.

What it does:

- Shows 1,500+ motorcycle bays across London

- Tells you if a bay is free or paid (and how to pay)

- Borough-specific rules built in (Westminster charges £1/day, most others are free)

- Works on your phone, no app download needed

- No registration, no ads, no tracking

The data comes from OpenStreetMap and council datasets I got through FOI requests to Camden, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth, and RBKC. I've added 797 bays to OSM so far that weren't mapped before.

If you spot a bay that's missing, there's an "Add to OSM" button that lets you add it directly. Every bay you add shows up for the next rider within 30 minutes.

It's completely free and I'm not selling anything. Just a side project from a rider who parks in London daily.

Would appreciate any feedback. Also happy to answer questions about the FOI process if anyone wants to try it for their borough.

parkmoto.london