Welcome to the first update for February. Looking back, the first month of Webmaps has been a busy month with coverage gradually being increased. The webmaps now cover just over 500 km of the national network, and this is being steadily increased alongside other project work as time allows. Today’s update takes the NIMT coverage to Palmerston North and it should reach at least Marton next week, possibly even further depending on priorities.

Last week the Volumes site launched (it shows as Volumes on the menu at the top right of this page) and this site contains the static map format that was historically the main format of the maps. With Webmaps becoming the main format, the statics will still be produced as an alternative for users whose devices can’t run Webmaps and for offline use, and will also be inserted into PDF files for hardcopy and offline uses. However, they will not be updated as often as webmaps, which are much easier to maintain. The Volumes site is gradually having content added to it, beginning with Volumes 5 and 6, which were produced in the first quarter of 2020 and are fairly up to date, and previously produced older volumes.

Aerial photos of parts of Volume 6 and Volume 2 are being created and updated as well, and Volume 6 statics being updated with these sometime this year is possible, as well the aerials will be used to update Volume 2 on the webmaps and add historical aerial photos to webmaps on both of Volumes 2 and 6. It is known that there are a number of issues in a lot of the webmaps mainly in alignments of the rail tracks not matching the current aerial photos (Linz Basemap), which is selectable as a base layer in the web client. Note that the latest client update shows “Linz Basemap” near the top of the layer list and under this name rather than “Aerial Basemap”, whilst “Maps” has been renamed “Topographic”. The alignments used by default were obtained from Linz and the mistakes are being rectified as time permits. However in some cases, such as directly north of Otaki, there have in fact been track realignments which account for the differences, and these will be shown as such in the maps when they are updated in due course.