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I want to get the graph (Road Network) of Area of interest:

Lon/Lat - Left/Bottom = -93.28587,44.9674 and Right/Top=-93.25351,44.9855
Minneapolis, MN

Searching for a non-commercial source - aside from Open Street Map (OSM) - of a road dataset containing routing and network cost attributes.

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3  
This is pretty vague... can you be more specific? – blah238 Jun 14 '12 at 14:27
I just want the graph of a region containing the highways and roads inside that region. How can I accomplish this? – user31820 Jun 14 '12 at 14:33
4  
Even with that clarifying comment, user31820, it's hard to tell what you're looking for. Is this question about obtaining a dataset or about a procedure to extract features from a dataset? Or something else? And what precisely do you mean by "graph"? (This term has many quite different technical meanings in GIS and related fields, ranging from types of visual representations of data to abstract mathematical assemblies of vertices and edges.) – whuber♦ Jun 14 '12 at 15:14
Yeah obtaining a dataset defining the graph basically a list of edges their corresponding nodes and cost – user31820 Jun 14 '12 at 15:14
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Rather than try to clarify your question by responding with a little extra information each time someone tries to help, my recommendation would be to overhaul your original question to assist us to understand what you are hoping to find out. – PolyGeo Jun 15 '12 at 7:44
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2 Answers

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+25

I have found that searching numerous US State GIS agencies has yielded road information for download in .shp format free of charge.

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+1, I did exactly this, only I'd never ran into this in-Minnesota-UTM-15E-means-UTM-15N-problem before. Though, I took the lesson at face value after I found their UTM 15E files aligned properly with some UTM 15N files. ---perhaps I'll get schooled about this by someone. – elrobis Jul 17 '12 at 23:59
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I Googled "minnesota gis data", which took me to the Minnesota Geographic Data Clearinghose.

From there I selected Data, then under Data Catalogs, I selected Mn/DOT (i.e. Department of Transportation).

At the next webspace, under the GIS maps heading (right side, half-way down), I selected "MnDOT basemap data files".

Here, needing some additional reference info, I followed the Statewide Data link and downloaded the MN State Boundary, MN County Boundaries, Trunk Highway System (?), and Municipal Boundaries.

Next, I created a shapefile of your region of interest (RIO) using the Well Known Text (WKT) expression for your bounding box coordinates. The goal was to determine which county your ROI fell within (because the MnDOT high definition road data is split apart by county). That said, the WKT expression for your RIO is this:

POLYGON ((-93.28587 44.9674, -93.28587 44.9855, -93.25351 44.9855, -93.25351 44.9674, -93.28587 44.9674))

Finally, as you see in this screenshot, I was able to determine that your ROI fell in Hennepin County, Minnesota:

  • Dark Green = State Background
  • Light Green = Hennepin County
  • Orange Boundary = Minneapolis (visualized for convenience)
  • Yellow Boundary = your ROI.

ArcMap view with Hennepin County, Minneapolis Boundary, and custom ROI

Once I knew I needed the Hennepin County MnDOT data, I returned to the MnDOT basemap data files site mentioned earlier, selected County Based, then chose Hennepin County.

Do this, and you'll find a lonesome dataset just waiting for you. Or in other words, this exact file.

Having said all this, all I really did was follow the advice of @wstewart1958 and apply some GIS basics (admittedly the WKT stuff was probably over the top, but all you needed was a 4-point polygon defining your ROI to visualize the placement).

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