Hi David,

This is an interesting use case and actually there isn't a straightforward
way of doing it with vectors. In GRASS there's r.thin [1], but you need to
convert your data into raster format.

It may actually be more simple if you just code your model to use the road
network as is. Besides that, in all likelyhood the city council has also a
line network with road centres, it's a very usefull dataset in certain
tasks.

Regards,

Luís

[1] http://grass.osgeo.org/grass64/manuals/r.thin.html


On 11 July 2013 19:24, David Masad <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> This might end up being more of a GIS question than a MASON question, but
> I hope someone here has dealt with this before.
>
> I'm working on a model involving agents moving along an urban road system.
> My test case was DC, and it turns out that the DC road data on the city's
> website (http://1.usa.gov/1aei0L8) has the roads as polygons rather than
> lines. Is there a good technique or tool for turning polygonal road data
> into a network of linestrings?
>
> Thanks!
> -David
>
>
>