RoamAble

RoamAble is a full-stack accessibility routing app built for NewHacks 2025. It helps users search Toronto locations, view accessibility-focused place information, and generate walking routes that prefer wheelchair-passable sidewalk segments.

Why This Exists

Most maps optimize for speed or distance. RoamAble optimizes for accessibility signals such as curb conditions, sidewalk presence, surface quality, width, incline, and wheelchair-related OpenStreetMap tags. The backend turns sidewalk GeoJSON into a scored graph, then routes over that graph with accessibility penalties.

Tech Stack

• Frontend: React, Vite, Leaflet, React Leaflet, Supabase
• Backend: Node.js, Express, OpenStreetMap Nominatim, Overpass API, osmtogeojson
• Data: OpenStreetMap/OpenSidewalks-style sidewalk GeoJSON and processed accessibility segment JSON

Run Locally

Install and start the backend:

cd back_end
npm install
npm run dev

The API runs on http://localhost:3000 by default. Health check:

curl http://localhost:3000/health

Install and start the frontend in another terminal:

cd front_end
npm install
cp .env.example .env
npm run dev

The frontend usually runs on http://localhost:5173.

Environment Variables

The frontend reads Vite environment variables from front_end/.env:

VITE_API_BASE_URL=http://localhost:3000/api
VITE_SUPABASE_URL=https://your-project.supabase.co
VITE_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY=your-supabase-anon-key

Supabase anon keys are client-exposed by design, but they are still kept out of source control so the sample is easy to configure for a different project.

The backend can optionally use:

PORT=3000
ALLOWED_ORIGIN=http://localhost:5173
OSM_USER_AGENT=RoamAble/1.0 (your-email@example.com)

Data Notes

This repository includes a small downtown Toronto sidewalk sample so the routing pipeline has data without making the code sample unnecessarily large. The sample is focused on the main demo area around City Hall, Eaton Centre, Union Station, Harbourfront, and the ROM area. To regenerate fuller Toronto coverage:

cd back_end
npm run fetch:opensidewalks
npm run process:accessibility

The fetch script uses Overpass API data for a Toronto bounding box, converts it to GeoJSON, and the processing script scores each segment into back_end/data/processed/accessible_segments.json.

API Overview

• GET /api/map/search?query=... searches places through OpenStreetMap Nominatim.
• GET /api/map/reverse?lat=...&lon=... reverse geocodes coordinates.
• POST /api/map/location-details returns normalized location metadata.
• POST /api/routes/walking returns an accessibility-aware walking route.
• POST /api/routes/transit is scaffolded for multimodal routing and currently falls back to walking.
• POST /api/routes/navigate accepts location names or coordinates and returns a route envelope.

Current Limitations

• The sample data is downtown Toronto-focused and intentionally small for reviewability.
• Transit routing is scaffolded but not fully implemented with GTFS or service alerts yet.
• Accessibility quality depends on available OpenStreetMap/OpenSidewalks tags, so some segments have low-confidence scores.