The above map (and this one) was produced using R and ggplot2 and serve to demonstrate just how sophisticated R visualisations can be. We are used to seeing similar maps produced with conventional GIS platforms or software such as Processing but I hadn’t yet seen one from the R community (feel free to suggest some in the comments). The map contains three layers: buildings, water and the journey segments. The most challenging aspect was to change the standard line ends in geom_segment from “butt” to “round” in order that the lines appeared continuous and not with “cracks” in, see below.

I am grateful to Hadley and the rest of the ggplot2 Google Group for the solution. You can see it here. From this point I layered the plots using the geom_polygon() command for the buildings and water bodies and my new function geom_segment2() for the journey segments- these were simply the start and end latitudes and longitudes for each node in the road network and the number of times a cyclist passed between them. I have included the code below
#Code supplied by james cheshire Feb 2012 #load packages and enter development mode library('devtools') dev_mode() library(ggplot2) library(proto)

#if your map data is a shapefile use maptools
library(maptools)
gpclibPermit()

#create GeomSegment2 function
GeomSegment2 objname <- “geom_segment2″
draw if (is.linear(coordinates)) {
return(with(coord_transform(coordinates, data, scales),
segmentsGrob(x, y, xend, yend, default.units=”native”,
gp = gpar(col=alpha(colour, alpha), lwd=size * .pt,
lty=linetype, lineend = “round”),
arrow = arrow)
))
}
}})

geom_segment2 “identity”, position = “identity”, arrow = NULL, …) {
GeomSegment2$new(mapping = mapping, data = data, stat = stat,
position = position, arrow = arrow, …)
}

#load data stlat/stlong are the start points elat/elong are the end points of the lines
lon names(lon)<-c(“stlat”, “stlon”, “elat”, “elong”, “count”)

#load spatial data. You need to fortify if loaded as a shapefile
water built

#This step removes the axes labels etc when called in the plot.
xquiet yquiet<-scale_y_continuous(“”, breaks=NA)
quiet<-list(xquiet, yquiet)

#create base plot
plon1

#ready the plot layers
pbuilt<-c(geom_polygon(data=built, aes(x=long, y=lat, group=group), colour= “#4B4B4B”, fill=”#4F4F4F”, lwd=0.2))
pwater<-c(geom_polygon(data=water, aes(x=long, y=lat, group=group), colour= “#708090″, fill=”#708090″))

#create plot
plon2

plon2