OSM is usually quite good. My colleagues simulated nationwide travel using OSM roads:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337332041_Agent-bas...
OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities
121–130 of 252 posts
Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities
#122As Google has lost it's sheen of benevolence over the last decade public knowledge projects like this become ever more appealing. Wikipedia proves they can be wildly successful all without capital investment and the perverse incentives that follow.
I used to think Google was the "good guy" by providing so many resources for free, but I've realized how they've exploited their market dominance by essentially manipulating the masses with their ad service. We need to move away from conglomerates and start using software that doesn't sell your soul to the devil.
You need to start paying for software because if you don't then you're the product.
Payment might include leasing out your infrastructure to the project until cryptos become viable for something other than ponzi schemes.
Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities
#123I've been looking to replace Google Maps with OSM on my smartphone. OSM itself is great, but I've been having a harder time finding a good app to use it with. Is anyone familiar with a good option? I mostly use a maps app for location searches and real-time GPS navigation, but offline maps and location sharing are nice-to-have features. I've been using OsmAnd and it's okay. The interface is pretty good. It supports o…
Magic Earth offers a more polished user experience for driving. Compared to OsmAnd, you gain address geolocation from a third-party source (not sure which), traffic alerts, and a dashcam feature, but you lose map editing functionality and many of the non-driving features in OsmAnd. Magic Earth is closed source, although it is free of charge and has no ads. It doesn't hurt to have both Magic Earth and OsmAnd installed.
Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities
#124Lyft has access to some pretty good data on where the roads actually are and if there are any closures. Looks like they are already contributing back, which is awesome. Something I've never heard being done, but could be very helpful for cities, is tracking the bumpiness of roads as a metric for road quality. The city could have near real time access to information on where the potholes are. I'd think they'd be willi…
The Lyft app could measure bumpiness in great detail by using the phone's accelerometer.
Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a fantastic idea. Thank you for sharing. I just checked a few trails that were missing in OSM and they all showed up as bright yellow on heatmap.
Strava even has their own fork of the OSM online editor iD[0], that uses the heatmap data to align (or "slide" [1]) paths to where people have been. I haven't used it in a while, it was pretty slow when I did and I don't know about licensing etc, but it looks like it still works. So if you want to add the trails you could try it out. [0] https://strava.github.io/iD [1] https://labs.strava.com/slide/
Slide unfortunately hasn't worked for years. Not long after Paul Mach, who created slide, left strava, there was that whole national security incident with the heat map.
The heat map was changed to hide military bases, etc, but it broke slide and no one cared enough to fix it.
Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities
#126I have been considering looking at OSM as "yet another data source" for my maps, but overall I run into the highly abstract issue of comparison: how do I know that two segments (one from say OSM, one from perhaps the county) reference the same stretch of street for comparison? Even the slightest nudge of a single coordinate point on the line would mean that they were not geometrically identical, so I would not know t…
One of the under-appreciated advantages OSM has here is that they have a fairly well enforced convention of using fully expanded abbreviations in addresses and street names. It's _much_ easier for automated comparison to replace `street` with `st` than it is to guess which one of many possible expansions to replace `st` with (is it saint? street? sankt? strasse?). This isn't foolproof but much of the "authoritative"…
Oh, cramming the names into a common format is something I have under my belt, but there are additional wrinkles and, worse yet, local bizarreness (aka "historical convention"). The names are the least of it, really, even if they are ... odd.
Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities
#127Good that OSM is accurate in cities as well, because in hiking, skiing, or even some ferry routes, OSM simply wins because that's often the only mapping provider to even have _any_ data. Some of my first hand experiences: - French GR-20 routes. Google maps are laughably empty, while OSM has you covered with almost the same information as the hiking maps you can buy on the trail. - Anapurna - similar to GR-20 situatio…
Is there an easy way to contribute from my phone? If I could just turn the GPS on and let it track my path I’d be able to contribute all of my random hikes that might not be on OSM.
You can also add details using https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete, it's super simple and almost like a game :)
Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Road directionality is variable over time. I'm not sure at what rate it changes but I bet it's a lot more than 1.1% per year.
Hmm, I’ve seen maybe a handful of two-way streets change to one-way over my entire life, and have never seen a one-way street change direction. If ~1% of streets changed direction every year, there’d be mass confusion and frustration.
There’s apparently a trend of converting one-way streets to two-way; cities have realized that one-way streets are a little too efficient, they increase bandwidth but often cities want you to stop and shop.
Indianapolis has been moving that direction, at least, but I don’t know how widespread it is.
Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple Maps has been OpenStreetMap for years.
Apple's old map was OpenStreetMap plus other sources but its new ones are proprietary. But its new ones are only available in the US, UK, Canada and Ireland.
I believe the old map was mostly TomTom (TeleAtlas) with a little bit of other sources sprinkled in.
Re: OpenStreetMap proven to be a highly accurate map in top US cities
#130OSM is lovely, except for the UI. It is way over complicated.