Open US GPS Data?

tobiasly writes "I read an article today about a map error on the popular Garmin GPS devices which often leads to truckers in a particular town becoming trapped. From my own experience, every electronic map I've ever seen (Google, Mapquest, my Mio GPS) has the layout of my neighborhood completely and frustratingly wrong. A quick search turned up only one open-source mapping project, but it's for New Zealand only. Why are there no comparable projects in the U.S. or elsewhere? Obviously such a project would need a good peer-review/moderation/trust system but I'd gladly put in the time necessary to drive around town with my GPS in "tracking" mode, then upload, tag, and verify my local data. Has anyone with more technical knowledge in maps and auto-routing looked more into this? Are there technical limitations to such a project? Should the government subsidize a project to create open, free, up-to-date electronic maps? Surely there is a public benefit available from such a project."

Comments

open street map?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

Re:open street map?

[TheRaven64]

Being able to distinguish a bike path from a highway is significant Are you looking at the same OpenStreetMap as me? I just looked up the area around my house on OSM and Google Maps. OSM has more accurate mapping of the extents of the park (Google Maps is just plain wrong here). It also shows footpaths through the park (as dotted lines - Google doesn't show them at all) and indicates the different road types correctly (Google uses nonstandard colouring for roads) and shows roads inside the university campus, where Google just shows a grey blob. OSM also shows the hospitals and carparks correctly (sadly not the pubs). When it comes to road names, both have some that the other lacks (neither has complete coverage, but both have all of the major ones).

Re:open street map?

[ageforce_]

I could help that project by uploading my route tracks but what if I use mapsource (garmin software) to look up the road name am I infringing on something?

Yes. Unfortunately you are not allowed to do that. Map-vendors are protecting themselves against copying by deliberately introducing errors. See for example http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Copyright_Easter_Eggs

Re:TomTom MapShare

[Laughing Pigeon]

Try TomTom MapShare.

Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with an "open source project". It is more like:

1. Make something that is so-so.

2. Profit!

3. Let the people who pay a lot of money for this so-so product do work for You without paying them for it. These users will take Your product from the so-so stadium and turn it into a good product.

4. Even more Profit! without any costs.

Reminds me a bit of cddb... What the OP wants is something like Freedb.

Re:Frustrating

[Kagura]

Unfortunately the same bad data keeps getting recycled everywhere, because companies are too lazy to verify things.

I think you are underestimating just how many roads there are in the US.

Source: National Highway System (United States)
The National Highway System (NHS) of the United States comprises approximately 160,000 miles (256,000 kilometers) of roadway, including the Interstate Highway System as well as other roads, which are important to the nation's economy, defense, and mobility.

Further down in the same article:
The 160,000 miles of NHS include only 4% of the nation's roads, but they carry more than 40% of all highway traffic, 75% of heavy truck traffic, and 90% of tourist traffic.

That's a lot of roads. Stupid lazy companies... :)

Open Source UK GPS Data

[killthebunny]

We have been collecting GPS positions at 10 second intervals since we began operations in London in 2004 (we're a courier company with a technology twist). We have collected 173 million positions on a 24/7 basis (growing by about 1 million per day) across our bicycle, motorbike, and van fleet. We have been donating to OpenStreetMap for years and have released our data for noncommercial use via a public API http://api.ecourier.co.uk/ under a CC license. Have fun!

No? There are commercial applications...

[Lord Satri]

I disagree. OSM is very useful in many areas, including where it is hard to find maps (try Baghdad for example). With the recent addition of TIGER data for the whole U.S., OSM became useful even in the U.S.

this project is lllloooooonnnnggg ways off from being useful everywhere This is obviously not true when considering there have been commercial applications of OSM for a long time (Isle of Wight - October 2006). See also this related wrap-up entry.

I am amongst the ones who believe we're only seeing the beginning of OSM everywhere. Contrary to your comment, I believe it is happening and will not take that long to reach some level of overall maturity. As to why is doesn't need an army of volunteers? Because, as done with the TIGER dataset, datasets are directly piped into OSM, as done in the Netherlands last year.