OpenStreetMap.org Gets Routing

An anonymous reader writes "Good news for OpenStreetMap: the main website now has A-to-B routing (directions) built in to the homepage! The OSM website offers directions which are powered by third-parties using OSM data, providing car, bike, and foot routing. OpenStreetMap has a saying: 'What gets rendered, gets mapped' – meaning that often you don't notice a bit of data that needs tweaking unless it actually shows up on the map image. It will make OpenStreetMap's data better by creating a virtuous feedback loop."

Comments

Now needs a better phone app

[Allen Zadr]

I've used Navit for phone routing, but it has no way to submit corrections. And the official osm app doesn't do offline routing.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Anonymous Coward]

This website will never be as good as GoogleMaps. It'll never happen. I don't even bother. I dig the whole open source concept but when it comes to actually getting me from point a to point b efficiently and safely I simply want something that works.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Anonymous Coward]

When I first used google maps, it directed me to drive over a sidewalk that was between two streets. Great job google maps!

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Anonymous Coward]

Guessing you're a motorist. For getting from point A to point B by bike, OSM kicks Google's ass. If I ask Google for bike directions it sends me up along a 70mph divided highway with no shoulders. No thanks.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[NotInHere]

I'm happy with osmand

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[NotInHere]

GoogleMaps will never have a sane license for their maps. When you edit google maps, you perhaps improve their map. But its their map then, not yours anymore. OSM map is everyone's. You instantly have access to all kinds of map data -- google maps will never be as good as OSM here. Want to generate a power grid of europe? if you have the knowledge, its just a command away.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not happy with osmand. Their address lookups require an internet connection? Lame.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[RDW]

Google's mapping products have been getting steadily worse for the last couple of years. On a phone, Maps 6 was the last great version, with My Maps and Latitude nicely integrated, half-decent offline caching, and sane road colouring (especially for, e.g., UK users). Now we have a dumbed-down app that's superficially prettier with the currently fashionable low-contrast look that's harder to read, poorer road colouring in various countries, Latitude swallowed by Google+, and My Maps pointlessly spun off into a separate app. The desktop version also has a trendier but largely poorer interface, and although the 'Classic' version remains for the moment, 'migrated' My Maps tracks and locations no longer work properly. Purely for offline use, the Nokia Here maps app is so much better it's embarrassing - on a phone, you can cache an entire country or US state in a form that's fully searchable and routable with turn by turn navigation, and doesn't expire.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no official osm app.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Anonymous Coward]

Want to generate a power grid of europe? if you have the knowledge, its just a command away.

So, what you're saying is OSM is the go-to tool for terrorists using decision support methodologies to focus future infrastructure attacks?

"OpenStreetMap.org: ISIS and al Qaeda approved! 9 out of 10 terrorists prefer OSM to the competition!"

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Anonymous Coward]

What version are you using? Here it doesn't require an internet connection.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[BasilBrush]

Great anecdote. Right here, right now, today, OSM believes my location is a country that's at the opposite side of the world from the one I actually am in.

None of the commercial services ever get this wrong for me these days. They all pinpoint me within a block.

That means OSM has fallen at the first hurdle. If it doesn't get the continent, let alone the country right, it won't recognise my locations when I type them in to the router.

Maybe I'll check back again in a few more years.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't think OpenStreetMap.org tries to guess your location.
After all it sets a cookie to remember what has been displayed last time you went there.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Anonymous Coward]

The "OsmAnd (offline)" navigation service has some incredibly inadequate data for "building" level navigation. State, Towns, Streets are ok but the buildings/addresses aren't there yet for the State data I have which, admittedly, is about 6 months old now. The web site seems to confirm this is still the current state. The bigger town nearby has several buildings on main street with addresses specified. That is basically it for a town of ~25k people.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[thetoadwarrior]

Sure if you only care about frivolous features and constant tinkering to make the experience worse.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[thetoadwarrior]

I'm not sure why anyone would contribute to Google maps. Who works for one of the world's largest corporations for free?

Re: Now needs a better phone app

[Anonymous Coward]

Terrorism meets meaningless business jargon!

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Jane Q. Public]

Great anecdote. Right here, right now, today, OSM believes my location is a country that's at the opposite side of the world from the one I actually am in.

None of the commercial services ever get this wrong for me these days. They all pinpoint me within a block.

It must be a failure of that "virtuous feedback loop" referred to by OP. :o)

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Jane Q. Public]

I'm not sure why anyone would contribute to Google maps. Who works for one of the world's largest corporations for free?

Anybody who uses Waze.

I used to use it because it was "open", community-sourced like OSM, and was NOT Google. Then Google acquired it, and made it known they would be using Waze data in their own maps.

It's been sitting idle in my phone ever since. But I bet an awful lot of people don't even know it changed hands.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[drinkypoo]

Well, if it occasionally works, then it's better than Garmin Viago, which always requires an internet connection to look up places. You can look at maps all day, and route from point to point, but you can't look anything up.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[gr8dude]

I've traveled to several countries in the past year and I've used Osmand (the version on F-droid) with great success - it is completely offline and routing works out of the box, as well as the address search.

The trick is that you have to download the offline maps first.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Askmum]

It does not require an internet connection but it has a stupid arbitrary distinction between "city" and "town" where when you search for a place it will first only search in its list of cities and you have to manually select to search further, and the search then becomes painfully slow. As if it's geared towards city users only.
It is a good navigation app, but it suffers from some bad mistakes and unwillingness to correct them. But ok, it's a one-man-job, or so I believe, so it is commendable it is at this level at all.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[TheRaven64]

Right here, right now, today, OSM believes my location is a country that's at the opposite side of the world from the one I actually am in.

Huh? OSM doesn't know anything about your location. If you're talking about the web page (OSM is a database, the web site is just one view on it), then it will ask your browser for location information if you click on the 'go to my location' button, otherwise it will show you the last location that you looked at. If you're using a mobile application, then it will use your GPS.

That means OSM has fallen at the first hurdle

The first hurdle for you in a map service is that the web page doesn't know your location? Odd. For me, it would be that it didn't allow me to have offline vector maps of a whole country when I'm travelling so that I don't run up roaming charges and here all of the solutions other than OSM fail. I guess it depends on how you use maps...

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[TheRaven64]

Same here. I don't understand the other poster's comment about addresses either - I've had no problem finding directions to a house number when in a country where I definitely don't want to enable data roaming. I have about 2GBs of maps on my phone - they're sufficiently small that I've not bothered deleting them.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Baloo Uriza]

I'm not aware of an official OSM app, however, there's Osmand~ from F-Droid, and it does offline routing just fine; I used to work as a field service engineer for a Unisys contractor and it was my primary means of navigation in a three-state area, mostly because Google Maps is horribly out of date anywhere but the 10 biggest metros and actually works offline.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Baloo Uriza]

I honestly can't remember the last time Google Maps was remotely right. But then again, it's been six years since I lived in Portland, and everywhere else I've been since then, Google's been somewhere between flat out wrong or just not available. And I haven't even left the US since 2009.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Baloo Uriza]

Weird thing is, almost everything Waze does, Scout by TeleNav does using open data.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Baloo Uriza]

No, it doesn't. However, offline address lookups only work if someone's actually put the addresses into the map. Consider doing that.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Baloo Uriza]

So go to osm.org and fix it.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Baloo Uriza]

It's not entirely arbitrary, anymore than the distinction is in reality. And it does help filter out irrelevant results if you end up having to figure it by nearest intersection.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[blind biker]

And the official osm app doesn't do offline routing.

Just use OSMAnd (the Android Open Street Maps app), which has a GREAT offline routing feature. PLUS it uses ector and not bitmap maps (Google Maps data is transferred as bitmap) so you can set the street font size to what you prefer. This is NOT possible with Google Maps, and likely it never will be. Just read the Google Discussion threads about inaccessibility of Google Maps for visually impaired people.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Jane Q. Public]

Waze uses open data too. The point wasn't that the Waze program doesn't use open data. It's that now YOUR personal data (who, what, where) is now being sent back to Google.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[BasilBrush]

Huh? OSM doesn't know anything about your location. If you're talking about the web page (OSM is a database, the web site is just one view on it)

By that moronic line of thought, the story's claim that OSM now supports routing is also wrong.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[TheRaven64]

You know, it helps if you read the entire sentence before replying.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[BasilBrush]

No, it was still a moronic point.

Re:Now needs a better phone app

[Baloo Uriza]

Waze license seems to disagree with you, as it explicitly states that the data is NOT open.

A decade behind the rest

[wired_parrot]

So OpenStreetMaps is only now adding a basic mapping feature that's been available in other sites for over 10 years now, and somehow we're supposed to get excited about it? To me this is only highlighting how far behind a lot of the open source software is compared to commercially available applications.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[Nicopa]

No. OpenStreetMap is more a data backend and its website is more oriented toward mappers than to regular users (although that is slowly changing). Routing services using OSM have been available for quite some time. OpenStreetMap is already ahead Google in many places where Google has broken and partial information.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[sacrilicious]

You're still allowed to get excited at the fact that it isn't google, so your travel plans remain in a silo separate from that whole thing... that's actually quite a good thing.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to MapQuest. This isnt about OpenSource being behind, its about rehashed ideas that keep looping back around. Now go watch the new Ghostbusters movie.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[fisted]

Who said you were supposed to get excited about it? It's nice to finally have it in OSM, is all. If you do want to get excited, compare the level of detail in OSM to that of "commercially available applications", especially in more populated areas.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[StripedCow]

When Linux was first introduced, your response was probably: sigh, another operating system. I've been using Windows for over 10 years now.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[seyyah]

It's not about the software (Dykstra's algorithm has been around for a long time), but about the data. What's impressive is that OSM has built a good enough network through community contributions that it can do routing.

PS Naturally routing isn't as simple as just Dykstra, but it'll still be the basis.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[Anonymous Coward]

One point is that the evolution of open source solutions will never regress -- while locked down solutions come and go due to companies coming and going, the open solutions could be around for 100 years or more, who knows? Every advance is permanent.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[Anonymous Coward]

It's available as an offline database. That feature is tough to get from most sites. If someone gets smart, this feature could be built into a replacement for streets and trips.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[Bite The Pillow]

I added streets to osm and google maps had the data a few weeks later. I know it my osm data because I didn't know one street name, left it as the initial unique identifier, and that's what showed up.

I assume google has a priority list, and uses navteq or the other atlas whatever before osm data, if present. If not, use osm.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[PPH]

It's not about the software but about the data.

That's odd. I've used OSM, converted and downloaded to a Garmin handheld and done routing with it for several years. Yes, there are a lot of data holes to be filled. But once people start doing routing on the web site, they can more easily contribute updates. At least that's what I took away from TFS.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[omnichad]

Every advance is permanent.

If the world they were mapping was static, then yes, that would make sense. An ever-changing reality requires an ever-evolving dataset.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[caseih]

No it certainly doesn't highlight that. As others have mention you seem to fundamentally misunderstand what openstreetmap is. Openstreetmap can enable things that other map providers simply can't, such as quick, crowd-sourced updating of maps in disaster areas, which enables apps to be built quickly for the purposes disaster assistance, emergency planning, as well as routing. In short, OpenStreetMap is a platform, not an app, though they do host apps as well, such as a map viewer and now a route system. Google Maps is a platform too, with routing built on top of that, but few users of Google maps understand the difference (and hence are not likely to need or want to use OpenStreetMap for anything). But Besides that, accurate mapping is something too important to trust solely to proprietary companies who then want to limit access (IE sell access) to what should be public information.

Routing can be based on top of this, and several third-parties do this (osmand is one that worked rather well for me while traveling in a foreign country).

I encourage all slashdotters to update the maps in their neighborhoods. With accurate mapping information, routing based on top of the maps becomes more accurate. It's a win for everyone.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[TheRaven64]

No, the new thing is that they're integrating it with the main site. Sites like OSRM and OpenRouteService have provided routing from OSM data for years, but now OSM is deploying their code in a central place. They have, for example, two implementations of route finding for cyclists. One gives about as good as Google Maps (i.e. crap), the other gives good routes. Because the database is open, a number of other groups have written routing applications and libraries (including some that run on mobile devices using offline maps, without needing Internet access - again, something that Google Maps doesn't do), so now there's a pool for the core OSM project to pull from incorporate on their site.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[Baloo Uriza]

Theft by Google seems to be a growing concern; many users have been suspecting this for some time now. You might want to contact data@openstreetmap.org or post to talk@openstreetmap.org if you can prove it, since Google clearly isn't falling within OSM's license right now if that's the case.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[Baloo Uriza]

Hell, if you go by Google Maps in the midwest, you'd have no idea things have changed and in some cases some entire interstates have moved since the 2000 Census before you encounter it in person. Google Maps is often in worse shape today than OSM was in 2006 outside the 10 biggest metros in the US.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[Baloo Uriza]

As others have mention you seem to fundamentally misunderstand what openstreetmap is. Openstreetmap can enable things that other map providers simply can't, such as quick, crowd-sourced updating of maps in disaster areas

It's rare I actually get to highlight a US example of this, since the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team seems to find it uninteresting, but I managed to source aerial imagery through the OK GIS community and get to mapping tornado damage after the Moore tornado within hours, and OSM was already putting out data to get traffic moving around it rather than through when I 35 went local traffic only for months after the storm.

Re:A decade behind the rest

[Bite The Pillow]

Do you have a specific link? Because the ones I saw basically said that Google is taking legal advantage of the Open part of Open Street Map.

Again, I submit data to an Open platform, and some asshole decides to Open the platform.

Is this not allowed? If not, could you post something more relevant?

OSM did progress

[hcs_$reboot]

Comparing OSM with Google Maps, OSM did progress a lot, compared to a couple of years ago. I find more readability in Google maps, but that's maybe only a matter of taste.

Re:OSM did progress

[Anonymous Coward]

I also find the default OSM rendering not as readable as Google Maps, which is why I usually use the MapQuest Openrendering: On the right side, click on the Layers button, and choose MapQuest Open.

Re:OSM did progress

[porjo]

+1 regarding readability. OSM default map style has a lot of room for improvement, but I'm confident that will happen in time. As others have mentioned, you can use 3rd party tiles such as MapQuest or Mapbox which look nicer. Another reason I usually prefer to use Google maps is speed. I live in Australia and there are no OSM tile caches here, so map loading can be sloooowww.

Re:OSM did progress

[Baloo Uriza]

Depends on which renderer you filter the data through. Fun fact, when Google Maps doesn't know where you are, it decides you want to look at the center of the universe, no joke. So, let's compare three different OSM renderings (OpenBusMap, Mapnik (the standard layer on osm.org), and MapQuest Open (the version you see on open.mapquest.com) against Google Maps in Google's favorite spot. Google just can't keep up...

OsmAnd

[pahles]

I'm a happy user of OsmAnd. It can do offline routing, shows which lanes to take, shows POIs and did I mention it is offline? There is a free and a paid version, the difference being the number of maps you can download.

Re:OsmAnd

[mrchaotica]

There is a free and a paid version, the difference being the number of maps you can download.

And, if I understand correctly, the F-Droid repository has a free version (named OsmAnd~) with the limitations removed so that it's equivalent to Google Play's paid version.

Re:OsmAnd

[Anonymous Coward]

That is correct, and even if you prefer the Google App Store unpaid version (perhaps because it is updated more quickly than the one from F-Droid), you can manually download as many map files as you want and Osmand will use them, if they're in the right folder on your phone. Still, if you can afford the paid app, that is the best of both worlds and supports the developers, so get that.

Re: OsmAnd

[Anonymous Coward]

After trying to OSMand from F-droid I find it to be excellent and no I don't need an internet connection to search an address. Now all I need to do is unlock my phone so I can put everything on the memory card.

Re:OsmAnd

[TheRaven64]

Yup. The free version in F-Droid is so nice that I donated to the project. I didn't want to pay to fund a crippled open source version, but after seeing how good the open source version is when built without the limitations, I was very happy to donate (more than the Google Play price) to the project.

Re:OsmAnd

[Baloo Uriza]

And the paid Osmand+ is the same as the free Osmand~ on F-Droid, with the exception of a single character in the name.

Good enough for me

[DrYak]

This website will never be as good as GoogleMaps. It'll never happen. {...} when it comes to actually getting me from point a to point b efficiently and safely I simply want something that works.

In my experience, the quality of maps available on OpenStreetMap is good enough (and sometime even better, they have better bike- and hike- trails, whereas Google concentrate all their efforts in making their maps the best ever for cars).

Navit provides a decent enough routing capability (and comes with extra data, like speed limitations, speed cameras, etc.)

So even if it's not Google-level quality (except for the hike & bike exception mentionned above), it's good enough for me to get around.

Of course, depending on where you live, "your mileage may vary". Here around (central europe), other netizent spend great effort fixing OSM and it has good quality data. (sometime better/more up to date than the paid-for GSM maps of our family car).
Some other place might be better (places that Google doesn't even care covering) or worse (region with less community involved in OSM).

So in other words, for me: I bothered to have a look at OSM, and already works at getting me from point a to point b. (Thanks to the fact that all my a and b points tend to lay in region with online communities paying attention to OSM) (even more when the path between a and b is non-car. Then OSM rocks).

Re:Good enough for me

[drinkypoo]

Of course, depending on where you live, "your mileage may vary". Here around (central europe), other netizent spend great effort fixing OSM and it has good quality data.

I now have a phone with sensitive modern GPS, so if I had a good Android app that would let me contribute without trying hard, I would run it. Is there something like this? If not, is there a project underway to make something like this, to which I might contribute somehow? I would like OSM to be useful in my area.

Re:Good enough for me

[Baloo Uriza]

Osmand~ on the F-Droid market is my preferred choice. Almost overfeatured bike/hike/car nav app that's got the groundwork in place to go transit, motorcycle and large vehicle as well in the future.

Terrible

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but openstreetmaps can't even find my place of employment given the full street address. Compared to something like google maps, it is terrible. With google I can give just the street name and it ends up close enough to navigate me there in less than a second. With other locations, google (and pretty much anything else but osm) can get by with just a business or street name and city.

To find my house, osm needs a ridiculous amount of information, such as my county. The default location on the map isn't even the correct continent for me - something easily determined by my IP address.

Re:Terrible

[Baloo Uriza]

I'm sorry, but openstreetmaps can't even find my place of employment given the full street address. Compared to something like google maps, it is terrible.

So go add it? Try expanding abbreviations?

With google I can give just the street name and it ends up close enough to navigate me there in less than a second. With other locations, google (and pretty much anything else but osm) can get by with just a business or street name and city.

To find my house, osm needs a ridiculous amount of information, such as my county. The default location on the map isn't even the correct continent for me - something easily determined by my IP address.

Places where you need that level of information to find something have the opposite problem with Google Maps. Google is unfuckwithably impossible to locate where you're trying to go. This is especially true in the US for addresses that have a house name instead of a house number. Which, if you've ever traveled around the reservations of the Five Civilized Tribes and their neighbors, is actually a pretty common problem (only further compounded by the fact that there's literally thousands of unnamed roads, and the roads that are named tend to recycle the same names in every town).

When is routing updated to reflect map changes?

[stonedown]

I modified a road in OSM to be one-way, because it is an exit only road from a gated community. Will this change be reflected in the OSM routing?

For the moment, the change is reflected on the map but not in the routing.

Re:When is routing updated to reflect map changes?

[AndrewBuck]

The different routers update on different schedules, but they generally take at least a day to do so. Redrawing the map to show an update only modifies the local area, whereas updating the routing graph can have large changes. I know work is being done to support incremental updates but I am not sure when this will be supported (and again each routing engine would do it on their own since they all work differently, they just pull down the same data from OSM). I know for OSRM they update once a day by rebuilding the entire routing graph from scratch and then dropping the old graph table and loading in the new one. Building the worldwide routing graph takes like 18 hours so they can only do it once a day currently.

-AndrewBuck

Re:When is routing updated to reflect map changes?

[Baloo Uriza]

If you did it right. If you did it wrong, it probably broke routing further. Routing engines often snapshot the data every 10-30 days (which is still more frequent than the 1-10 year snapshots commercial sources tend to do).

Re:When is routing updated to reflect map changes?

[stonedown]

Thanks. The editing tool is pretty sophisticated, so I think I did it right, but if not I'll fix it. :-)

I also added a "no left turn" restriction at the intersection, so that it matches the existing signage, and I modified all of the roads in the gated residential area to be private access roads.

Re:When is routing updated to reflect map changes?

[AndrewBuck]

Awesome work. This kind of feedback is exactly what OSM needs to become the best map. Right now there are places where it is better than other maps and places where it is worse, but it does not take very many people deciding to do what you just did to make it the best everywhere.

-AndrewBuck

Re:When is routing updated to reflect map changes?

[stonedown]

Thanks! OSM is pretty amazing.

Re:When is routing updated to reflect map changes?

[Baloo Uriza]

Awesome. I take it you went with the iD editor that loads by default when you hit Edit on the website? Also if you let me know your OSM ID, I can go take a look later when I get off work and doublecheck it.

Re:When is routing updated to reflect map changes?

[Baloo Uriza]

Thanks! OSM is pretty amazing.

First you're just sneaking edits of your neighborhood during a few minutes of downtime. Soon, you'll be up to 30, 40 changesets a day....