7 ms·

It's time cyclists discovered OpenStreetMaps. The cyclist community, as far as I can see (it's just a mode of transportation for me, so I'm not part of it), has

by Vinnl 7y ago

It's time cyclists discovered OpenStreetMaps. The cyclist community, as far as I can see (it's just a mode of transportation for me, so I'm not part of it), has been doing an excellent job of making sure cycling routes are properly mapped there. Doesn't solve the Street View problem, but you're really missing out if you haven't tried it for navigation. Even in the Netherlands, it's often better than Google Maps. And it can serve as the basis for apps building on top of it like https://cycle.travel/ https://cycle.travel/.

dubcanada 7y ago
I have to agree, this instance that "Google" has to do better is silly. There are alternatives that are dedicated to cycling and mapping of cycling routes. Why not use one of them? Nobody needs a single entity corporation to do everything for them, it's really time people see that there is shopping experience besides Amazon and search/map experiences besides Google.
- imgabe 7y ago
  Why shouldn't Google do it? We should want as many people as possible to cycle. It's healthier, reduces traffic, no pollution. Google maps is the default option for most people. Why would we want to make it harder for people to start cycling by forcing them to hunt down some specialist app that they don't even know exists? Why not just have the information in the app they're already using?
  - gumby 7y ago
    Because as “technology”* becomes infrastructure it’s better off that it transition (via growth) into public hands. And OSM (and Wikipedia and..) demonstrate that “public hands” doesn’t automatically mean “government ownership” especially with transnational resources. * in the general sense, not just today’s sense, like roads, bridges, power, water etc.
  - _jal 7y ago
    Google can do whatever they want. The point is that there's a great resource already there. I have no reference to hand agreeing with me, but somehow I suspect that Google Maps is not the biggest barrier between Joe Commuter and the bicycle.
Fricken 7y ago
A lot of cycling routes are obscure and labyrinthine, meaning you have to constantly check your phone to ensure you aren't lost. While riding, and in direct daylight I have to stop to be able to read the map. It ends up taking a lot of time. I wish cities were more clear about signage. I experienced obscure and labyrinthine bike routes in my own city, and I usually bring a bike with me when travelling to other cities and have experienced the same thing pretty much everywhere. The thing I would much prefer is clear signage. The lack of it is common.
- gregkerzhner 7y ago
  My favorite biking accessory is my Quadlock - https://www.quadlockcase.com/ https://www.quadlockcase.com/. Having my phone securely mounted on my handlebars is a game changer. If I want maps, I have those up. On longer rides, I have my phone playing music directly from the phone speaker which I actually like more than using headphones. I also have my heart rate monitor connected to my phone so I can see those stats if I want them. My bike feels like a Tesla with a touchscreen on it.
  - gkolli 7y ago
    This looks really neat! How does screen brightness/battery life/sound quality compare whilst biking? Have been keen to try something like this.
    - 8ytecoder 7y ago
      A battery pack case + Quad-lock is what I used to use. I got a Garmin for the battery life. But I didn't find that useful for navigation - slow and really hard to set destination and doesn't always pick the safest bike path (Google isn't great either but in my area it consistently chooses inner bike path over path that run through multi-lane roads).
- simonbr 7y ago
  Totally! All too often cars have a direct route from point A to point B while cyclists have to wind through complicated, low-speed side roads with little or no signage to help. That said, I think Portland has done a great job with the signage part of this problem. Signs like [1] are present at just about every intersection of bike routes, giving directions to neighborhoods and landmarks. And when a bike route dog-legs, directional "sharrow" symbols [2] are clearly visible on the road surface. [1]: https://nacto.org/case-study/bikeway-network-signage-in-portland-or/ https://nacto.org/case-study/bikeway-network-signage-in-port... [2]: https://nacto.org/publication/urban-bikeway-design-guide/bicycle-boulevards/offset-intersections/ https://nacto.org/publication/urban-bikeway-design-guide/bic...
brnt 7y ago
I'm also Dutch, and even for cars Google Maps isn't the best. Traffic info maybe, but routing? Here Maps does both, with better time estimates in my experience.
Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
cycle.travel's my project - thanks for the mention! Always happy to hear suggestions and ideas. It uses OpenStreetMap data plus a heavily customised instance of OSRM (Open Source Routing Machine, a fast routeplanning engine). The routing "profile", which calculates the weighting, is a few thousand lines of code alone, never mind various other stuff like custom elevation calculations. It's a great project to work on, and the best reward of all is when people plan multi-day tours with it and say how much they've enjoyed the route.
- jswag 7y ago
  Bookmarked! While it seemed unable to locate my home address for some reason, when I manually dragged the pin it planned a route from my work to my home nearly identical to the one it took me several weeks of harrowing journeys with Google Maps and looking at PDFs of bike routes to find. This will DEFINITELY come in handy in the future!
- ccvannorman 7y ago
  cycle.travel does not work on iOS. Loaded page, green popup, Starting from: cycling to: I filled these out and pressed Find Route, nothing happens. Tried selecting Circular route, press Find Route, nothing happens
  - Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
    Curious - works for me but would like to debug! Could you ping me the start/end points you're entering? (info@cycle.travel if you don't want to post them here.)
    - soperj 7y ago
      same thing happened to me on the home page (linux, firefox 66), but the actual map pages works great.
  - Poiesis 7y ago
    Works for me on iOS 13.4. Even have 1Blocker installed; didn't have to disable. Edit: This looks pretty great, but I should probably point out that it turned my 5.5 mile commute into a 8.5 mile one. Realize it's probably trying to avoid larger streets; Hope this is or becomes configurable.
floatingatoll 7y ago
As a cyclist, is there an app I can install that simply has “start recording” and “stop recording” and lets me trim my off the start and end, so that I can contribute my cycling path data to OSM without having to curate it further? The set of people who would happily upload cycling data minus their precise start/endpoint is probably 1000x larger than the set of people who enjoy map curation in their free time, but I’m not sure what solution I can present to bicyclist friends that would let them contribute.
- 43920 7y ago
  Just having a trace of your route probably isn't very useful in a lot of cases, since it's going to be mostly on roads that are already mapped. Instead, you'd probably want to map the actual paths, in which case you can view your GPS trace in the editor to map from without having to share it publicly. The Strava heatmap is also licensed for usage in OSM, and in a lot of areas it has pretty good coverage of bike paths already (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Strava https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Strava).
  - floatingatoll 7y ago
    How many bike paths have been added to OSM as a result of the Strava heatmap identifying them?
    - 43920 7y ago
      I don't think there's any exact numbers. You can search for changesets that have Strava listed as a source [1], but that doesn't mean the Strava data was actually used. [1] https://osmcha.org/?filters={"source"%3A[{"label"%3A"strava"%2C"value"%3A"strava"}] https://osmcha.org/?filters={"source"%3A[{"label"%3A"strava"...}
      - floatingatoll 7y ago
        Thanks! Note that the link doesn't seem to work at all for me :( But I'm happy to see that someone is drawing the connections from the data somehow.
andrewaylett 7y ago
Slightly surprised no-one's mentioned https://www.cyclestreets.net/ https://www.cyclestreets.net/ yet. It does have photographs of many of the segments -- see https://www.cyclestreets.net/journey/68844717/#balanced https://www.cyclestreets.net/journey/68844717/#balanced for an example. https://www.opencyclemap.org/ https://www.opencyclemap.org/ is also pretty useful.
nailer 7y ago
Can I get turn-by-turn directions for a bicycle trip, sticking to bike paths, in OSM? I know I can find out by trying different apps but I appreciate you potentially saving me time. Thanks!
- Aachen 7y ago
  Not to be pedantic, but OSM is just data, you're asking whether there exists software that can do this. (You might for example ask in the OsmAnd Telegram chat whether this can be done with OsmAnd.) I don't know if there is any that sticks to only cycle paths, but there is definitely software that'll avoid car-only roads like highways, try to avoid big roads where reasonable, and prefers cycle paths where available, such as OsmAnd (you can also configure routing preferences like shortest way, prefer byways, configuring your cycling speed, using elevation data...). For turn by turn instructions, that seems to be pretty standard and OsmAnd can do this too. Have you tried any software that uses OSM data?
  - nailer 7y ago
    Well yes, that's the point, I don't know what app to install. Sounds like OsmAnd is a good start, cheers.
- makepanic 7y ago
  I made some bicycle trips with maps.me [1] which uses OSM data and worked pretty well. [1] - https://maps.me/en/download/ https://maps.me/en/download/
Waterluvian 7y ago
I was going to say. This is a GIS problem, not a Google problem. OpenStreetMaps is a phenomenal way to approach this problem. Distilled down, you care about different properties of your spatial datasets. Cars don't so much care about topography, but you do. That data is all there.
Rebelgecko 7y ago
It looks like OSM has two builtin bike routing algorithms you can use, and at least for a few routes I tried they both seem significantly worse than what Google Maps does (Big fat disclaimer: I work at Google, although not on anything related to this). The OSM directions for biking to my office involve going through a decommissioned oil field (fenced off, so the road isn't actually passable) and a swamp. What's weird is that it looks like OSM knows the road is closed but still tries to route me through it. Google's directions for the same destination aren't perfect either but at least they'd get me to my destination (they include a short jaunt down an eroding hillside where I have to walk my bike because the sand is so loose). That cycle.travel site looks really promising. They give the same route as Google Maps, but do a much better job explaining that part of it is an unpaved dirt trail.
- Reason077 7y ago
  OSM itself is really just the base map. A huge, editable database of map data. Anyone can build apps that make use of that data - the route planner you used is just one of many. The routing errors you describe could be issues with the particular route planner you used, or they could be issues with the OSM data itself. Some parts of the world are indeed better mapped than others (this is also true of Google Maps), but the great thing about OSM is if you find an error you can fix it yourself in seconds. Just click that “edit” button right there in the OSM interface...
- upofadown 7y ago
  >...fenced off, so the road isn't actually passable... Is that actually true if you are on a bike? In my city OSM is a good source of unofficial bikeways. What does the cycle layer have to say?
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    I'd have to toss my bike over a barbed wire fence, or maybe cut the lock. The service road winds between a bunch of natural gas storage tanks so I don't think they'd willingly let me in. There's a "≠" symbol where the service road is fenced off, which I assume means impassible but "≠" isn't on the map legend so I'm not sure. When I hit the cycle layer, the ≠ symbol goes away
lowwave 7y ago
maps.me an offline map also have pretty good cycling routes.

by Vinnl 7y ago

dubcanada 7y ago

I have to agree, this instance that "Google" has to do better is silly. There are alternatives that are dedicated to cycling and mapping of cycling routes. Why not use one of them? Nobody needs a single entity corporation to do everything for them, it's really time people see that there is shopping experience besides Amazon and search/map experiences besides Google.

imgabe 7y ago
Why shouldn't Google do it? We should want as many people as possible to cycle. It's healthier, reduces traffic, no pollution. Google maps is the default option for most people. Why would we want to make it harder for people to start cycling by forcing them to hunt down some specialist app that they don't even know exists? Why not just have the information in the app they're already using?
- gumby 7y ago
  Because as “technology”* becomes infrastructure it’s better off that it transition (via growth) into public hands. And OSM (and Wikipedia and..) demonstrate that “public hands” doesn’t automatically mean “government ownership” especially with transnational resources. * in the general sense, not just today’s sense, like roads, bridges, power, water etc.
- _jal 7y ago
  Google can do whatever they want. The point is that there's a great resource already there. I have no reference to hand agreeing with me, but somehow I suspect that Google Maps is not the biggest barrier between Joe Commuter and the bicycle.

Fricken 7y ago

A lot of cycling routes are obscure and labyrinthine, meaning you have to constantly check your phone to ensure you aren't lost. While riding, and in direct daylight I have to stop to be able to read the map. It ends up taking a lot of time. I wish cities were more clear about signage. I experienced obscure and labyrinthine bike routes in my own city, and I usually bring a bike with me when travelling to other cities and have experienced the same thing pretty much everywhere. The thing I would much prefer is clear signage. The lack of it is common.

gregkerzhner 7y ago
My favorite biking accessory is my Quadlock - https://www.quadlockcase.com/ https://www.quadlockcase.com/. Having my phone securely mounted on my handlebars is a game changer. If I want maps, I have those up. On longer rides, I have my phone playing music directly from the phone speaker which I actually like more than using headphones. I also have my heart rate monitor connected to my phone so I can see those stats if I want them. My bike feels like a Tesla with a touchscreen on it.
- gkolli 7y ago
  This looks really neat! How does screen brightness/battery life/sound quality compare whilst biking? Have been keen to try something like this.
  - 8ytecoder 7y ago
    A battery pack case + Quad-lock is what I used to use. I got a Garmin for the battery life. But I didn't find that useful for navigation - slow and really hard to set destination and doesn't always pick the safest bike path (Google isn't great either but in my area it consistently chooses inner bike path over path that run through multi-lane roads).
simonbr 7y ago
Totally! All too often cars have a direct route from point A to point B while cyclists have to wind through complicated, low-speed side roads with little or no signage to help. That said, I think Portland has done a great job with the signage part of this problem. Signs like [1] are present at just about every intersection of bike routes, giving directions to neighborhoods and landmarks. And when a bike route dog-legs, directional "sharrow" symbols [2] are clearly visible on the road surface. [1]: https://nacto.org/case-study/bikeway-network-signage-in-portland-or/ https://nacto.org/case-study/bikeway-network-signage-in-port... [2]: https://nacto.org/publication/urban-bikeway-design-guide/bicycle-boulevards/offset-intersections/ https://nacto.org/publication/urban-bikeway-design-guide/bic...

brnt 7y ago

I'm also Dutch, and even for cars Google Maps isn't the best. Traffic info maybe, but routing? Here Maps does both, with better time estimates in my experience.

Doctor_Fegg 7y ago

cycle.travel's my project - thanks for the mention! Always happy to hear suggestions and ideas. It uses OpenStreetMap data plus a heavily customised instance of OSRM (Open Source Routing Machine, a fast routeplanning engine). The routing "profile", which calculates the weighting, is a few thousand lines of code alone, never mind various other stuff like custom elevation calculations. It's a great project to work on, and the best reward of all is when people plan multi-day tours with it and say how much they've enjoyed the route.

jswag 7y ago
Bookmarked! While it seemed unable to locate my home address for some reason, when I manually dragged the pin it planned a route from my work to my home nearly identical to the one it took me several weeks of harrowing journeys with Google Maps and looking at PDFs of bike routes to find. This will DEFINITELY come in handy in the future!
ccvannorman 7y ago
cycle.travel does not work on iOS. Loaded page, green popup, Starting from: cycling to: I filled these out and pressed Find Route, nothing happens. Tried selecting Circular route, press Find Route, nothing happens
- Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
  Curious - works for me but would like to debug! Could you ping me the start/end points you're entering? (info@cycle.travel if you don't want to post them here.)
  - soperj 7y ago
    same thing happened to me on the home page (linux, firefox 66), but the actual map pages works great.
- Poiesis 7y ago
  Works for me on iOS 13.4. Even have 1Blocker installed; didn't have to disable. Edit: This looks pretty great, but I should probably point out that it turned my 5.5 mile commute into a 8.5 mile one. Realize it's probably trying to avoid larger streets; Hope this is or becomes configurable.

floatingatoll 7y ago

As a cyclist, is there an app I can install that simply has “start recording” and “stop recording” and lets me trim my off the start and end, so that I can contribute my cycling path data to OSM without having to curate it further? The set of people who would happily upload cycling data minus their precise start/endpoint is probably 1000x larger than the set of people who enjoy map curation in their free time, but I’m not sure what solution I can present to bicyclist friends that would let them contribute.

43920 7y ago
Just having a trace of your route probably isn't very useful in a lot of cases, since it's going to be mostly on roads that are already mapped. Instead, you'd probably want to map the actual paths, in which case you can view your GPS trace in the editor to map from without having to share it publicly. The Strava heatmap is also licensed for usage in OSM, and in a lot of areas it has pretty good coverage of bike paths already (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Strava https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Strava).
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  How many bike paths have been added to OSM as a result of the Strava heatmap identifying them?
  - 43920 7y ago
    I don't think there's any exact numbers. You can search for changesets that have Strava listed as a source [1], but that doesn't mean the Strava data was actually used. [1] https://osmcha.org/?filters={"source"%3A[{"label"%3A"strava"%2C"value"%3A"strava"}] https://osmcha.org/?filters={"source"%3A[{"label"%3A"strava"...}
    - floatingatoll 7y ago
      Thanks! Note that the link doesn't seem to work at all for me :( But I'm happy to see that someone is drawing the connections from the data somehow.

andrewaylett 7y ago

Slightly surprised no-one's mentioned https://www.cyclestreets.net/ https://www.cyclestreets.net/ yet. It does have photographs of many of the segments -- see https://www.cyclestreets.net/journey/68844717/#balanced https://www.cyclestreets.net/journey/68844717/#balanced for an example. https://www.opencyclemap.org/ https://www.opencyclemap.org/ is also pretty useful.

nailer 7y ago

Can I get turn-by-turn directions for a bicycle trip, sticking to bike paths, in OSM? I know I can find out by trying different apps but I appreciate you potentially saving me time. Thanks!

Aachen 7y ago
Not to be pedantic, but OSM is just data, you're asking whether there exists software that can do this. (You might for example ask in the OsmAnd Telegram chat whether this can be done with OsmAnd.) I don't know if there is any that sticks to only cycle paths, but there is definitely software that'll avoid car-only roads like highways, try to avoid big roads where reasonable, and prefers cycle paths where available, such as OsmAnd (you can also configure routing preferences like shortest way, prefer byways, configuring your cycling speed, using elevation data...). For turn by turn instructions, that seems to be pretty standard and OsmAnd can do this too. Have you tried any software that uses OSM data?
- nailer 7y ago
  Well yes, that's the point, I don't know what app to install. Sounds like OsmAnd is a good start, cheers.
makepanic 7y ago
I made some bicycle trips with maps.me [1] which uses OSM data and worked pretty well. [1] - https://maps.me/en/download/ https://maps.me/en/download/

Waterluvian 7y ago

I was going to say. This is a GIS problem, not a Google problem. OpenStreetMaps is a phenomenal way to approach this problem. Distilled down, you care about different properties of your spatial datasets. Cars don't so much care about topography, but you do. That data is all there.

Rebelgecko 7y ago

It looks like OSM has two builtin bike routing algorithms you can use, and at least for a few routes I tried they both seem significantly worse than what Google Maps does (Big fat disclaimer: I work at Google, although not on anything related to this). The OSM directions for biking to my office involve going through a decommissioned oil field (fenced off, so the road isn't actually passable) and a swamp. What's weird is that it looks like OSM knows the road is closed but still tries to route me through it. Google's directions for the same destination aren't perfect either but at least they'd get me to my destination (they include a short jaunt down an eroding hillside where I have to walk my bike because the sand is so loose). That cycle.travel site looks really promising. They give the same route as Google Maps, but do a much better job explaining that part of it is an unpaved dirt trail.

Reason077 7y ago
OSM itself is really just the base map. A huge, editable database of map data. Anyone can build apps that make use of that data - the route planner you used is just one of many. The routing errors you describe could be issues with the particular route planner you used, or they could be issues with the OSM data itself. Some parts of the world are indeed better mapped than others (this is also true of Google Maps), but the great thing about OSM is if you find an error you can fix it yourself in seconds. Just click that “edit” button right there in the OSM interface...
upofadown 7y ago
>...fenced off, so the road isn't actually passable... Is that actually true if you are on a bike? In my city OSM is a good source of unofficial bikeways. What does the cycle layer have to say?
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  I'd have to toss my bike over a barbed wire fence, or maybe cut the lock. The service road winds between a bunch of natural gas storage tanks so I don't think they'd willingly let me in. There's a "≠" symbol where the service road is fenced off, which I assume means impassible but "≠" isn't on the map legend so I'm not sure. When I hit the cycle layer, the ≠ symbol goes away

lowwave 7y ago

maps.me an offline map also have pretty good cycling routes.