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Lyft 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

Lyft 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 willing to pay for it.

mqus 6y ago
The wiki states that this data type is being proposed: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Surface_Quality https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Surfac...
- qwertay 6y ago
  Says the proposal is abandoned in 2011. The thing is OSM does not deal with real time data, the general rule is if the data is likely to change within the next month it doesn't go in OSM. A lot of OSM apps and servers cache the OSM dataset so anything like a road closed for one day would be stale before it even reached users. Thats one of the big issues with OSM though, they have an attitude of "Thats not my problem, it should go in another dataset" but then no one actually has an alternative place to put it so users just miss out.
  - berkes 6y ago
    There are people working on layering the data better. I was at a talk about this at two State of the Map conferences. I don't have links or names ready, on mobile, sorry. The idea, in my words, is to have a standard on how to link between layers: how to merge them, so to say. That way, a routing app for a car would only need the roads and their features layers. But the search engine for tourists needs the poi layer and not all the road details. A 'live' layer for e.g. traffic density could then be a neat commercial product for OSM consumers. But without standards to link your layer to, say, the OSM streets, it is almost impossible to offer and process such a layer.
blt 6y ago
The Lyft app could measure bumpiness in great detail by using the phone's accelerometer.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tauntz 6y ago
I did a prototype for that idea back in the J2ME days when the first phones came out that had accelerometers. It works surprisingly well, provided you have lots of data (multiple cars driving through the same route to average out any random fluctuations due to driving style etc). There were two issues: 1) It was way too early for this idea as the devices that had the HW for it were rather rare 2) I had no killer app that would entice people to install and run the app. There were no app-taxi companies at the time and just telling people that "please download and open that app when you are driving to help the local municipality fix the roads" wasn't really going to fly I'd still love to work on that idea though.. one day :)
friseurtermin 6y ago
We're working on a project in that direction [0]. The basic idea of the app is that cyclist record their bike rides through the city and accelerometer data is used to report dangerous situations (e.g. a car crossing a cycle lane without regards for the cyclists). It turns out that this accelerometer data can also be used to check the cycle path quality. Some cities respond well to the idea while others just ignore the problem [0]: https://www.mcc.tu-berlin.de/menue/forschung/projekte/simra/parameter/en/ https://www.mcc.tu-berlin.de/menue/forschung/projekte/simra/...
aasasd 6y ago
There's a similar-ish precedent: in my city, OsmAnd can display whether streets have proper lighting. Though I guess that doesn't change as often as asphalt—but then again, I can only envy people if potholes are fixed too fast for them.
elgaard 6y ago
There have been projects like that. The problem is that potholes do not exists because cities do not know where they are. They exist because of lack of resources or priorities.
jacobr 6y ago
Volvo cars will notify other Volvos about slippery roads and other road hazards, and there’s work to share this data with other car manufacturers as well. https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/volvo-european-data-task-force-v2v-safety-data-sharing/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/volvo-european-data-task-... Is there something like an Open Routing project where this dynamic data would make more sense than in OSM?

mqus 6y ago

The wiki states that this data type is being proposed: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Surface_Quality https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Surfac...

qwertay 6y ago
Says the proposal is abandoned in 2011. The thing is OSM does not deal with real time data, the general rule is if the data is likely to change within the next month it doesn't go in OSM. A lot of OSM apps and servers cache the OSM dataset so anything like a road closed for one day would be stale before it even reached users. Thats one of the big issues with OSM though, they have an attitude of "Thats not my problem, it should go in another dataset" but then no one actually has an alternative place to put it so users just miss out.
- berkes 6y ago
  There are people working on layering the data better. I was at a talk about this at two State of the Map conferences. I don't have links or names ready, on mobile, sorry. The idea, in my words, is to have a standard on how to link between layers: how to merge them, so to say. That way, a routing app for a car would only need the roads and their features layers. But the search engine for tourists needs the poi layer and not all the road details. A 'live' layer for e.g. traffic density could then be a neat commercial product for OSM consumers. But without standards to link your layer to, say, the OSM streets, it is almost impossible to offer and process such a layer.

blt 6y ago

The Lyft app could measure bumpiness in great detail by using the phone's accelerometer.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tauntz 6y ago

I did a prototype for that idea back in the J2ME days when the first phones came out that had accelerometers. It works surprisingly well, provided you have lots of data (multiple cars driving through the same route to average out any random fluctuations due to driving style etc). There were two issues: 1) It was way too early for this idea as the devices that had the HW for it were rather rare 2) I had no killer app that would entice people to install and run the app. There were no app-taxi companies at the time and just telling people that "please download and open that app when you are driving to help the local municipality fix the roads" wasn't really going to fly I'd still love to work on that idea though.. one day :)

friseurtermin 6y ago

We're working on a project in that direction [0]. The basic idea of the app is that cyclist record their bike rides through the city and accelerometer data is used to report dangerous situations (e.g. a car crossing a cycle lane without regards for the cyclists). It turns out that this accelerometer data can also be used to check the cycle path quality. Some cities respond well to the idea while others just ignore the problem [0]: https://www.mcc.tu-berlin.de/menue/forschung/projekte/simra/parameter/en/ https://www.mcc.tu-berlin.de/menue/forschung/projekte/simra/...

aasasd 6y ago

There's a similar-ish precedent: in my city, OsmAnd can display whether streets have proper lighting. Though I guess that doesn't change as often as asphalt—but then again, I can only envy people if potholes are fixed too fast for them.

elgaard 6y ago

There have been projects like that. The problem is that potholes do not exists because cities do not know where they are. They exist because of lack of resources or priorities.

jacobr 6y ago

Volvo cars will notify other Volvos about slippery roads and other road hazards, and there’s work to share this data with other car manufacturers as well. https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/volvo-european-data-task-force-v2v-safety-data-sharing/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/volvo-european-data-task-... Is there something like an Open Routing project where this dynamic data would make more sense than in OSM?