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I've had it for a while, but I don't use it nearly enough. I still rely on Google Maps for most things, until Google Maps lets me down. Which it does mostly whe
by mcv 3y ago
I've had it for a while, but I don't use it nearly enough. I still rely on Google Maps for most things, until Google Maps lets me down. Which it does mostly when I'm on vacation.
Although now that I think about it, Google Maps lets me down on vacation because I'm in unfamiliar territory and I have no idea how to correct for the mistakes it makes. When I'm at home (in Amsterdam) it makes plenty of mistakes too, but I'm familiar with them and the are, so I can easily correct for it.
For example, Google really dislikes the Sarphatistraat for some reason. It's a bike street: basically a gigantic bike path that also allows cars, but bikes have right of way. It's one of the most important bike thoroughfares in Amsterdam, so of course you should always take it. But for some reason, Google always prefers to send me along the Stadhouderskade, which is part of the centrumring for cars, one of the major car thoroughfares, parallel to the Sarphatistraat, and it does have a separate bike path, but you're still in car fumes. Also, it's slightly longer.
There are plenty of other bike routes it doesn't know. I should really try to get used to using Organic Maps on my bike from now on. It's excellent on bike and pedestrian infrastructure, including hiking trails, things to see, etc. Many years ago when I first learned about OSM, I was amazed about the level of detail I got when I zoomed in on Artis, the Amsterdam Zoo. You don't get that kind of detail on Google Maps. I really should use it more.
- coolgoose 3y agoThe amount of mistakes Google makes in the Netherlands when it comes to bikes is mind-blowing. If you don't know the area or manually check the maps it takes you trough a lot more car places that it should do.
- mcv 3y agoYeah, I think I've gotten too used to it and learned to automatically compensate for it, but the more I think about it, the more I realise just how terrible Google is at bike routes.
- twic 3y agoI've had some horrendous experiences using Google Maps for cycling in the UK too. Mostly it's very good, and it's impressive how good it is, really, but it's the times it gets it wrong that you remember. Routing me through a park in the middle of the night, when it was closed, was one. Taking me on a detour to avoid a busy road, which turned to be on a farm track where the road surface was completely destroyed, was another.
- raybb 3y agoI recently moved to Amsterdam and I find Google maps biking directions are often wrong or just a bit worse than organic maps. But also when organic maps it wrong (like one time it though there was a nice connecting sidewalk that no longer existed) it was super easy to go edit on OSM and next time I'll get the right directions. My one wish was the OSM had a great app for discovering POI or reviews. Like something that can show me all the bookstores around but with a little extra human touch on if it's nice to sit at or mostly used books or something like this.
- pietervdvn 3y agoHere you go: https://mapcomplete.org/shops.html?z=12.2&lat=52.36511&lon=4.897517&filter-shops-shop-type=%7B%22search%22%3A%22books%22%7D&layer-pharmacy=false https://mapcomplete.org/shops.html?z=12.2&lat=52.36511&lon=4... Note: it takes a little while to load all of Amsterdam. Disclaimer: I'm the (main) dev of mapcomplete
- ricardobayes 3y agoGoogle displays my street name wrong and there is no way to change it. I've reported it 10+ times and nothing is happening. I don't know where they got that street name from but it's definitely not the "official name" of the street as recorded by the official authorities. And this is in Europe on a street where the google car goes through basically every few years. I can't even describe the level of frustration this causes because I'm forced to use a non-existant street name for packages because otherwise no courier finds me.
- mcv 3y agoThat is really harmful and bizarre. But that also means you basically need to know which delivery service is going to deliver it, because some, like the postal service, may be relying on the real name or the postal code.
- titaniumtown 3y agoBut with Organic Maps, since it uses OpenStreetMap, I've actually corrected a bunch of street names near me and have added about 4,000 house numbers. It's really nice when you're able to improve the area near you.
- qingcharles 3y agoYou're doing the Lord's work.
- metabagel 3y agoMake sure it’s correct on OpenStreetMaps. I believe Google it as one of their data sources, and it’s something you can actually go in and fix yourself.
- bsimpson 3y agoWhat's the street? The edit review system for Maps is really frustrating. Sometimes obscure things are approved instantly, and sometimes really important things are silently ignored. I once attached a news article to my report, and they still denied it. I've also added street vendors like "coconut cakes lady" and had them approved.
- aembleton 3y agoWorth trying out mapy.cz app for cycling. It uses OSM data; and I find it works well in the UK, I've never tried it in the Netherlands though. It has good route finding, but unfortunatelly you can't load in a GPX route: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?mobilepromo=1&x=15.6252330&y=49.8022514&z=8 https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?mobilepromo=1&x=15.6252330&y=49....
- ex-googlemaps 3y agoI’m an ex-Googler and I tried to fix cycling routing. I’m honestly sorry I wasn’t successful. We had a really nice solution but privacy considerations made it extremely difficult and limited. And then I and the other main driver both left Google so it withered and died I believe. I really hope someone else can fix it one day. This is a throwaway obviously since this basically 50% doxes me.
- aix1 3y ago> We had a really nice solution but privacy considerations made it extremely difficult and limited. Would you be willing to elaborate a bit more on those privacy considerations? (I guess what I'm struggling with is how cycling is different in this regard from other modalities.)
- ex-googlemaps 3y agoThere are significantly more people using the other modes, especially in active navigation. For example, it’s well known that Google detects traffic through the movement of active users (there was the wagon of phones traffic jam experiment). Imagine trying to do something similar with the amount of cyclists actively using Google with the necessary privacy settings enabled on any given route. It would be noisy but possible, but then on top of that Google is extremely strict with privacy requirements (the exact opposite of what everyone on HN assumes). And once you add all of Google’s voluntary restrictions like anonymity of inferred data and such, it’s nearly impossible to gather any signal, even in major cities. Edit: By the way, the massive difference in potential users compared to all other modes is also why it’s so hard to prioritise work on cycling inside Google.
- rob74 3y agoThis sounds a bit American to me honestly - I would think that in Europe (and especially in Amsterdam) there would be enough cyclists to make the data usable. OTOH, they may not have the necessary privacy settings enabled (I think that's a minority among car users too). Of course it's also a vicious circle: if Google Maps is bad for cyclists, few cyclists will be using it, so you won't get the data you need to make it better. Additionally, I think the proportion of cyclists using any kind of navigation solution is lower than with car drivers...
- eCa 3y agoHow does https://cycle.travel/map/ https://cycle.travel/map/ perform routing-wise in Amsterdam? (Unaffiliated happy user.)
- mcv 3y agoMaybe slightly better, but still not great. It's skipping the eastern part of the Sarphatistraat. Also it struggles with street names and encourages you to only type a town, which isn't very useful. I like that it allows you to choose between paved, gravel or any. Although gravel may still be too limited for some; mountainbikers like dirt tracks, and I've had Google Maps send me through loose sand that would probably require a BMX.
- Doctor_Fegg 3y ago> Also it struggles with street names and encourages you to only type a town, which isn't very useful. Oh, good spot. Fixed. OSM geocoding is better than it used to be - I used to just say "town" because streetnames were partial, but they're pretty good now. If you have a start and endpoint that should use Sarphatistraat but don't, I'm all ears. (It's my site!)
- mcv 3y agoThat's an amazingly quick fix! Try "Feike de Boerlaan" to "Vondelpark". I would expect the trip to take the Czaar Peterstraat and then the Sarphatistraat, but instead it takes the Panamalaan, Zeeburgerdijk, Mauritskade, and only switches to the Sarphatistraat at the Weesperplein, which I think is also the point where the Sarphatistraat changes from a bike street to a regular street with a bike lane. Although it later switches back to bike street again yet the route stays on the bike street. So I have no idea what's going on with that first part of the Sarphatistraat. It's a really nice route, yet all apps hate it.
- Doctor_Fegg 3y agoReally interesting test case - thanks! cycle.travel's scoring for the two routes differs by 0.4% so it's very close. In OSM data terms, the challenge is that there's no particular special tagging for the Sarphatistraat - it just gets classed as a "cycleway", same as the route along Mauritskade. Plus there's a couple of very slight advantages for the Panamalaan (which is tagged as part of a designated longer-distance bike route) and the Zeeburgerdijk/Mauritskade (which are beside water so get a scenic uplift). I might look at doing some Amsterdam-specific routing tweaks: I doubt the longer-distance bike route consideration should be relevant in this case, for example.
- ihaveajob 3y agoI feel like nobody in the Google Maps uses a bike for commuting or other daily life purposes. If they did, they wouldn't route me through the most dangerous, fast traffic street in my neighborhood, and instead they would choose the adjacent bike boulevard. Apple Maps does this much better, even though they've sent me to the wrong side of town a few times. From my early tests, Organic Maps also sends you down dangerous routes, so I'll use cautiously.
- jeffbee 3y agoThis seems local. I just checked routing from North Berkeley to Emeryville and Apple Maps routes me down the main north-south traffic sewer instead of good parallel bike routes, and Apple Maps appears unaware of the new bridge across the rail yard. Google's results are far more sensible.
- ihaveajob 3y agoExactly this. I'm sent down Sacramento or San Pablo regularly, instead of the California or King st boulevards. Most people who ride around don't need the directions, but now and then you see someone you can tell is following them, not realizing there's a far safer option around the block.
- burkaman 3y agoI they they have designed a routing algorithm that works very well in cities where Google employees live and work, and they either haven't tested elsewhere or aren't willing to make targeted changes to fix specific areas. It does work very well in US cities that have Google offices, but it's not surprising to me that it would fail elsewhere.
- Arelius 3y agoI mean, you'd think that, but lately it constantly tries to send me down illegal lefts, and tries to have me drive on the Muni/Taxi only part of Market. In San Francisco. And if San Francisco isn't a coty where Google employees live and work, I don't know what is!
- m-p-3 3y agoOne feature I definitely enjoy is the ability to connect with my OSM account and easily submit changes on the go (business hours, etc).
- MayeulC 3y agoOSMAnd + Brouter is really the gold standard for bike routing for me, though the Brouter Android app could certainly use some polish (it barely looks like an Android 1.0 app). If you just want to try the routing, there's brouter-web too ;)