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"What we learned is that OSM data can be quite terrible at times in minute ways that made it look decent but made routing nearly impossible." This is exactly w

"What we learned is that OSM data can be quite terrible at times in minute ways that made it look decent but made routing nearly impossible." This is exactly why we've exposed routing on the front page of osm.org. I run my own site with OSM-based routing, http://cycle.travel/map http://cycle.travel/map . When I first got the routing engine up and running, I literally spent the next fortnight fixing routing bugs in OSM - "I'd go that way, why doesn't the router agree?". By putting routing front-and-centre, we're hoping that our dedicated contributors - and OSM contributors are nothing if not dedicated! - will do exactly that: they'll find an error and fix it. In the UK and Germany this'll just be little slip-ups, turn restrictions and so on, but in the US there are whole counties that need serious fixup. That's why I submitted the pull request for this[1] and why I'm delighted it's now live. OSM is already a great display map; by making routing more visible, we can make it a great routable map too. [1] https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/716 https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/...

grizzles 12y ago
It says it uses a 3rd party service. Can you clarify why OSM isn't dogfooding it's own router? Though I'm a huge fan of OSM that sounds like a bit of a let down.
- dima55 12y ago
  Because there is no "own router".
- maxerickson 12y ago
  OSM is primarily a data project. There isn't currently any notion of providing centralized end user services. The various services on openstreetmap.org don't have terribly strict usage policies, but they all pretty much ask heavy users to set up their own instance (or use other resources; for example, Mapquest has quite generous free usage, and there are lots of paid OSM tile hosters). If you click the stack on the right tool bar, you get a layers menu, where 4 of the styles are rendered and served by other projects. So the routing is similar to that, showcasing how the data can be used.
  - nroets 12y ago
    Yes, it's great that it's possible to use OSM for many different purposes. However, all these compromises on the front page are too complicated for end users and scare them off. End users expect services that seamlessly work together. If centralization is needed to achieve that, then yes, OSMF needs centralization.
    - ZeroGravitas 12y ago
      The front page isn't intended for end users in the sense of "people looking for a map or directions", it's mainly focused on people who intend to map. People find it hard to get out of the "Google Maps" mindset, just as everyone approached Linux as a "Cheap Windows" when in reality it can be so much more. OSM's strategy (and data) aren't perfect, but they're growing the pie rather than fighting for a larger slice and doing pretty well with it. Just like using Linux has become a no-brainer for all sorts of projects from smartphones to supercomputer clusters to educational toys OSM is well on it's way to being the default peer-produced commons for geographical data. Whether that usage happens on one site or a million different commercial, government, non-profit and amateur sites isn't important.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      I was trying to describe things as they are, not take a side. The interest generated by this change demonstrates your point well enough, OSRM has been available at http://map.project-osrm.org/ http://map.project-osrm.org/ with worldwide coverage for quite a while, and the other projects are also up for quite a while. I even see a bunch of OSM enthusiasts who were apparently oblivious to the availability of the routing services (saying 'wow, it works good' sort of indicates they haven't seen it work before).
- nroets 12y ago
  The routers are written by small teams that don't talk to each other. On the OSM routing mailing list, there was very little / no meaningful discussion in the last 2 or 3 years.
- lorenzhs 12y ago
  For one, it's anything but easy to write a fast and correct routing engine that produces good results. OSRM was (mainly) written by Dennis Luxen who literally has a PhD in route planning. Secondly, if these projects already exist and are easy to integrate, I fail to see why it should be problematic for OSM to use them. OSRM is completely open source, anyone can spin up their own instance if they wanted to, so someone else can host it if the current server goes down. Open source routing engines like OSRM exist so that OSM doesn't need to roll their own. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how you construe this to be a bad thing.
- rmc 12y ago
  OSM is much more decentralised than that. There isn't really a central OSM body that controls everything. 2 of the 3 routing engines used are written by members of the OSM community, are open source, and are designed to work with OSM data. Should we count them as "3rd party" or not? They aren't hosted on the main OSM servers, instead hosted on the servers of the respective projects.
frik 12y ago
OSM suffers because everyone creates his own (closed source) layer service and his own (closed source) routing service. Instead the community should be on the OSM site and contribute to open layers hosted on the official page and open routing code so that the OSM map data can be tuned for it. But apparently it goes in the opposite direction :(
- softwarehippie 12y ago
  What you see on cycle.travel _is_ an open source router. They run https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend Actually, I don't really see where you get that impression from. Very few commercial providers use their own routing stack. It is almost always OSRM or pgRouting if you want something that scales for world-wide routing.
pmontra 12y ago
I didn't know about cycle.travel until I read OSM's announcement this morning. The site is great even if a little slow. I planned a 110 km route mostly on unpaved roads and it did well. I run into a couple of glitches but I don't know if they happened because of the routing algorithm or the data. Is there a way to report them beside taking a screenshot?
- Doctor_Fegg 12y ago
  Glad it went well! There's no automated "report a problem with this" but I'm always happy to take a look - either via the site forum or email, whichever's easiest.
  - pmontra 12y ago
    I posted to the forum right now, same nick as here.

grizzles 12y ago

It says it uses a 3rd party service. Can you clarify why OSM isn't dogfooding it's own router? Though I'm a huge fan of OSM that sounds like a bit of a let down.

dima55 12y ago
Because there is no "own router".
maxerickson 12y ago
OSM is primarily a data project. There isn't currently any notion of providing centralized end user services. The various services on openstreetmap.org don't have terribly strict usage policies, but they all pretty much ask heavy users to set up their own instance (or use other resources; for example, Mapquest has quite generous free usage, and there are lots of paid OSM tile hosters). If you click the stack on the right tool bar, you get a layers menu, where 4 of the styles are rendered and served by other projects. So the routing is similar to that, showcasing how the data can be used.
- nroets 12y ago
  Yes, it's great that it's possible to use OSM for many different purposes. However, all these compromises on the front page are too complicated for end users and scare them off. End users expect services that seamlessly work together. If centralization is needed to achieve that, then yes, OSMF needs centralization.
  - ZeroGravitas 12y ago
    The front page isn't intended for end users in the sense of "people looking for a map or directions", it's mainly focused on people who intend to map. People find it hard to get out of the "Google Maps" mindset, just as everyone approached Linux as a "Cheap Windows" when in reality it can be so much more. OSM's strategy (and data) aren't perfect, but they're growing the pie rather than fighting for a larger slice and doing pretty well with it. Just like using Linux has become a no-brainer for all sorts of projects from smartphones to supercomputer clusters to educational toys OSM is well on it's way to being the default peer-produced commons for geographical data. Whether that usage happens on one site or a million different commercial, government, non-profit and amateur sites isn't important.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    I was trying to describe things as they are, not take a side. The interest generated by this change demonstrates your point well enough, OSRM has been available at http://map.project-osrm.org/ http://map.project-osrm.org/ with worldwide coverage for quite a while, and the other projects are also up for quite a while. I even see a bunch of OSM enthusiasts who were apparently oblivious to the availability of the routing services (saying 'wow, it works good' sort of indicates they haven't seen it work before).
nroets 12y ago
The routers are written by small teams that don't talk to each other. On the OSM routing mailing list, there was very little / no meaningful discussion in the last 2 or 3 years.
lorenzhs 12y ago
For one, it's anything but easy to write a fast and correct routing engine that produces good results. OSRM was (mainly) written by Dennis Luxen who literally has a PhD in route planning. Secondly, if these projects already exist and are easy to integrate, I fail to see why it should be problematic for OSM to use them. OSRM is completely open source, anyone can spin up their own instance if they wanted to, so someone else can host it if the current server goes down. Open source routing engines like OSRM exist so that OSM doesn't need to roll their own. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how you construe this to be a bad thing.
rmc 12y ago
OSM is much more decentralised than that. There isn't really a central OSM body that controls everything. 2 of the 3 routing engines used are written by members of the OSM community, are open source, and are designed to work with OSM data. Should we count them as "3rd party" or not? They aren't hosted on the main OSM servers, instead hosted on the servers of the respective projects.

frik 12y ago

OSM suffers because everyone creates his own (closed source) layer service and his own (closed source) routing service. Instead the community should be on the OSM site and contribute to open layers hosted on the official page and open routing code so that the OSM map data can be tuned for it. But apparently it goes in the opposite direction :(

softwarehippie 12y ago
What you see on cycle.travel _is_ an open source router. They run https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend Actually, I don't really see where you get that impression from. Very few commercial providers use their own routing stack. It is almost always OSRM or pgRouting if you want something that scales for world-wide routing.

pmontra 12y ago

I didn't know about cycle.travel until I read OSM's announcement this morning. The site is great even if a little slow. I planned a 110 km route mostly on unpaved roads and it did well. I run into a couple of glitches but I don't know if they happened because of the routing algorithm or the data. Is there a way to report them beside taking a screenshot?

Doctor_Fegg 12y ago
Glad it went well! There's no automated "report a problem with this" but I'm always happy to take a look - either via the site forum or email, whichever's easiest.
- pmontra 12y ago
  I posted to the forum right now, same nick as here.