OpenStreetMap
(written in response to the discussions here and elsewhere, prompted by this blog post, which was in itself presumably prompted by this HN item)
Yesterday was a nice day, so I decided to walk from Derby to Alfreton (roughly here). The criteria were pretty simple:
- No muddy paths
- Only roads with footpaths alongside (sidewalks in OSM terms), or if necessary, grass verges (or very minor roads)
- Somewhere to stop for something decent to drink and a bite to eat.
Ignoring “automatic routing” altogether, what map provider in the UK has that data? OSM does (at least in the area that I’m interested in). Google sort-of does - I’m sticking to roads here, and via their StreetView I can see that e.g. Codnor Denby Lane does have somewhere to safely walk, but it’s not really practical to “virtually walk” an entire route in Google’s StreetView to check it before setting off. HERE has some aerial imagery but not with enough detail. The UK’s Ordnance Survey surely has most of the data, but getting at it is hard (even if you pay them money). The small map on this page can be zoomed in to hint at sidewalk info, but neither the buyable OS Explorer map (which I have a copy of) nor this page which I presume is based on OS OpenData, do. Bing can show basic road info and their own or OS Explorer’s map style, but no “is this walkable” information.
With regard to POI data, Google was (until yesterday) the only one that had the correct name for this pub, and does link through to food and beer details (even CAMRA, usually the go-to guide for this sort of thing, are out of date). However, there’s no differentiation on the map beyond a “place that serves food” icon and a mousover blurb (“family friendly chain pub and restaurant”).
So am I missing something - is there anyone out there with this level of data that’s available in an accessible format, other than OSM?
Discussion
Comment from RobJN on 22 February 2018 at 19:02
It’s very easy to give examples that demonstrate either side. What you’re missing is therefore the consistency and “bitrot” debate (to use a term from coding). How we solve these is up for debate but simply pretending all is well is misleading. Similarly suggestions that “we’re doomed” are also wrong. We have some super talented people and can easily solve them - as soon as we agree how…!
Comment from imagico on 23 February 2018 at 10:57
Regarding ‘bitrot’ (or in other words: the problem of outdated information) - it seems that typically OSM has a significant advantage over official mapping institutions in this field in many areas. But this is to a significant part because OSM is simply as a whole much younger than these institutions. In the future managing the transit from initial data acquisition (where the majority of edits add new data) to data maintenance (where the majority of edits update or correct existing data) is one of the big challenges of the future for OSM. We know this is possible - primarily from a few mostly urban areas where this is happening right now already but we also know that OSM currently is much better at initial data acquisition than at data maintenance which is likely in the future going to lead to significant volumes of essentially unmaintained data.