Comment by mcv
2 years 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.
I’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.
> 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.)
There 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.
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Two days ago, thanks to cycle routing, I accidentally discovered a bike path (with some dirt even!) that ran parallel to a more busy car road that I have been riding for 35 years now. I had no idea it existed. Not all seems lost.
Also, in Amsterdam it works pretty well if you set Google Maps to "walking" and then divide all time estimates by 3.
Google maps is still terrible for pedestrian / cycling use.
OSM is much, much better but I guess Google refuses to pull OSM data because it would require them to open up their own maps.
For cycling, yeah, that’s why I said I’m very sorry I wasn’t successful.
For pedestrian, I’d disagree. At least in places I go, I find Google’s walking directions to be top notch.
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I’ve been wondering why doesn’t google use its own elevation and traffic data? There are no privacy issues with the data they already make publicly available. Prioritizing flatter and more pleasant routes over shorter ones couldn’t be more complicated than adjusting a few variables, could it?
Google 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.
But 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.
You're doing the Lord's work.
That 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.
What'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.
Make 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.
I 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.
Here you go: 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
When did you last refresh your data? It seems at least a year out of date compared to OSM as there are shops I've added that aren't showing.
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I 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.
The bike profile in OSM routers will prioritize bike paths, bike lanes, and small streets over big highways, but there's always a balance since you're unlikely to want to bike 10 miles out of your way to avoid a busy street. That balance is always in flux and can only ever be as good as the OSM data underlying it (road classification and bike tagging etc)
If you bookmark streets that it's sending you down or avoiding inaccurately and check them out later on a computer, I bet you'll find that there's some OSM tagging issue. https://osm.org has a routing tool you can compare with as well. The OM Telegram channel is always willing to take reports on where OM routes are worse than OSM.org routes, and OSM channels are happy to help figure out what tagging issues there may be.
Cheers!
The balance is problematic in every cycling directions app. Some may be a bit more comprehensive than others in certain areas but all of them prioritize shorter routes over flatter ones.
I wish there were a true flattest route app/website that prioritized quieter roads and more gentle slopes by default using existing terrain data instead of making users manually add a bunch of waypoints using their own knowledge in order to compare elevation profiles.
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I 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.
I 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!
This 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.
Exactly 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.
The 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.
I'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.
Yeah, 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.
How does https://cycle.travel/map/ perform routing-wise in Amsterdam?
(Unaffiliated happy user.)
Maybe 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.
> 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!)
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Worth 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....
there is import GPX feature when you sign in, I use it quite often.
Ah thanks; you can load them through the website and sync from the app.
OSMAnd + 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 ;)
One feature I definitely enjoy is the ability to connect with my OSM account and easily submit changes on the go (business hours, etc).