The only major disadvantage of OSM-derived applications is the lack of real-time traffic information. Google Maps harvests data from phones inside cars and some car navigation systems. They also buy it from third parties.
http://opentraffic.io/ is trying to do some data harvesting, but it's still not very good. Another option would be to build an aggregator. Lots of governments publish real-time traffic data, so it should be a matter of integrating that into an OSM layer.
Lastly, there's this old technology called Traffic Message Channel which uses RDS (digital data on FM radio) to broadcast traffic warnings. It's quite popular in Western Europe. There's already a F-Droid application that is trying to provide an interface for that: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.vonglasow.michael.qz/
I cannot stress how important live traffic information is. Without live traffic, navigating on densely populated areas is a nightmare. It's the only part of my mobile workflow I can't do using F-Droid applications. I'm currently forced to use a web version of Google Maps.
[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.github.axet.maps/ [2] https://maps.me/
Aspects of the model like noise reduction, modality classification, and speed distribution estimation also require lots of fine tuning that is specific to the telemetry being ingested & the usage patterns of the output. For example, our speed models learn and correct from observed errors in various situations over time, which is coupled to our internal metrics data.
Cambridge is incredibly atypical, though, given its large number of smart people without much money.
There will always be room for individual contributions, because there are things that the big corporations do not care about. For example, many hiking trails and agricultural tracks good for cycling are missing from Google Maps because they simply do not have a business case for those details. Yet they are on OpenStreetMap because when OSM editors actually walk or cycle those ways, they add them to OSM.
Another example is opening hours for shops. There are only three ways those can end up on the map: 1) the business itself adds them, 2) a large corporation is aware of them and adds them, or 3) an individual mapper copies them off the sign at the shop’s entrance. For a lot of small shops, only 3 is realistically going to happen.
At least I've had rather good experiences using Maps for biking. Even small, unofficial paths were mapped, and travel times indicated that Maps had an accurate idea of their condition.
> At least I've had rather good experiences using Maps for biking.
You wouldn’t in many countries around the world. Google Maps is considerably inferior to OpenStreetMap for cycling in much of the Western Balkans, Africa, and Patagonia.
Specifically, never to assume that "It's like ten meters between these two points... I don't see a reason why we would need to go all the way around".
(There was a 30m deep gorge)
More to the point: Given enough position data, Google should be able to assess all those road parameters you mention, far better than manual entry could ever do at scale. They could easily notice, as but one example, when locals routinely take different routes than they would suggest and modify their data accordingly.
which may well have been explicitly marked, tagged with depth information, in OSM.
They're both significantly worse than maps focused on hikers.
There's an app called OpenVegeMap which shows you vegetarian and vegan restaurants nearby. It also allows you to add and edit this information. Found a nice vegan bistro? You're just two clicks away from adding a missing tag about it to OSM. Just this and nothing else.
But be careful that you don't lead your editors to think this isn't a global database that others use, or other OSMers will be annoyed.,
Unfortunately, the dominance of Google Maps makes 1) more likely to happen for them - more likely even than 3) is going to happen for OSM. Or at least, that's what my gut feeling says.
In my own neck of the woods, if you are cycling around the countryside, you can not only find a nearby convenience store to stop for a drink or snack, you can even know if it is presently open. Meanwhile, Google Maps has almost none of the small shops in this region, let alone their opening hours.
I'm also not quite sure how often large chains are importing their opening hours into OSM? Because quite a few of them probably do so for Google Maps (or at least - Google Maps often has their opening hours).
Very rarely, to almost not at all. Most OSM imports are still either roads, address points or buildings. PoI imports are very rare (to be almost non-existant)
We’ve written a small app that does route calculations for us to make reporting business related driving (you get a refund, but that has to be taxed in specific ways) an automated process. We use OSM in that, but we do pay a company to do the routing algorithm and supply the data in a way that doesn’t abuse the standard OSM api. I’m not sure exactly how they do that, I think they host part of OSM or something like that. There is a big industry for small companies which are specialized in those things in Europe, and they are typically cheaper and easier to use than google.
We also rely heavily on OSM in our GIS department, where we have our own private maps, though they aren’t so much for traffic we have been building our own “street-view” thing, using OSM and our own 360 images.
The disadvantage of OSM is actually the submission process, like if a street is wrong, and you supply the correct information, it’s not always accepted right away. Which is a huge issue if you rely on it for something serious. That hasn’t been an issue for us for two years though, but we did have one week where an elected official couldn’t submit his driving because of a wrong one-way street.
I'm a long time OSMer, and I'm a little confused by this, because OSM is a wiki. There are no data controls. When a user makes a contribution, it's saved into the global OSM database straight away.
Can you explain more about what you've experienced?
In what way does this happen? I haven't experienced it yet and I get the impression my edits are accepted automatically. Is someone reverting your changes with no good justification?
An account vetting system would solve this. Being an official municipality it’s kind of silly that we can change the actual direction of a street, but not use our internal maps as evidence for it. ;)
Most local mappers will gladly work with you in resolving such issues. Try the country-specific subforum on https://forum.openstreetmap.org/ if you get stuck.
There is some opposition within the OSM community from getting big tech corps to do all the work.