Up-to-date Route Planner including new Motorways

munchkin_utd

The commercial route planners are lagging behind in keeping pace with the latest additions to the Irish road network, whether its road openings or Motorway designations. Via Michelin is the best of them BUT its still showing longer journey times due to faulty road classification.

No worries though, there is a solution to hand!

OpenRouteService is yer only man!!
It is based on openstreetmaps so has every road properly classified and new additions present and correct. **
Anyhow, heres a comparison of some results of openrouteservice and via michelin:

Example 1, Galway to Dublin now all Motorway
(Eyre Squre/Westmoreland St)

Via-Michelin timing
Time 02h42
Distance 208 km

OpenRouteService timing:
Total-Time: ~ 1 hour(s) 53 minute(s)
Total-Distance: ~ 207.3 km

Example 2, Cork to Dublin, lots of reclassified road
(Patrick Street/Westmoreland St)

Via-Michelin timing
Time 02h58
Distance 258 km

OpenRouteService timing:
Total-Time: ~ 2 hour(s) 24 minute(s)
Total-Distance: ~ 251.2 km

Example 3, Tramore Co. Waterford to Dublin

Via-Michelin timing
Time 02h29
Distance 184 km

OpenRouteService timing: via by pass+motorways classified as such
Total-Time: ~ 2 hour(s) 5 minute(s)
Total-Distance: ~ 177.6 km


** To be fair I should point out that one downside is that it is sometimes a little tempermental with start/ finish points. You may need to reposition these or use right click to set a start on an actual street! Also, no info on tolls.

loyatemu

is it entirely based on OSM? because I can see problems with that

bigar

Did a few tests and it is very good for Meath/Dublin or at least the roads I travel.

Alun

bigar wrote: »

Did a few tests and it is very good for Meath/Dublin or at least the roads I travel.

Yes, it's as good if not better (i.e. new roads appear almost the minute they open) than the other offerings for main roads and the major urban areas, but falls short in many of the more obscure rural areas.

ManAboutCouch

The OpenStreetMap coverage for Ireland is far from complete, but it is ever increasing. All National routes are present and we must be heading towards having a majority of the regional roads in the system by now.

As ever - if the map is incorrect, out-of-date or simply incomplete where you are, I would encourage you to fix what is wrong or missing.

Some OpenStreetMap users and mappers are planning a mapping party in Dublin on the weekend of 6th / 7th Feb. Details here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ireland/Events/Dublin_Mapping_party

munchkin_utd

The rural coverage is pretty catastrophic all right. In the whole county of Cavan the N3/N55 is there but not much more. (i.e. theres 3000km of regional/ local roads missing)

Stil and all, its still appears to be the only online planner giving up to date realistic timings for interurban journeys involving the new Motorway network. You can still let your Sat Nav do the tricky work at the beginning/ end of the journey off the motorway.

NOTE: if you are going somewhere rural in Ireland, the majority of times no planner will get you there anyways. You still need the phone call to the person youre visiting to tell you which yellow house you turn at and which church indicates you've gone too far and missed a turn!!!

Chris_533976

Rural coverage can be based off GPS or (allowed) ariel photography. Yahoo let their images be used for tracing, but they have very sporadic coverage. When they improve, so will OSM.

JHMEG

Or anyone can contribute. If your area is badly covered grab your GPS-enabled PDA (or anything that can log) and go out an survey it and submit it.

As far as commercial satnav/GPS is concerned it's worth bearing in mind that TeleAtlas maps are a bit ahead of Navteq as TA don't survey as such but work off plans. E.g. The M9 is on Tomtom whereas it's not finished in reality and the M6 Athlone to Galway was also there (albeit as the N6) long before it opened.

mackerski

JHMEG wrote: »

Or anyone can contribute. If your area is badly covered grab your GPS-enabled PDA (or anything that can log) and go out an survey it and submit it.

I'll echo the comments about the importance of helping to fill the gaps. The great thing about OSM is that you can go out and fix what's wrong and add what's missing. And the drawback? It's that you'll sometimes have to fix what's wrong or add what's missing. But the point is, what we have is useful for many purposes even today, and the job really will be "complete" sooner than you'd think. Look at Germany to see what's achievable.

JHMEG wrote: »

As far as commercial satnav/GPS is concerned it's worth bearing in mind that TeleAtlas maps are a bit ahead of Navteq as TA don't survey as such but work off plans. E.g. The M9 is on Tomtom whereas it's not finished in reality and the M6 Athlone to Galway was also there (albeit as the N6) long before it opened.

This is only true for very specific values of "ahead". TA does indeed appear to jump the gun in mapping new roads from plans. But for existing roads their maps of Ireland exhibit a creativity Picasso would have been proud of. The geometry of many roads is ridiculously coarse, and much of what makes it onto the map doesn't even exist as a road on the ground. Conversely, the estate I've lived in for at least 5 years isn't even on the TA map.

Consider this extract from Dublin 15. Google on the left, OSM on the right. Have a look at how much of Blanchardstown Hospital is now, in fact, residential estate, unnoticed by TA. Now look at the road, called "Main Street" by TA, between Clonsilla Road and the Old Corduff Road. That has been closed to traffic since the 70s. Madness...

bigar

JHMEG wrote: »

As far as commercial satnav/GPS is concerned it's worth bearing in mind that TeleAtlas maps are a bit ahead of Navteq ...

Not true for the greater Dublin area though. As an example just take a look a Tyrrelstown and 5 km around it. Although the name "Tyrrelstown" is there, none of the roads are mapped. Navteq has them all.

Have a look on maps.google (Tele Atlas) and compare it to maps.bing (NavTeq).

There are many more areas I could point out.

When you go further into the rural areas though, it is a bit of pot luck between the two. For instance in Dunshaughlin, Google has my street but not the connecting road, where Bing has the connecting road but not my street :P

OSM of course has them both as I put them there.

EDIT: just noticed mackerski said the same, he always beats me also with mapping on OSM

munchkin_utd

Google maps have literally only just added updates this evening for:
- N9 Waterford to Knocktopher
- N25 Waterford by Pass
- N8 Cullahill to Cork is now all present and reclassified parts almost fully marked in blue
- N6 Ballinasloe to Galway now there in full BUT as N road from Athlone to Galway.
- M50/ N4 junction mapped
- M50 / N7 junction mapped

Missing still is (as far as i can find)
- Tullamore by pass completely,
- few km of the M9 (missing the little extra bit that opened north of Knocktopher to bring you closer to Kilkenny)
- M18 reclassification Ennis ByPass,
- M20 reclassification South of Limerick.
- M3 reclassification Clonee
- M6 reclassification Athlone - Galway
- M7 reclassification Nenagh - Limerick
- M8 reclassification Watergrass Hill- Dunkettle
- M9 reclassification Waterford - Knocktopher

So for route planning incl almost every km of the new Motorways google seems to be yer only man coupled with its extensive coverage of the existing roads network!

But with a lot of the motorways being mapped as basic Dual carraigeway with its lower speed limit, the journey times quoted will be a little slower than what is realistically possible by even taking it reasonably handy on the motorway.

Steviemak

They have also updated the new road alignment between Aughnacloy and Ballygawley on the Dublin Derry rd.

JHMEG

bigar wrote: »

Not true for the greater Dublin area though. As an example just take a look a Tyrrelstown and 5 km around it. Although the name "Tyrrelstown" is there, none of the roads are mapped. Navteq has them all.

I've noticed in recent times that it's not as clear cut between TA working "off the plans" and Navteq surveying as it used to be - Navteq seemed to have roads (can't rem where) that weren't built yet and it struck me as unusual for them. Otoh TA on TT was insisting in December that I drive the stretch of the M9 that only opened last week.

On the other hand I have to say OSM is looking better by the day!

munchkin_utd

I am flabbergasted!

Google now has all schemes updated (seemingly correctly) EVEN GORT which was only open days ago.

well, some reclassifications aren't there, but the old culprits like the M7/M8 at Portlaoise, M3 + kells bypass, Limerick tunnel, Tullamore by pass are all there.

http://open.mapquest.co.uk ,who use openstreetmap , also seem to be speedier than previously in updating, in that they have also the motorway at Gort in their route planner as well as their maps (on previous opening like the M3, they were quick to show the new road, but the route planner ignored it completely)
Still, they might have the new schemes mapped and present, but there are swathes of countryside missing, not just back roads but also regional roads.

With the extreme patchyness of Openstreetmap outside the cities, is google now the most up to date and most complete route planner?

Has any other route planner the depth of the maps available on google maps BUT with the new Motorway schemes classified correctly?

Victor

Yeah, google seem to have updated soemtime last week.

I still think you need to look at mroe than one journey planner **and** bring a paper map with you.

mackerski

munchkin_utd wrote: »

I
http://open.mapquest.co.uk ,who use openstreetmap , also seem to be speedier than previously in updating, in that they have also the motorway at Gort in their route planner as well as their maps (on previous opening like the M3, they were quick to show the new road, but the route planner ignored it completely)

Two possible explanations for this - the map that you see isn't guaranteed to be an exact match for the routing database used to generate your route - in my experience, Mapquest are very much on top of stuff like this, so I'd be surprised to see this problem persist if that is the cause - a day or so at most. Keep in mind that Google has been showing the Gort scheme (albeit incorrectly as N18) as being open for quite a while now. OSM held off until it was actually open.

The more likely cause is that OSM doesn't yet (donations of track logs welcome) have every single access ramp to the new M18, so routing based on OSM can't route you over all possible movements. This is very easily solved - somebody please drive down those ramps and contribute the tracklog. Hell, map it yourself if you know how.

munchkin_utd wrote: »

Still, they might have the new schemes mapped and present, but there are swathes of countryside missing, not just back roads but also regional roads.

With the extreme patchyness of Openstreetmap outside the cities, is google now the most up to date and most complete route planner?

Google is more complete than OSM (for now, there's a finite amount of stuff to catch up), but you can't claim it's more up-to-date for any useful definition of that. I can't think of any recent new road scheme that Google has mapped that OSM has not. (I can think of one that's not open, though - Borris in Ossory to Nenagh). But I can think of plenty of cases where Google's map data are years out of date but OSM is solid:

First, some old, some new. Notice that TeleAtlas (because Google isn't using their own data for Ireland) still thinks that Blanchardstown Hospital is the size it was 20 years ago. In fact for the best part of last decade much of it has been residential or park.

But look at that road labelled "Main Street" on Google maps. It hasn't been passable to traffic for 40 years. Not my idea of up-to-date.

http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=googlemap&mt1=mapnik&lon=-6.37396&lat=53.3912&zoom=16

Also here in Athenry (where OSM is very incomplete) you can see that TeleAtlas, in spite of having some new road geometry, still indicates a road connection now severed, and lacks a housing estate.

http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=googlemap&mt1=mapnik&lon=-8.7475&lat=53.29082&zoom=16

Or how about the new link road in Mullingar?

http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=googlemap&mt1=mapnik&lon=-7.35638&lat=53.51122&zoom=14


In summary - using a commercial map set will let you start with something you can call a "complete" data set, something that OSM can't yet offer, but will. But occasionally catching up with much of the freshest OSM data doesn't equate to being the most up-to-date map data set, not by a very wide margin.