Roads in rural areas are a HUGE problem. Particular in remote / forested places where logging roads were used in TIGER data. For example, places like this: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/46.6397/-87.7149

There's a number of us who use this kind of data for building back country cycling routes, and while it's great guidance, there's both the problem with roads being listed that are no longer passable (nor often even visible at ground level), or other routes available that don't exist.

Of course, this gets back to the way much of the data is crowd sourced... And we're working on that. :)

Anecdotally, in Northern Wisconsin, GMaps is only slightly better than OSM on abandoned logging roads. There are a lot of private gated or abandoned roads and logging tracks which Google Maps will use for route planning.

That's kinda how it is here. The best thing seems to be to bounce between Google Maps and OSM and an aerial view to get a sense of what's up.

For an interesting example, check out this place: Google: https://www.google.com/maps/@46.4133003,-87.5248774,5345m/da... OSM: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/46.4161/-87.5406

Neither has the actual current lake boundaries (as used as a retention pond), Google has roads where the lake is while OSM doesn't, etc.

3dep can be a huge help in figuring out how prominent tree covered roads are.

https://elevation.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/3DEPE...

It's listed as a Theme Overlay at https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/services/

Thanks, this is interesting. I checked a few spots and it doesn't seem to be quite helpful for what I'm looking for (seeing if a road has had brush grow back in over it making it impassable) but this would be quite useful for other things.

> Roads in rural areas are a HUGE problem

*in the US - it's a TIGER-specific thing (and certainly not exclusive to OSM). It doesn't affect the rest of the world.

Interested to learn what you're doing with cycling routes - I've been working on improving cycling directions in the US (for my site, cycle.travel) for a few years.

Yes, the TIGER problem is, but I don't think missing (or wrong due to physical abandonment) is a US-only problem.

For cycling stuff I'm mostly ensuring that mountain bike-specific trails are in OSM and properly tagged (eg: highway=path and NOT highway=cycleway as some are wont to do), with appropriate intersection markers, names, etc.

My goal is to ensure that these trails are in OSM so they'll flow down to Garmin, Trailforks, Mapbox / Strava, etc. I also use the OSM data, exported to vectors, to make PDF maps to support the local trail advocacy/building org that I'm part of.

As examples, check out my edit history: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/c0nsumer/history#map=7/44...

Here's examples of the print maps I've made. Versions of these hang at many trailheads in southeast Michigan:

1: http://www.cramba.org/storage/maps/stonycreek/CRAMBA_Stony_C...

2: http://www.cramba.org/storage/maps/pontiaclake/CRAMBA_Pontia...

3: http://www.cramba.org/storage/maps/riverbends/CRAMBA_River_B...

Print maps are made using osm2ai.pl to get the routes into Adobe Illustrator (AI) format. I then stylize things there. I know I could use GIS software, but QGIS is a pain to get things looking the way I want (similar to Michigan DNR maps) and ArcGIS is too expensive for unpaid volunteer work. It's also way more hand-off-able in AI format; I can send the files to any graphic designer and they can keep-on with it. GIS software requires far more specialized knowledge.

I wanted to use node data on shops, like if they take cash or not for example. Noticed there was already a lot of shops with data in there. But none of it was accurate.

Just one example is that an Apple store in Sweden was set to accept cash. Just for fun I called them up and asked if they take cash and they laughed at me.

It seemed to me that someone had automated input for businesses without actually verifying their data.

Not OP, but I'm in the UK and find the OSM data to be not all that useful. The streets themselves seem mostly accurate, but there is almost no building data.

If you had to rely on OSM data to get around, your best bet would be to live and work in northeast London, within the circular.

A great thing about OSM is that you can improve the data, specifically in your local area so that at the very least it will no longer have spotty coverage of the places you frequent.

I use https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete for doing this so I don't have to make the investment to learn the technical details of tags.

"You have to create the map to use the map" isn't as compelling of a feature for a mapping service as you think it is

OP talked about improving OSM using StreetComplete. So this is about adding missing speed limits, opening hours, roof shapes, recycling containers, tactile pavement at bus stops, etc. Hardly "creating the map".

When I travel to a place where OSM could need improvement I make sure that at least the hotel I will be staying at, nearby restaurants, bars and museums, etc are correctly tagged with phone numbers, opening hours etc. It is not much work and it gives me an opportunity to decide what I want to do before I leave.

When I get there I then have everything ready offline in OsmAnd. In a way I just update OSM instead of adding my own bookmarks/favorites.

nelgaard got the gist of it. I've never encountered an area where OSM didn't have the roads and buildings already mapped. I have encountered areas where it didn't have the speed limits and house numbers of those structures (and, once or twice, places lacking a road name, but that's pretty rare).

But, my personal perspective was a little different. It's more like: I want to use OSM, and get others to use OSM instead of proprietary mapping solutions like Google's, for moral reasons. In that context, being able to make sure my friends can always get to my house using OSM is a great boon.

I realize I didn't share that perspective in my original post, which is probably the source of the confusion here.

YMMV really. OSM in the UK has orders of magnitude more cycling and walking data than Google, for example, but fewer buildings. I don't generally find I need buildings in my day-to-day mapping needs but everyone's different I guess.

I have found this in the U.K., Canada, Japan and Taiwan - OpenStreetMaps is way better as a pedestrian or a cyclist in my experience, at least in relatively built up areas.

Its the same in many parts of the USA. For example in a college town with 50k students / 50k permanent population, streets are complete with sidewalks and bike trails etc., but good luck trying to find nearby restaurants by looking around the map, like you can do with google maps. Even the buildings which are marked with their name and type usually lack operating hours, phone number, website url and other sorts of info that GMaps has. But the situation is much better - close to GMaps level - in big cities here.

> lack operating hours

If you have an Android phone - I want to plug StreetComplete app here. I never mapped opening hours before I started using it.

It asks simple questions, there is no requirement to learn anything OSM specific.

Registration at OSM website is probably the biggest hurdle.

(disclaimer: I am one of contributors to that project)

The great thing about OSM is the currency. New developments will be added more qucikly. But for completeness and consistency Ordnance Survey data will just be better. And they do have a free building dataset, and even pre-generated vector tiles.

Even the OS data -- at least what I can see in Aurora -- might not be as complete as where someone has taken an interest in a new development, such as one near here. The OpenData building shapes are a good start, but they appear to have been auto-generated, and usually need correcting from up-to-date satellite imagery, if not a survey.

Whether buildings are mapped, and in what detail, just depends on the area; detailed mapping definitely isn't confined to London. The main utility of mapping buildings for navigation might be to tag them with postcodes, even if that's not ideal. Roads are typically at least as accurate as OS OpenData where I've looked.