RE: ( Krueger St -at- Cleveland St, City: Spring Lake, State: MI, USA)
When traveling (West Bound) on Cleveland St. - (from a point EAST of Krueger St) - with destination goal to continue on 152nd Ave… My GPS CORRECTLY instructs me to take the '1st opportunity" and turn onto the East END of Krueger St then continue and turn Left onto 152nd Ave.
HOWEVER… When traveling (East bound) on Cleveland from a point WEST of Krueger St. My GPS Does NOT suggest taking the “1st opportunity” to reach 152nd Ave via the (WEST END) of Krueger St. My GPS prefers to instructs me to go all the way to the (EAST END) of Krueger St. then backtrack to 152nd Ave… as originally described in the first paragraph.
QUESTION: Though this maybe a bug with my GPS, is it possible to provide some kind of TAG - “destination:street=152nd AVE; Krueger St; Cleveland St” ? By including (152nd Ave) as a destination when traveling East on Cleveland St… my GPS may determine turning onto (west end) of Krueger St is the Best route choice to reach 152nd Ave.? But are “destination:street” Tags only for hwy exits.?
Or do you have any other Tagging or “Relationship” suggestions to help work around this problem.?
I can reproduce this behavior using the GraphHopper and Valhalla routing engines but not OSRM, which suggests that it might be suboptimal behavior in the routing engine rather than something inherent in the data. My guess is that GraphHopper and Valhalla care too much about the fact that Cleveland Street has a higher speed limit and aren’t penalizing the backtracking by enough. OSRM’s debug map shows some slight penalties along Cleveland Street, probably due to the road’s slight curvature.
destination:street=* is by no means limited to highway exits. However, it along with destination=* are intended for green destination signs – if not the big highway signs, then at least the smaller ones at intersections that have arrows on them. I don’t see any in Bing Streetside imagery at a glance, but maybe I missed them or they’re newer than the imagery. In any case, since these are two-way streets, you’d have to qualify the tag as destination:street:forward=* or destination:street:backward=*, depending on the way’s direction, to avoid telling people going the other way about 152nd Avenue.
(See this lengthy post for more about destination:street=* and why you might consider destination=* instead on highway exits.)
We generally avoid optimizing for a specific data consumer in favor of hewing to the truth on the ground. The website only integrates these three routers as a QA tool to catch actual errors in the data, but workarounds are frowned upon. The first step would be to double-check that all the speed limits in the area correctly reflect the speed limits currently in effect. Beyond that, which GPS unit or application are you using? Maybe there’s an opportunity to get the developers to adjust their weighting?
Hi [Minh_Nguyen]…
THANKS… MUCH… for your prompt and Very helpful reply. !!!
I was also very impressed with your knowledge and technical skills being able to replicate my issue using different navigation engines. I had no idea that was possible. There is much about GPS navigation I simply take for granite.
The name of the GPS App I use is called: Magic Earth. It seems intuitive to use and I find its user interface friendly. One button takes you to a menu for “HISTORY”, “HOME”, “Favorites” etc. Maps are all offline so no active data required. And ETA projections seem fairly accurate and nicely presented visually on screen.
Initially I got involved with OSM to just add posted Speed Limits which is a feature I like most using GPS. Then one thing led to another, driving more inquiry.
The community here is always so friendly and knowledgeable. Your reply in particular gave insights on more than what I had asked for.
Thanks much for the broader explanation.
May all your navigating be safe and efficient…
We’re glad you’re here and contributing your valuable local knowledge to the map too! Magic Earth’s online demo shows the same backtracking you’re describing. I’m sure the company that develops it would appreciate your feedback. As another data point, a similar application called Organic Maps does appear to take the route you prefer, though due to the nature of routing, it could potentially be for reasons that you might consider a misfeature in other situations, so your mileage may vary. See you around the map!
Thanks for your encouraging comments. I’ll follow through and contact Magic Earth support as you suggested… However with a million users or at least 10’s or 100’s of thousand of users, I’m not sure if they will see or act upon my email. But it’s certainly worth a try
Tonight I was on a different side of town… Opportunity to add a few new Speed Limit values on roads i haven’t traveled before… but may again in the future.
Take care… Best wishes…
GPS-GR
P.S. I’m actually from Grand Rapids, MI and only visit friends in Spring Lake, MI a few times a year. I may not return there until Summer. Hopefully enough time passage for Magic Earth to resolve my Krueger St issues
