How do you use OpenStreetMaps data?

As a part of our graduation in germany we have to hold a presentation about a topic we can choose. I decided to talk about the chances and risks of open geodata. I want to focus on OpenStreetMap. This brings me to my question: How do you use OpenStreetMap? What Serviceses, sites and Apps do you use? Are there things you wish you could use osm-data for? I’d like to have a routing algorithem for public transport, so I don’t have to rely on Google Maps or local knowlegde. Do you use OpenStreetMap commercially or scientificly?

Thank you for reading and answering.

ps: If you have ideas or interresting sources for my topic, i’d love to hear them.

I use OsmAnd and Maps.me on my phone for navigation. Those apps use OSM data and by adding/correcting data in OSM I can directly improve the operation of those apps.

In addition, I’ve created trail maps for a cross country ski area using OSM. We first added information about the trail system to OSM then used the rendering tools created for the OSM project and a custom style to create the PDF for our printed paper maps.

For public transportation, the app I am most likely to use is Transportr which gets its routing data from Navitia. They, in turn, get the GTFS files directly from the various transport agencies that publish it. I believe the map display in Transportr uses OSM data, but the actual routing is not based on OSM information.

https://transportr.grobox.de

I suspect you will not find the professional users of the data on this forum, so you will get a response that is very biassed towards the obvious consumer uses. If you do find professional users, the sample is likely to be too small to be representative.

Typical forums have a very small regular readership. You can get some idea from the number of reads on the index page. For this one I’d say it is somewhere between 30 and 50 people.

The challenge with public transport routing using OSM is that OSM doesn’t contain timetable information. So although you might find that a given journey is possible using trains and buses, OSM won’t tell you how long it will take, and given that some buses only run once a month (and some trains once a year!) that might be a while…

“Who do you use OpenStreetMap yourself ?” is one of the questions of our Mapper of the Month series. This series runs now for 3 years. You can find the list of all previous interviews on the wiki.

All interviews are done with mappers, not necessarily with developers of apps.
The OpenCage Blog did some interviews with developers of software, e.g the devs of the Grapphopper routing engine.