Routing issue with long driveway

Stephen304 · 2020-07-21T17:56:34.000Z

I’m trying to improve the mapping data for a friend who has access to a property by a pond. I’ve added the building with address as well as a driveway leading up to it, as well as connecting a road that was mistakenly disconnected from the rest of the world. Unfortunately, it seems that trying to get directions to the address still gives the same incorrect directions we got from google maps when trying to navigate there. See the screenshot which I think is self explanatory.

I suspect that the routing algorithm is finding the closest point on “Stiles pond road” to the building with the address, and routing there. I’m not entirely sure whether it’s ignoring the driveways due to them not being named “Stiles pond road” or whether it has to do with access control.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/828522564

Viajero_Perdido · 2020-07-21T19:11:44.000Z

The driveway is (correctly IMHO) marked as access=private, and it would seem the routing engine (you didn’t say which) is reasonably assuming that private doesn’t include you.

PS, I see you’ve added the driveway just two hours ago. It’ll take a while for it to migrate out to the various maps and routing engines that use OSM. Though as I suggested above, I still don’t think most (any?) routing engines will route through access=private.

Stephen304 · 2020-07-21T19:20:40.000Z

Dang that’s unfortunate. As it turns out, only the last segment of “Stiles pond road” is not marked private, so it seems to have happily routed through private roads, but maybe the last portion being “public” negates that.

I also read on the associatedStreet page that it can potentially help routing engines, so I added the last segment of driveway next to the building to a relation which I think is reasonable (since it’s the “street” that the building is actually attached to).

Is there any potential workaround if that doesn’t end up working? I feel like this is exactly the kind of case where OSM can shine - google/apple maps is horribly incorrect and we have to rely on old fashioned written down step by step directions from our host to get there.

Btw I just used the default Car OSRM selection when getting openstreetmaps directions.

n76 · 2020-07-22T00:46:44.000Z

I am not entirely certain if I am tagging correctly or not, but I generally use access=private if there is a gate or guard house blocking the way (i.e. you need explicit permission for each entry). And I use access=destination if the roads are privately maintained but there is no gate or guard house so if you are visiting you can just drive to the house.

Remember that access is for the legal access restrictions, it does not imply ownership information. So a privately owned and maintained road could be off limits (access=private), available for use when visiting (access=destination) or able to be used for through traffic (access=yes). This also applies to some roads that are publicly owned and maintained as sometimes they restrict access as shown by posted signs (e.g. “No thru traffic”).

That might make a difference in how you tag the roads in this situation.

But as mentioned by Viajero Perdido, it can take some time for changes to make it from the main OSM database to the various routing services. So even if you’ve got things tagged as the routing service expects you may not see the result for a while. One hopes for a few hours but several days or even a couple of weeks is not unheard of.

Stephen304 · 2020-07-22T02:02:05.000Z

Thanks it’s kind of hard to remember all the nuances of all the tags.

There is definitely no physical access control on any of the relevant roads, but access was already set to private and there is an abundance of private property signs so I was hesitant to change it. But maybe there’s a case for at least switching the main road to access=yes since according to Mass GIS data (if I’m looking at it right), the main road Stiles Pond Road isn’t included in any of the parcels.

Another potential issue is that one of the roads (the right fork at the bottom of the screenshot) appears to go right through one of the property parcels, so I’m not sure what to make of that as far as access goes, especially since I’m pretty sure you need that section to get to a bunch of the properties.

I did however change the main road to highway=residential, since I think it’s a stretch to call it a driveway since it services all the houses like a neighborhood road would. I think there’s a stronger case for pipestem if highway=service + service=* is wanted.

Edit: Access=destination actually sounds like it would make the most sense from what I know about the place. Either for the whole place or using access=yes for the main road and access=destination for any segment that’s shared by multiple property owners.

MikeN1 · 2020-07-22T11:17:33.000Z

The default routers on Openstreetmap.org do not route into driveways at all. The only online router I’ve found is BRouter - http://brouter.de/brouter-web , and first a custom set of routing rules must be created there to allow driveway routing.

Some apps that do driveway routing:

Magic Earth, with an average 1 month update cycle to get the new data
Maps.me, about 3 month delay to get new data.