[maelito]

We need global open congestion data. At least on the european scale.

It's important so that alternatives to Google Maps and Waze (Google) can emerge.

To create congestion data, one needs to own an OS with location tracking, or be an international mobile network. Won't happen.

[disclaimer : I work on an open source alternative to big tech's maps]

[danelski]

In my experience, the congestion data is not the issue: even with the split across Google / TomTom / Here / Apple / some hyperlocal alternatives, everyone seems to have reasonably good idea where the traffic jams are. Having up to date POIs is a different can of worms only solved by Google, not by some clever algo, but through the sheer brand recognition. They're the only ones that have this data fed to them by POI owners.

[goda90]

Idea: an open website/app that updates POI information on every known platform simultaneously. To POI owners it would be a win because it means their info is reaching more people but there's not much extra work. The hard part is spreading the word, but I don't see why an open project's donations can't go towards marketing. The marketing material can also be used to promote the existing open platforms like OSM and some of the open review websites(mangrove.reviews and lib.reviews for example), such as sending free window stickers to POI owners that say "Review us on **!".

[pietervdvn]

I work on https://mapcomplete.org - that one pretty much integrates images (panoramax) and reviews (mangrove.reviews) and makes it easy to update data for anyone.

I also go in-depth on some topics, e.g. on restaurants and toilets

[zbycz]

We don't even have this for OpenStreetMap, let alone some meta service.

btw, easily showing/adding/editing businesses was one of the reasons I started https://osmapp.org in 2017, I think it works decently, but I never got to the marketing part :D

[maelito]

Google will actively fight against that. It would break their monopoly.

[subscribed]

Traffic jams are highly "volatile" in my area.

I commute using one of the several paths and there's only a coarse relationship between the times and paths congestion, but there's absolutely no certainty regarding the actual congestion. Single broken down vehicle on the single lane road can cause backpressure to the key places and make non-obvious variants MUCH better.

As a result I always drive/ride with Waze (I know! ) and I'd love some alternative. Google maps is too slow.

[maelito]

Well, Google has the most popular OS. Tomtom is not far from being the OS of lots of cars. Here, too. It's owned by Daimler/BMW/Audi (sold for 3 billions). Apple has the second most used mobile OS.

So yes, for these huge actors, it's quite easy to create congestion data.

[brandmeyer]

The vast majority of POI churn information comes from streetview + machine learning object detection + automatic change detection + human verification. There are many clever algorithms in play through the entire pipeline. As moats go, its probably bigger than search.

[maelito]

You forgot the massive user base of Google. Users through comments are the first to tell Google that the POI changed. And shop owners are often the first users to worry.

[cheschire]

How would you overcome the data source trust issue? In open data collection you either fingerprint the data to ensure validity or you anonymize the data to provide security, but striking the balance between the two seems like the biggest of hurdles in an effort like this.

The risk of the data being invalid seems as risky as the privacy implications in this case.

[peterp_123]

Hi, as the developer of opentrafficmap.org I can tell you that nearly all stations (traffic lights, cars, busses, trams, etc.) have a certificate, that can be validated against a trust chain managed by the EU. You can see the signature of you click "View JSON" on a tracked object

[maelito]

Good question. If one strong national actor (map app, for instance) could publish its live dataset, without even mixing with others, this could already be used.

Authorities could pay them for this service.

[eagleal]

> We need global open congestion data. At least on the european scale.

Congestion data was also used to track the advancing Russian army invasion in Ukraine's urban area according to the probably sponsored articles on Bloomberg for Project Maven.

[crimsoneer]

What is the OS alternative? OSM?

[maelito]

https://cartes.app. Based on OSM of course, but OSM is just a geographical database, with lots of incomplete UIs built on top by the community. Cartes is one of them, we're trying to make it complete and modern :)

[yosamino]

That looks pretty cool - sorry to have a complaint immediately:

When opening the map on Firefox/Linux zooming to like a France-size view and then not doing anything, the view keeps scrolling up and down relatively slowly, but very annoyingly.

Zooming all the way out, it looks like the globe is jiggling back and forth ever so slightly, but continually.

I've recently seen this happen on another mapping application ( cannot remember which one) so it's probably in down the stack somewhere in a library you are using.

[maelito]

Yes, known bug, we've discovered it recently. Here's how to unbreak the map. https://codeberg.org/cartes/web/issues/2095

[yosamino]

Heh

> For privacy reasons we've made the planet shake a little bit

Thank you for the hint. We live in a very complex world...

[raybb]

This is freaking great! How are you involved? Where does it get this cool image from? Dog Eared Books https://cartes.app/?allez=Dog+Eared+Books%7Cn6780338385%7C-1...

Also, I noticed the map is at least a few days behind in my area, how long does it take for you to get updates?

Do you plan to offer any way to sync data between devices?

[maelito]

I'm the founder and main developer.

> Where does it get this cool image from? Dog Eared Books https://cartes.app/?allez=Dog+Eared+Books%7Cn6780338385%7C-1...

We extract the og image from the website. https://codeberg.org/cartes/web/src/branch/master/app/getOgI...

> Also, I noticed the map is at least a few days behind in my area, how long does it take for you to get updates?

Yes, we have a double problem : first, the planet dump is not available every day. Then, our tilemaker script runs every week.

https://cartes.app/maj

> Do you plan to offer any way to sync data between devices?

Hopefully ! Without any account though, that's too much work. Except maybe for the future paid offers.

[atollk]

I would be interested in contributing but it seems like speaking French is basically a hard requirement?