[HN Gopher] Where the Digital Sidewalk Ends
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Where the Digital Sidewalk Ends
Author : jmward01
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-10-17 20:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smolways.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smolways.com)
| CalRobert wrote:
| I hope to use street view and Mapillary data to see if I can
| improve this myself, actually, but street view is too expensive
| and Mapillary too sparse
| 43920 wrote:
| If you're editing Openstreetmap, using data from Street View is
| prohibited by the license, even if you pay for it I believe.
| However, Microsoft has licensed Bing Streetside for this use
| for free; the dataset isn't as good as Street View, but is much
| better than Mapillary.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Thanks for that (I haven't tried streetside) - I'm not
| editing openstreetmap at this point but trying to find homes
| near decent infra.
| moegev wrote:
| Hi CalRobert, Your use case is indeed one we are very keen
| to work on. What tools have you been using to find homes
| near decent infra? I don't find https://www.walkscore.com/
| to of much use -- but maybe I don't understand how to use
| it.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I think this is why Google preferentially wanted to take me down
| a 45 MPH state route that runs downhill and has curves and no
| separation between the bike lane and vehicle traffic instead of
| the nice, calm, traffic-less series of roads in residential
| neighborhoods that was accessible with a quarter-mile detour.
| Those roads didn't have sidewalks or bike lanes marked on the
| roads, so they were totally unsafe for a cyclist. As opposed to
| the 45 MPH road, which is perfectly safe because it has a bike
| lane.
|
| This is a great project.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| In my city the bike lanes are almost all death traps because
| they only exist to rake in federal funding with no care for
| making them useful or safe. I avoid them whenever possible.
| They routed one "lane" onto a narrow sidewalk under a wide
| railroad bridge and had to change a city ordinance prohibiting
| bikes on sidewalks in that region of the city.
| XorNot wrote:
| No Google has definitely gotten progressively worse at
| navigating. The original satnav system in my 2004 Prius was
| very good at the time (probably still mostly is) - "quick"
| takes the presumed speed of a "major" road, and calculates with
| that. It led to mostly sensible routes following main roads.
| These were routes I would've picked myself from a map book.
|
| Google Maps these days...just doesn't seem to do that. They've
| overweighted their traffic management algorithm or something,
| but it seems to have no notion of the idea that you can't
| negotiate 50kmh residential roads with a turn every block at
| anything close to 50kmh, and such a drive is incredibly
| stressful. And then will do other things like conclude that a
| side-road against traffic turn into a main road (so right for
| me, equiv to a left in the US) is something that will easily be
| done any time of day rather then consist of waiting for a gap
| in 4 lanes of traffic.
| ck2 wrote:
| I do not understand the mentality of blogging sites that do this,
| why lose visitors over simple text display?
|
| _" Your Browser Is No Longer Supported"_
|
| _" To view this website and enjoy a better online experience,
| update your browser for free."_
| verandaguy wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what browser are you using?
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| It appears to be made with Wix.com website builder.
|
| https://support.wix.com/en/article/supported-browsers
| moegev wrote:
| Yup, I used Wix. It's the best I can do with the resources we
| have.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| This is one area where autonomous vehicle companies can and
| should be contributing more to the public sphere. Much of this
| data already exists at a very high quality within mapping
| datasets to adjust priors for unseen pedestrian risk.
|
| There simply aren't institutional mechanisms to make mapping data
| public though.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Are there that many (or even _any_ ) autonomous vehicles
| designed to drive on bike paths and/or sidewalks exclusively ?
| smokel wrote:
| There is quite some research being done on autonomous
| wheelchairs.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| No, but presumably there are huge datasets from Tesla, Waymo,
| et al. that are tracking the boundaries of the road,
| crosswalks, the existence, or lack, of sidewalks, pedestrian
| density, desire paths, and all sorts of things that aren't on
| the map. If they aren't actively being tracked, the raw data
| could be used as training data against areas with known non-
| car infrastructure to create a model that maps areas with no
| data.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why do you think a private company attempting to beat the
| competition would make any of their data publicly available
| for other companies to benefit?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| You might well ask the same about code, ML models, or
| testing datasets, all of which have established concepts
| of open access. The Waymo open dataset in particular
| contains some of the data being discussed.
|
| Can you clarify the difference you think is significant
| here?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I didn't say they would be eager to do that, but I would
| hope they would understand why it might be a long term
| loss to hoard data that makes roads safer.
|
| One answer is that they might have to in order to be
| allowed to operate. Since operating a private service on
| public infrastructure is not a right, it is perfectly
| reasonable to require that companies share their data
| especially when that data relates to safety.
|
| Getting run over by a Tesla in an unmarked, but legal,
| crosswalk that Waymo knows is frequently used, and should
| be crossed with caution is not desirable under any
| reasonable model of capitalism and competition.
|
| You can also make the case that if you want ANY
| autonomous driving to be commercially successful, you
| need to make sure that ALL autonomous driving is safe. Up
| to date maps of where the squishy humans are likely to be
| is a great way for all players to ensure that a single
| incident doesn't set back the entire industry. A Tesla
| running over a pedestrian isn't a win for Waymo.
|
| Basically my feeling is that it is perfectly reasonable
| to require companies to share their data about the
| location of sidewalks and other infrastructure in
| exchange for getting to use public property. It benefits
| everyone, and is likely to have little to no impact on
| their competitiveness.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Starship delivery robots are the most notable these days
| since most of the others are bankrupt.
|
| Either way, very few pedestrian spaces in SF are out of sight
| of driven mapping vehicles and most of those are parks that
| are easily mapped or interior spaces.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I think this is a trend for the future. Mico-knowledge (tm) like
| this will enable things we haven't thought of. Things like this
| 'fill in the gaps' that make it hard to create new services and
| take advantage of opportunities. I hope this continues to be
| followed up on.
| nurtbo wrote:
| For biking and walking, could accepting data from Strava users
| (or other places that let you download GPS tracks), let you infer
| where there are sidewalks and good bike routes?
|
| Eg if you have 20 GPS traces in an area and they all turn at one
| point, that's a good place to turn. Or you can assume something
| has a sidewalk if many people have walked there?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > Or you can assume something has a sidewalk if many people
| have walked there?
|
| There's still a quality difference between a well-worn path and
| sidewalk. It can be a great way to find places to build new
| sidewalks. (There's the classic story of the University that
| didn't pave sidewalks in its quad until well worn paths in the
| grass were visible, using essentially crowd judgement/"ant hill
| optimization".)
| hunter2_ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| This is where Strava is interesting because of how fine
| grained the data is.
|
| You can reasonably assume that a place frequented by road
| bikers is an acceptable surface for electric scooters, or
| wheelchairs (the surface only, not necessarily an appropriate
| setting).
|
| A well worn path will show many walkers and runners, but
| almost no road bikers.
|
| I'm sure there's all sorts of accurate inferences that can be
| made from the data.
| moegev wrote:
| Mapbox presumably does this now. The issue with the real world
| is that you do need some high quality truth data to do any
| decent routing. Different users/vehicles are more or less
| sensitive to road conditions. If you want to provide an
| effective micro-mobility routing solution you have to know with
| certainty where the sidewalks and bike lanes are, how wide they
| are, how f'ed-up they are and provide directions accordingly.
| Waiting until 10,000 different transportation agencies decide
| to fix sidewalks and bike lanes on different schedules and
| different standards isn't gonna solve issues any time soon.
| retzkek wrote:
| I refer to Strava and RideWithGPS heatmaps whenever planning a
| new cycling or running route, and they are very useful, but
| they still need vetting (satellite and street view mostly)
| since 1) people have different tolerances for safe/comfortable
| interactions with traffic, and 2) road race data is often mixed
| in (despite users being able to tag races), which frequently
| are on (closed) roads you wouldn't want to be on otherwise.
| labcomputer wrote:
| Strava already sells heatmap data to municipalities for urban
| planning purposes, and AFAIK anyone with a free account can see
| the public heatmap data (though it is probably against the ToS
| to incorporate it in another map without paying). It's even
| tagged by modality and surface type.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The splash page showing a GIS image of San Francisco is always a
| sign that the lights are on and nobody is home.
|
| On one hand people feel compelled to put up images of San
| Francisco to make people think that they're with it. On the other
| hand if you've been to San Francisco you'll know it is where GIS
| applications go to die. It's where I'll walk past endless open
| restaurants because my coworker insists on finding one with Yelp
| and five of the restaurants listed on Yelp won't close. It's
| where the only place my handheld GPS can get a fix is on the roof
| of the Moscone Center. It's where my handheld GPS struggles to
| route, even for a car, because there is just too much geometry in
| too small of an area.
|
| Go to some normal city, say St. Louis, MO or Billings, MT and you
| will see GIS applications "just work" in comparison.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I've done GNSS localization in SF and I can't relate to what
| you're saying here. It's not notably more challenging than any
| other dense urban environment and the public commercial maps
| (e.g. Google, Apple) have better data than they do in most
| cities. I saw more issues with Pittsburgh and Phoenix because
| they hit weird edge cases no one had foreseen than SF, which
| had the typical issues you expect to see in urban canyons.
| Plus, there are local GNSS companies testing in the bay area,
| so stuff tends to just work out of the box.
| moegev wrote:
| We chose SF Bay area because we live here. I just did some
| surveying in the greater Detroit metro so I hope to look at
| the data there too. However, mapping and surveying is a
| supremely local thing, so we started locally.
| moegev wrote:
| I don't understand what you are saying. Are you saying GIS,
| GNSS and RTK are worthless in SF?
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Not sure why you want a fake email / zip code in your database
| but okay
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Even after reading the entire article, I don't understand. Mind
| clarifying?
| forbiddenlake wrote:
| If you click through to the app it requires an email and zip
| code to "register" and view the map. But it doesn't require
| actually receiving an email.
| briandear wrote:
| Apple only uses OSM for areas for which they have limited data.
| Just an FYI. The article implies that all these different map
| apps are using the same underlying data when they aren't.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I don't know how solvable a problem this is. There are two roads
| that would be labeled nearly identically that are an option for
| my commute. Let's call them Road A and Road B.
|
| _Road A:_ 45MPH, with a dedicated bike lane with no barrier.
|
| _Road B:_ 40MPH with a dedicated bike lane with no barrier.
|
| The similarities end there though:
|
| _Road A:_ Many turns with trees providing poor visibility
|
| _Road B:_ Relatively straight, good visibility
|
| _Road A:_ Typically has obstructions in the bike lane
|
| _Road B:_ Typically no obstructions in the bike lane
|
| _Road A:_ People speed rather massively
|
| _Road B:_ Many traffic signals; people who speed tend to take
| parallel Road A instead to avoid the signals.
|
| _Road A:_ The bike lane is sometimes only 30cm wide
|
| _Road B:_ The bike lane is wide enough to ride 2 abreast, and
| there is usually an additional 30cm painted area between you and
| traffic.
|
| _Road A:_ Car v. bike accidents are fairly regular, with
| multiple fatalities in the time I 've lived here.
|
| _Road B:_ Every car v. bike accident I 'm aware of was at night
| and involved an intoxicated driver.
|
| I have 3 parallel options for going in this direction, in order
| of increasing total distance for traveled: Road A, Road B, and a
| MUP (i.e. combination bike/pedestrian path).
|
| For obvious reasons, I prefer Road B, but it's hard to label a
| map in such a way that it won't pick the two best choices as Road
| A (shortest) the MUP (avoid highways).
| egypturnash wrote:
| I wonder if "ghost bikes" belong in a bike map. Someone died on
| a bike here. If you're on a bike maybe be extra careful, maybe
| avoid this street next time.
| sahmeepee wrote:
| I think the Street Complete approach is much more practical than
| anything voice based: slightly gamified "quest" based entry which
| lets you tackle an area or a data type in detail.
|
| It's pretty much impossible to do any meaningful and accurate
| data entry while riding a bike, whether the interface is touch,
| voice or whatever. You need to be able to verify that the phone
| has accurately captured what you were trying to tell it, not just
| take it on faith that it's worked, and that means looking at the
| screen carefully. Good luck to them making this work reliably.
| runsonrum wrote:
| I know this article isnt about the book but I haven't thought
| about it in decades.
|
| Loved it as a child. I should have another look.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_the_Sidewalk_Ends
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