mapbox
Project Missing Roads
Introduction
The Missing Roads project will be focused on the addition of the new and missing roads to improve the overall road network connectivity and visualization. Places with missing roads will be automatically identified by the internal tools built by Mapbox developers based on GPS traces.
Example:
Types of Activity
Here is list of features we will be commonly focus on:
- Missing roads
- Roads geometry
- Oneway tag
- Surface tag (paved, unpaved)*
- Access tag*
*We’re aware of local mapping and conditions. If there is a possibility that the road could have a special access tag and in case there is no ground truth we will leave a note or mark the access as unknown. Also we will add surface tag at least for roads outside of cities.
Geographical scope and timeframe
Missing Roads project will map on OSM worldwide. Right now main focus will be on:
- USA
- Canada
- Australia
- New Zealand
How to find Missing Roads edits
All edits made by our team in this project will have the hashtag #mapbox_missing_roads
Editing Team
All members of the team went through the onboarding process before starting editing on OpenStreetMap and are familiar with the principles of editing. The team will use OSM ID as the main tool for editing. New editors are guided to OSM training resources like the OSM Wiki and iD editor's Help panel. All team members can be found here: link
Documentation used for mapping:
- https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Way
- Tags: 2.1 https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tags 2.2 https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:highway 2.3 https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States/2021_Highway_Classification_Guidance 2.4 https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:oneway 2.5 https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:access 2.6 https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface
Sources
- All available sources on OpenStreetMap site itself:
1.1 Backgrounds or Satellite imagery (the latest ones based on dates in the Background panel info). Example:
1.2 Photo Overlays or Street-level sources (Mapilary, Bing Streetside etc.) 1.3 Overlays (OSM GPS traces, Tiger Roads etc.)
- Sources with ODbL license
- Mapbox datasets and tools**
**For cases where there is not enough ground truth data from the OSM (Backgrounds, Overlays, etc) we will use collected Mapbox telemetry data, GPS traces, knowledge of the on the ground test drivers, etc. to produce the edit. We are ready to share all sources that we will use for mapping in case and provide as much context as needed.
Results
The results of our review made by our team in OpenStreetMap will be provided quarterly in the /mapping repository in the comment section of the Project’s ticket. In the USA there are at least 3,000 cases of missing roads by the end of May '2024.
Contact
We welcome feedback from OSM mappers as local knowledge always prevails. If you have any questions about a specific edit done by the Mapbox team inside this project or want to suggest some improvements in the editing process you can contact project coordinator [email protected] (Evgeniya) or post a comment in a changeset.
In cases of the general Mapbox mapping activity feedback and suggestions, please, use general contact e-mail: [email protected].
More information about team : Wiki page
We’ve made 2250 changesets, created about 20,4K ways (2,4K km).
We spent most of our time adding service roads and parking aisles, residential roads and driveways. We also fixed old roads from TIGER uploads.
Right now the project is on pause, but we will use the hashtag if we will find a place to map again.
Examples:
| before | after | links |
|---|---|---|
| osm/37.84648/-81.19682 | ||
| osm/37.6993/-81.1071 | ||
| osm/map=16/47.4268/-111.3710 |
Missing Roads project will map on OSM worldwide. Right now main focus will be on:
- USA
- Canada
- Australia
- New Zealand
As we plan to scale the Missing Roads project worldwide, we plan to map in Europe too. Apart from USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand mentioned above, we plan to start mapping on OSM in the following European countries:
- Germany
- France
- Netherlands
- Belgium
- Italy
- Spain
- Sweden
- Denmark
- Norway
- United Kingdom
With regard to the United Kingdom, I suspect that the local community would be interested to hear about these "missing roads" of which you speak. We've had Amazon mappers adding every bit of concrete that they can find. There are new builds of course, but I'd suggest raising all these edits with the local communities in the forum so that people can understand what mechanism you're using for detecting these and can help with tagging etc.
Hello, @SomeoneElseOSM! We are currently making official announcements to the OSM communities of the European countries mentioned above where we're planning to scale the project. Here is the announcement link: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/mapbox-organized-editing-missing-roads-in-the-uk/125552 with the more details we've made for the UK OSM community.
Since the beginning of the year (January 1 - March 25) our team has created ~24200 changesets, mapping 14330 km of new roads and modifying 178351 km of already existing roads (including geometry changes, changes of incorrect road attributes: oneways, access, etc.)
Within our mapping activity we have been mostly adding service roads, parking areas, residential roads in newly built residential areas and driveways.
During this period our team expanded mapping activity from USA, Canada and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) to European countries, including: Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom (which was supported by the announcements to communities of each country).
Here are the results of mapping Missing Roads for each country:
Examples of most common cases mapped in each country:
| Country | Before | After | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| USA | osm/35.45074/-86.11858 | ||
| osm/38.133199/-83.687715 | |||
| Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) | osm/-33.687118/115.287390 | ||
| Canada | osm/47.723595/-69.604385 | ||
| Germany | osm/53.077133/11.838143 | ||
| osm/53.661273/11.353827 | |||
| Netherlands | osm/51.587349/5.199106 | ||
| osm/51.557576/5.066043 | |||
| Belgium | osm/50.862226/3.839990 | ||
| osm/50.8811271/4.4593422 | |||
| United Kingdom | osm/53.398911/-2.808649 | ||
| osm/54.506919/-5.894087 |
As part of our ongoing efforts within the Missing Roads project, we are expanding the Missing Roads project in Europe to new locations. Our mapping activities will extend to the following additional countries:
- Austria
- Switzerland
- Luxembourg
- Finland
- Ireland
- Portugal
- Czechia
- Slovakia
- Poland
This notification will be supplemented by announcements to the OSM communities in each country, providing comprehensive project details. We have already started making the announcements since late June and will commence our mapping activities only after alignment with each local community has been achieved.
During March 26 - June 30 our team has created ~29044 changesets, mapping 15088 km of new roads and modifying 197126 km of already existing roads (including geometry changes, changes of incorrect road attributes: oneways, access, etc.).
Within our mapping activity we continued adding mostly service roads, parking aisles, residential roads in newly built residential areas and driveways.
Our team's mapping efforts expanded across several regions during this period. We continued our work in the US, Canada, and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand). In Europe, we scaled our operations to include Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Spain, and Italy. Additionally, we began mapping activities in the UAE and Japan. All of our mapping efforts in mentioned locations have been supported with the announcements to OSM communities of each country.
Here are the results of mapping Missing Roads for each country:
Examples of most common cases mapped in each country:
| Country | Before | After | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| USA | osm/37.377917/-81.076749 | ||
| Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) | osm/-40.309023/175.655259 | ||
| Canada | osm/43.07597/-79.93280 | ||
| Denmark | osm/55.541614/8.548974 | ||
| Sweden | osm/60.47574/15.58911 | ||
| Norway | osm/59.242662/11.016422 | ||
| France | osm/45.139275/-0.411732 | ||
| Spain | osm/36.606187/-6.256167 | ||
| Italy | osm/41.411981/13.696493 | ||
| UAE | osm/25.180208/55.577713 | ||
| Japan | osm/34.910930/137.069120 |
During July 1 - October 17 our team has created ~10640 changesets, mapping 5897 km of new roads and modifying 44612 km of already existing roads (including geometry changes, changes of incorrect road attributes: oneways, access, etc.).
Within our mapping activity we continued adding mostly service roads, parking aisles, residential roads in newly built residential areas and driveways.
Our team's mapping efforts expanded across several regions during this period. We continued our work in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, UAE and Japan. In Europe, we scaled our operations to include Austria, Switzerland, Finland, Czechia, Poland. All of our mapping efforts in mentioned locations have been supported with the announcements to OSM communities of each country.
Here are the results of mapping Missing Roads for each country:
Examples of most common cases mapped in each country:
| Country | Before | After | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| USA | osm/36.58064/-86.24155 | ||
| osm/36.364054/-86.449798 | |||
| Australia | osm/-24.894942/152.291238 | ||
| New Zealand | osm/-42.503098/171.175004 | ||
| Canada | osm/43.020009/-80.871116 | ||
| osm/42.861232/-80.704372 | |||
| Japan | osm/34.935272/136.645412 | ||
| osm/37.449578/140.587632 | |||
| Austria | osm/46.806785/15.519265 | ||
| Switzerland | osm/46.300996/6.937834 | ||
| Finland | osm/62.770208/22.949014 | ||
| Czechia | osm/50.742043/14.172225 | ||
| Poland | osm/52.380835/17.067300 | ||
| osm/53.240860/19.405767 | |||
| Germany | osm/48.910532/8.719276 | ||
| UAE | osm/25.051474/55.216096 |