[Routing] pre-compute routing and building an ETA-database

[Steve Coast]

On 27 Sep 2007, at 13:55, Marcus Wolschon wrote:
>> I mean if you have more than one type of route, you're just
> multiplying the the total dataset size by the number of types.
>
> Sorry, the number is infinite a soon as the user
> can input his average speed for each road-type
> (Like I can do with every navigation-program and most
>  navigation-websites I am using).

I wasn't proposing The Worlds Most Amazing Router, I was proposing  
something along the lines of what Google do.

>> I would be really interested to see if we can build a picture of  
>> actual
>> average road speed for a given time/day from the data collected so  
>> far.
>> I'm not sure that we could at the moment, given the emphasis is on
>> building a complete map rather than collecting "redundant" points.
>> Nonetheless, could make routing ETAs very good. Thoughts?
>
> Collecting average real-world times for segments would be really
> usefull data!
> Given a service and an API to collect such data I would add a checkbox
> for the user to contribute to it right now!
> Given user-selected vehicle-class, time of way and boolean
> weekdey/weekend such a database could be used to augment ETA- 
> estimates.

Maybe have a look at http://api.ecourier.co.uk/

have fun,

SteveC | steve at asklater.com | http://www.asklater.com/steve/