[OSM-talk] City routing grid for Australia and the US

[Kai Krueger]

Hello everyone,

Inspired by the US 250 cities routing grid[1] used in the original TIGER
cleanup in 2009, I have now created a similar routing grid for the USA
and Australia.

Australia: http://apmon.dev.openstreetmap.org/aus_routing_grid.html
USA: http://apmon.dev.openstreetmap.org/us_routing_grid.html

It takes the top cities of the country and calculates the routing
distances between them and displays the result in a routing grid. It
allows to check the top tear inter city road network. Unusually long
routes are likely caused by broken data and indicates where things need
fixing.

In the grid, all routes that are more than 5% longer or slower than
expected* are show in red, otherwise they are considered as
superficially OK. The reference values are in brackets. If you click on
the link, you will be sent to the detailed routing information.

Unfortunately the situation, particularly in Australia, is pretty bad.
In Australlia currently non of the routes between the top ten cities
pass this criterion and in fact most of the routes can't be calculated
at all any more due to disconnectedness of the road network.

So for all those who are finished remapping their own area and are
looking to help with a bit of armchair mapping, trying to get more of
these routes green could be a good idea for arm chair mappers. Let's see
how quickly we can get all of them green!

The routing information is calculated using the Open Source Routing
Machine ( http://map.project-osrm.org/ ) and if I am not mistaken,
updates its data once a day. I will equally try and recreate those grids
on a daily basis to help track progress on the remapping.

Happy remapping,

Kai

* The time and distance that is expected is currently determined using
google's directions API. Although not perfect by any means, it is
probably the most reliable source for now as a reference.



[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER_fixup/250_cities/routing_grid