Mapillary coverage is growing fast and their team is adding exciting new features like traffic sign recognition by the week. The ability to use Mapillary imagery for OpenStreetMap is particularly exciting, so I’ve set out to take a look at mapping two of the most important features for navigation — turn restrictions and speed limits— with Mapillary’s help. Here is how to map these features with the two most popular editors in OpenStreetMap.
Spotting a speed limit on Mapillary.
Mapping with iD
To work with Mapillary on OpenStreetMap’s web based iD editor, just enable the Mapillary layer like so:
You can then easily follow down roads to look for speed limits or turn restrictions like seen in the animate gifs below.
Mapping a turn restriction in iD.
Mapping a speed limit in iD.
Mapping with JOSM
OpenStreetMap’s desktop editor JOSM does not offer direct Mapillary integration, but you can use the Mapillary web site to browse images which works well. The web site comes with an edit button that allows you to hop directly into JOSM for editing (the edit button also supports iD for that matter). For mapping turn restrictions, first install the respective plugin in JOSM:
Installing the turn restrictions plugin
You can then explore areas on the Mapillary web site and click “edit” to open JOSM (make sure remote control is enabled):
The following two animated GIFs show how to map a turn restriction and a speed limit in JOSM. JOSM also has a nice plugin for proposed turn lanes if you want to go into details.
Mapping a turn restriction in JOSM.
Mapping a speed limit in JOSM.
More data
Of course there’s more information that can be gleaned from Mapillary than turn restrictions and speed limits. Here are a series of features I’ve found possible to map:
- number of lanes on a road including turn lanes versus through lanes
- cycling lanes
- sidewalks and crosswalks
- traffic lights
- road surface
- all kinds of points of interests like banks, shops, fire hydrants, petrol stations, cafés
A wish list
While using Mapillary with OpenStreetMap, I ran into a few items that would be nice to see streamlined to provide a more frictionless experience:
- Show traffic signs layer in iD (we’ve heard from Mapillary this is happening)
- Larger Mapillary image in iD - often the pictures are too small to see details
- Embedded Mapillary support in JOSM - this would eliminate the need to hop between windows
- Fine tuning of the blurring algorithm to not exclude street signs like here
- A link from images on Mapillary.com directly to OpenStreetMap.org that opens iD with the right image present
All images by Mapillary / CC BY-SA 4.0