Streetcomplete: new Quest: surface smoothness

[Katzenstreu]

Hi,

I didn't found this feature request. What about a new qeust? Could we rate the quality of surfaces (ways, roads)?

Best regards,
Tim

[westnordost]

Can it be rated by an objective measure?

On November 8, 2019 10:48:16 AM GMT+01:00, Katzenstreu [e-mail] wrote:

Hi,

I didn't found this feature request. What about a new qeust? Could we
rate the quality of surfaces (ways, roads)?

Best regards,
Tim

[Katzenstreu]

Your're right. It's not easy.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Surface_Quality is inactive. But we could use smoothness=* https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:smoothness. There are eight grades.

But I understand the Problem. Its a little bit subjective. Could we vote for a smoothness? The Quest can be awnswerd three times. The average value could be transmitted to OSM.

[Katzenstreu]

Do you know if (bike) routing software and web services (like http://brouter.de/brouter-web/) using smoothness=*? brouter doesn't.

[westnordost]

I don't know. Also, voting is not possible, the app always tags directly.

On November 8, 2019 12:57:45 PM GMT+01:00, Katzenstreu [e-mail] wrote:

Do you know if (bike) routing software and web services (like
http://brouter.de/brouter-web/) using smoothness=*? brouter doesn't.

[Katzenstreu]

https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/smoothness (or http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/NUW) shows the coverage on a map for smoothness=*. It's used. You think its not useful?

[ghost]

It's used. You think its not useful?
I can definitely see a use for general routing and especially routing for people in wheelchairs

[westnordost]

It's used, the problem is that it is quite subjective. If this is implemented, the app needs to make it easier for the user to decide by providing a good and clear UI and providing a short and clear description when something is A or B.

On November 8, 2019 5:13:13 PM GMT+01:00, ferdinand0101 [e-mail] wrote:

It's used. You think its not useful?
I can definitely see a use for general routing and especially routing
for people in wheelchairs

[Katzenstreu]

Or allow tagging of smoothness only with a photo (to verify)?

Tobias Zwick [e-mail] schrieb am Fr., 8. Nov. 2019, 20:30:

It's used, the problem is that it is quite subjective. If this is
implemented, the app needs to make it easier for the user to decide by
providing a good and clear UI and providing a short and clear description
when something is A or B.

On November 8, 2019 5:13:13 PM GMT+01:00, ferdinand0101 <
[email protected]> wrote:

It's used. You think its not useful?
I can definitely see a use for general routing and especially routing
for people in wheelchairs

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[davidbaumann]

Same problem while pushing the stroller.
Actually, the smoothness of a road get less by time, but might suddenly be perfect if the road is repaired...
I remember there is a way to mark changes to be revised before applied, maybe this would be a way?

[westnordost]

This is rather a case where the surface quality should be asked again every few years or so, but this is another topic.

[westis]

Has there been any more thoughts put into this? I realize that smoothness is not always easy to tag, but it can be really useful to distinguish paths of different surface quality (and therefore relevant/passable for different wheeled vehicles). Maybe there can be one set of example images for highway=track and another set of example images for highway=path? With each photo possibly combined with a photo of the wheeled vehicle(s) that are supposed to be able to pass there.

Personally I'm interested in attributes for forest and mountain paths that will aid data consumers targeted at (trail) runners and hikers. Smoothness is one of the few existing tags that can actually be very useful for that.

Two others are mtb:scale and trail_visibility, but I suppose each of those should have separate issues for discussion.

[westnordost]

I'd say if this is implemented, it would best use the "eligible for XXX" descriptions on the wiki page.

So the user does not select "smoothness: excellent" but select something like "eligible for roller blades, skateboards". So for example perhaps something like this:

where the user should select for which vehicle type it is still usable.

[westnordost]

Though this slider would need 8 stop points for all the eight values of smoothness. So, difficult to fit it into one line. It could be made vertical but then the user always has to pull up the bottom sheet to properly answer this question.

[westis]

Agree that "Eligible for..." is much better than "Excellent" etc.

Some kind of vertical slider with image examples?

I'd say use different images for track and path, as 2-track vehicles can't travel on a path anyway and then the images may not be relevant for a forest path.

[davidbaumann]

Actually, there could be 8 boxes to select from, like road surface.
It should be asked after road surface, as the images presented to select smoothness should depend on surface.

[Identitaet]

I just saw this on weekly OSM and I thought it might be interesting

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Supaplex030/diary/393565
Smoothness-Ermittlung über Vibrationsmessung mit Smartphone und Fahrrad
(It seems to be only in German now but you can use software to translate it)

[westnordost]

I read it, it is very interesting. Though, I do not see how this could be used. In StreetComplete, such measuring could not be made directly. As the author writes himself, how big of a vibration equals which smoothness would need to be calibrated for each individual (bicycle suspension, wheel type and size, type of smartphone mount, tire pressure, driving style,...) and can only serve as a helper to decide about the smoothness. This is not how the app works, the app won't ask the user "please cycle down this road" and even if it did, what should then happen - it could only display some number to the user that shows the average level of vibrations, not make an automatic answer about the smoothness of the road.

But: Imagine there would be a QA tool that for a given (cycle)way would have the (average) amount of vibrations recorded by users of another app. This QA tool would be able to find those places where the smoothness=* value doesn't seem to fit to the level of vibrations recorded and show them on the map. Similarily to how osmose flags warnings. If that tool had an API, StreetComplete could ask for any suspects and ask StreetComplete users to (re-)survey those places. The "is this a oneway quest" works very similar to this idea.

[michaelblyons]

I support this quest¹. It's also one of the most interesting ones for maintaining with the #1998-style questions.

There's a little bit of difficulty with the "Eligible for…" method, although it may still be the best option. The smoothness=excellent roads do not have any car-like sample vehicles. Some people may misinterpret "Eligible for skateboards" to mean "Skateboards allowed on the street" and record a different answer. I notice that the English wiki now says "Usable by" which is better. Maybe we can say "Smooth enough for…" ?

I dislike several of the pictures on key:smoothness. The very_bad and horrible images are very similar looking, and the example for impassable looks very ridable on a mountain bike.

Someone talked about different options depending on the path type and/or access. I like that for similar reasons to the "Eligible for"/"Usable by" problem, but splitting into path and road/track leaves some holes in the available examples. I split MTB into front- vs. full-suspension so that paths didn't have two smoothness levels without examples back-to-back. I think that is a reasonable distinction to make (but I still have nothing great for "High clearance").

| value | description | Path smooth enough for | Road/Track smooth enough for |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| excellent | Tiny wheels |

• roller skates
• skateboard

|

• ???

|
| good | (very?) Thin wheels |

• racing bicycle
• child's wagon?
  (May belong in "wheels," instead)

|

• racing bicycle, if bicycles allowed
• ???

|
| intermediate | Wheels |

• "city" bicycle
• wheel chair

|

• "city" bicycle, if allowed
• sports car

|
| bad | Robust wheels |

• trekking bicycle
• rickshaw

|

• trekking bicycle, if allowed
• car

|
| very_bad | High clearance |

• Ox-drawn cart?
  (May belong in "robust wheels," instead)
• ???

|

• pickup truck / utility vehicle

|
| horrible | Off road wheels |

• front-suspension
  mountain bike ("hardtail")

|

• front-suspension
  mountain bike, if allowed
• Hilux / Land Rover / Jeep

|
| very_horrible | Specialty off road wheels
(Name is not great for "Path" items) |

• full-suspension
  mountain bike

|

• full-suspension
  mountain bike, if allowed
• ATV or motocross
• tractor (possible alternative: tank)

|
| impassable | No wheeled vehicles |

• A hiking boot

|

• A hiking boot

|

¹ …having recently discovered a bicycle "path" that turned out to be a dirt track covered in roots with 4 stream crossings. Very fun for MTB. Not as fun for a road bike.

[mnalis]

I'd really like this too, and "Smooth enough for…" wording seems best to me

[westnordost]

I do agree that defining the smoothness by with which vehicles it can still (comfortably) be used is a good step towards making this tag more objective and thus precise. However, there is a problem with this approach which I think has been mentioned somewhere in this thread:

To accurately measure the smoothness with this method, you'd theoretically have to have every of the mentioned modes of transportation (skates, racing bike, city bike, trekking bike, hardtail, full-suspension mountain bike) with you or at least have a very good understanding how smooth a surface has to be to classify it as usable for this or that method of transportation.
I for example have never used in my life either skates, a racing bike or any kind of mountain bike. So, I have no idea how bad a surface can be that it can still be conveniently used with anything else than a normal bicycle. Surely, I can not be the only one. And of course, this method does not completely do away with the subjectiveness with this tag - the more die-hard bicyclists may classify roads that would be completely unusable from my point of view as still okay-ish.

[michaelblyons]

I do agree that defining the smoothness by with which vehicles it can still (comfortably) be used is a good step towards making this tag more objective and thus precise.

Hooray! I am hopeful that we can work something out.

The more die-hard bicyclists may classify roads that would be completely unusable from my point of view as still okay-ish.

That makes sense. I once took a rented sedan on a trip in Idaho. The highway was boring, so we found an "alternate route" on the handheld GPS. We drove through a ghost town (cool), but wound up on a perilous forest road and came out the other side in Montana. The Montana side had a warning sign saying "No articulated vehicles. High clearance only." The Idaho side had no such sign.

Objectively, one _can_ drive an ordinary car through those woods (I did it), but nobody would _recommend_ that one do so.

And of course, this method does not completely do away with the subjectiveness with this tag

We _could_ try to make the surface smoothness objective instead of subjective by mimicking surface=pebblestone, where you have to measure the pebbles (although mud might make this more complicated):

• smoothness=excellent has a maximum surface discontinuity of 2 cm.
  
  
  
  • i.e. gaps in any direction, including vertical, are <2 cm
  
  
• smoothness=good has a maximum surface discontinuity between 2 cm and 6 cm.
• etc.

I have suspicions that a standard like that would annoy people more than help them, but it would definitely make things rigorous.

[Identitaet]

So if I understand you correctly you'd like different questions with different pictures etc. for each surface type ?

I think that sounds good, at least it would allow one to show examples which might be applicable