Mapbox was excited to sponsor and attend State of the Map US 2024 in Salt Lake City, Utah. For over a decade, Mapbox representatives and speakers have actively participated in this highly anticipated annual event, which this year centered around the theme "The Great Outdoors." 

State of the Map US (SoTM US) is the largest annual gathering of the US OpenStreetMap (OSM) community, bringing together mappers, businesses, academics, government agencies, and nonprofits from across the country to share experiences, ideas, and showcase innovative projects and technologies.

“The State of the Map US fosters collaboration, builds community, and drives innovation while raising awareness about OSM and welcoming new people to the community. Each year, OSM US looks forward to convening our mainly online community to connect face to face. The work we all do is truly transformative; we are not just mapping streets and buildings, but also creating a platform for inclusivity, accessibility, and empowerment. Through this year’s theme, the Great Outdoors, a selection of talks highlighted the importance of open data in recreation and the environment, but with more than 70 presenters discussing topics from tools to map impacts there was something for everyone.” - Diane Fritz, OpenStreetMap US Board President

This year, Robert Florance (Mapbox Product Manager) and I represented Mapbox at SoTMUS to stay connected with the US geospatial community and join in conversations about geo trends in 2024. 

Mapbox shares experience with mapping complex lanes

As part of sharing news and insights from Mapbox, I presented a lightning talk titled "Lines vs Lanes: Modeling Complex Lane Fanning" that delved into the nuances of mapping (vs. modeling traffic in) complex lane configurations. To illustrate the situation I began with the I-5 freeway as it flows into the Tijuana Border at San Ysidro.

In OSM, roadways like this are often modeled as numerous (in this case, dozens) of separate one-way paths through each toll booth. However, this method can be problematic for navigation routing applications - particularly related to how we model traffic and maintain consistent “real” flow speeds across all the numerous lanes when we do not have live probe data directly matching to all the edges.

The discussion then broke out regarding tagging protocol for such situations - as both the US and international communities have highlighted the need to use the lanes tag to indicate fan out vs. independent modeling of each lane. Considerations about feasible routing across a large fan-out condition pointed to the need for a “representative” number of ways where each way was associated with a lane tag count that was appropriate for that routable portion of the total fan-out. This pattern prevents vehicles from being inappropriately suggested a route that includes, for example, merging across a dozen or more lanes in a matter of seconds.

Finally, considerations about how accurate traffic flow estimates are managed across lane fan-out was discussed. Specifically, the use of relations to define fan out conditions like toll plazas was weighed against external-to-OSM “manual” tracking of such cases through methods like geofencing.

Understanding the considerations of other OSM users, especially companies like Lyft who are also actively using (and editing) the network and tagging protocol for routing, is extremely valuable in developing more consistent guidance on lane mapping for future OSM work.

Other Highlights from SoTM US

Throughout the event, Robert and I attended various talks, workshops, and social events. Key themes of interest for us this year were discussions about data completeness, pedestrian networks, and innovative mapping tools. 

As has been the case for the past few years, pedestrian mapping work featured heavily in conference talks - from Meta’s ongoing work attempting to flag crosswalks through computer vision parsing of satellite imagers - to other interesting and more localized cases like one from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) in the Bay Area: In the MTC presentation, a consultant to them shared how their team is developing internal routing for BART (the local suburban transit system in the Bay Area) stations that is synchronized with their schedule feed dataset (GTFS, which allows you to route transit trips on supporting apps). This work is useful in the context of growing interest in internal mapping of large destinations (such as airports and malls) as well as access points work.

Perhaps the most intriguing talk was Lyft’s as they have been grappling with common challenges regarding ETA vs. speed accuracy, developing introspection tools to review trip patterns, and populating OSM with road signage data from cameras mounted to drivers dashboards. It was exciting to hear about potential plans to open-source some of their internal tools to the wider OSM community. In follow up discussions with them, we gained fascinating, if humorous, insight into efforts to develop a clear congestion coloring metric as well as challenges updating speed and ETA modeling in conjunction with their driver pay team’s need for ETA consistency.

Continuing Mapbox Support to OSM

Mapbox has long partnered with the OSM community to enhance global mapping data. Since 2019, we've added over 4 million features to OSM, filling data gaps and offering expertise to the community. Continuing our long tradition of rallying in support of disaster response mapping initiatives, in 2023, Mapbox supported the disaster response efforts after earthquakes in Turkey and Syria by adding over 12k building features and 2k road features. 

As an Associate sponsor of OSM US and a Gold sponsor of the OSM Foundation, Mapbox is honored to continue our foundational support of OSM infrastructure. We also sponsor events like State of the Map US as vital community-building opportunities to connect hundreds of OSM contributors, supporters, and innovators in person. These community gatherings are invaluable for fostering discussions that shape the future of the global geospatial community.

“Mapbox’s continued support of OpenStreetMap and OpenStreetMap US demonstrates its commitment to community collaboration and the high-quality data maintained by thousands of contributors around the world. Continued partnership with OSM US helps promote collaboration and innovation, ensuring the long-term sustainability and success of the project.” - Maggie Cawley, Executive Director, OpenStreetMap US

We hope to connect with you at other geo events around the world this year!