OTP for walking and cycling should accommodate winter maintenance

[tsobuskerudbyen]

What is possible in OSM+OTP today for routing changes according to winter conditions? We should start preparation work, after feedback from Tromsø, as Entur/OTP/OSM could get an even greater competitive advantage if this is accommodated in route suggestions. There are multiple possible layers here:

• On/off with snowplowing=no. Covered in map visualization: Add info about closed roads at winter #52
• Tags https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:winter_service:priority
• Live status like the snow plowing project we have done

Please document here (or point to other documentation), what is needed and what initiatives has been done here previously? Has Entur looked into this?

[leonardehrenfried]

In the OTP community we regularly talk about time-dependent restrictions which is what this boils down to. Right now this is not possible but there is agreement that we want it.

Adding realtime information about snow plowing is also interesting.

Both are a large amount of work so we need to budget accordingly.

I'm not aware of some prior work by anyone else and Entur doesn't tend to focus on things like this.

[tsobuskerudbyen]

Thanks for update. Missed it somehow.
Can you please spend an hour or two on scoping some work on this. Answer out things like: What is needed on both logic and added functionality in OTP for this? What budget is needed to implement the three points over. I guess it needs to be some sort of function that can be tuned on or off, and – if on – accommodate either time of year information. And, even better, live data on local winter conditions.

[tsobuskerudbyen]

For reference, another G. document with general information: "Cycle road winter maintenance - Information on status of the maintenance to cyclists"

[leonardehrenfried]

I had a think about the following items. Unfortunately it's large amount of work to get OTP to understand all of it.

• On/off with snowplowing=no. Covered in map visualization
• Tags https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:winter_service:priority
• Live status like the snow plowing project we have done

All of these points require a lot of thinking and refactoring of the OTP core code. I estimate that I need about 3 months for implementing this. I'm afraid it's not going to be easy.

[tsobuskerudbyen]

Thanks for update. I have made an estimate in NOK for this work then. Good to know and have as a concrete point to move forward with here.

As a possible way forward (in parallel with the work I do with the people I cooperate with): Would it be possible for you to make a ticket/issue for this in the OTP development? Just to start with something and see if there are any response. E.g., from the other developers, and it may bring up aspects we have not thought of? Like, if there are other solutions out there, co-operation on similar features can be incorporated, etc.

[leonardehrenfried]

(Sorry for the late reply.)

I can definitely create a ticket in the upstream repo and can speak to other developers to gauge interest.

BTW, there is also an OTP PO (product owner) group where all those that coordinate development efforts (but aren't developers themselves) meet once a month: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L8FPVJXvL7ok9wEmFa5lV_t_ES7XxN_J-1Ws8AeXySc/edit

If you would like to find others that you want to share development costs with, this might be a good place.