Assessing the Completeness of Bicycle Trail and Lane Features in OpenStreetMap for the United States

This paper assesses the completeness of bicycle trail and on-street lane features in OpenStreetMap (OSM). Comparing OSM cycling features with reference data from local planning agencies for selected US Urbanized Areas shows that OSM bicycle trails tend to be more completely mapped than bicycle lanes. Manual evaluation of mapped cycling features in OSM and Google Maps for selected test areas within the Central Business Districts of Portland (OR) and Miami (FL) through comparison with governmental datasets, satellite imagery, and Google Street View, shows that the Bicycle layer in Google Maps can help to identify some missing or erroneously mapped OSM cycling links. However, also Google Maps was found to have some gaps in its data layers, suggesting that consultation of current trail and lane data from local planning authorities as an additional data source should be considered for bicycle related planning projects if available.