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There’s actually work ongoing on live traffic support from various public sources!

https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/projects/21877

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This looks really solid. It's the thing that would make me switch over. 90% of the time I know exactly where I'm going but need Google Maps to tell me what's unexpectedly in the way while I'm trying to get there.
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My problem is that more often than not the road or business name I'm trying to find us just not in the database. If I'm at home I'll try to add it but if I'm driving that is not going to happen and I'll just use something else.
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Yeah, that's a great call-out. While I can reckon my way most places, memorizing cross streets isn't my strength. Not having at least decent recency on top of traffic makes it tough.
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Thank you for contributing! The task of mapping every street and business in the world sounds impossible, but openstreetmap.org does really well.
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I'll preface this by saying I can't speak for India. I live in the US. Use your own discretion to decide what here might apply to you.

I've been using Organic Maps for almost 3 years. I lived in Chicago during this time, as well as some smaller American cities. I go back and forth between Organic Maps and GMaps depending on the situation.

I've found that Organic Maps' lack of traffic data isn't a big deal for me. It doesn't always give you an accurate ETA, sure, but it isn't any worse at actually getting you to your destination.

The thing with GMaps is that everyone has traffic data, so nobody has an advantage. Google's alternative routes end up equally saturated as the main routes, meaning a "dumb" maps app that always takes the main route will get you to your destination in basically the same amount of time. This is backed up by my own personal experience, and some academic research [1].

Now, when I do need an accurate ETA, I go back to GMaps. I'll also use GMaps to route to businesses sometimes, because OSM doesn't have up-to-date info about businesses throughout most of middle America.

[1]: https://trid.trb.org/view/1495267

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> I've found that Organic Maps' lack of traffic data isn't a big deal for me. It doesn't always give you an accurate ETA, sure, but it isn't any worse at actually getting you to your destination.

Some places live traffic information gives you a choice between a 10 minute way and 40 minute way though, if you get stuck in the wrong spots it really truly sucks, and for us who live in these places, being able to easily route around those spots saves us a bunch of time and energy.

I want to use any client app that uses OSM for car navigation, as I contribute both money and map fixes, but currently nothing seems to come close to either Wave or Google Maps when it comes to traffic information, which ends up being pretty important (for some), so I end up using Organic Maps only for when I walk on foot.

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In Europe you could use NUNAV, which does collaborative routing to avoid this scenario (I work for the company that develops it).
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I prefer Google Maps cause they'll tell you where pigs camp out.

Saved me a lot of speeding tickets on the interstate.

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Comaps can display your current speed and (if it's in the data) the speed limit for the road you're on - everything you need to avoid speeding tickets!
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It would be really cool to see the social situational awareness sharing feature be implemented in an open client over an open censorship resistant protocol. Because to me Google maps is just mass surveillance by the pigs even if it does happen to help you today, the long term incentive for big tech is to erode user freedom and collude with corrupt governments.
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Waze is way better for that and where Google gets its data, but delayed it seems, because they’re both Alphabet.
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There’s Magic Earth which uses OSM map data but also integrates live traffic information. Not sure whether it works in India, though.

https://www.magicearth.com/

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Have they tried/are there any plans of upstreaming that somehow? While I rely on proprietary services for car navigation today, if I move to a OSM-based services next, I'd want it to be similarly structured to actual OSM, not some proprietary bolted-on-top-of-OSM startup that will disappear/enshittificate within years.
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