Routability for OSM USA?

I recently downloaded and installed on my NUVI 260 the gmapsupp.img file for the USA from http://www.osmmaps.com/maps/united-states. The file shows up in the Map Details listings on the NUVI as OSM-generic-routable. However when I try to use this map to navigate to a location that I enter as a “Where TO?” address or POI, I get a message that the location cannot be found. However it is able to navigate to locations that have been previously saved as “favorites” or “recently found”.

I would appreciate help in getting my NUVI to navigate with this OSM map.

You could ask the creator of the map file ( http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Ben%20Konrath ) or try a different map.

I don’t know if it’s a shortfall in the map data (i.e. we need to step up our contributions in that respect) or the translation to Garmin format, but I’ve found the address data in the OSM-for-Garmin maps to be of limited use. I have had pretty good luck just using a street name in the destination town and then navigating to an address the old-fashioned way (by reading numbers from mailboxes and building).

I haven’t used the Garmin products derived from OSM data but I have been using OsmAnd on my phone quite a bit and I usually use it in offline mode where any lookups have to come from the OSM data and not from some Nominatum server with alternative sources of information.

My perspective from that is that two things are defective about trying to do routing in the US with OSM data alone:

  1. House numbers are nearly non-existent for much of the country.
  2. Speed limits are missing from most roads.

Because of the first, finding the address you wish to navigate to can be difficult or impossible. Because of the second the route picked may not be optimal.

As my part to help correct this situation, I’ve gathered addresses for a pretty big part of the city I live in and added them to the database. Same thing for speed limits, and when ever I drive anywhere I haven’t mapped before I run OSMtracker with a custom button set I created to allow easy “one touch” entry of speed limits.

I hope I’ve made things easier for others traveling to or through my area. I hope that others will do the same.