Big Street Purge?

Was there a big update of a city over the weekend? I saw a decent decrease in my overall streets and just curious. Anyone else?

Which city? You can see the date for the latest update of a city on the city page, next to the total distance

I think there has been some kind of major change in OSM so that public squares are not longer counted in CS. I “lost” around 150 streets in total in the last days because of that change

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A couple of weeks ago I suddenly “lost” 23 streets at a top city level. I don’t recall exactly when I noticed it, but it probably coincided with the marked date for the last time my city was updated (5 Jan).

Oddly, the total number of streets at that top city level also decreased by exactly 23 streets. When I checked my street counts at a sub-city level (ie suburbs and boroughs nested in that top city) I couldn’t see any changes at all, other than the odd street here or there, which is to be expected as maps get updated.

I’ve been puzzling over what the cause might have been, but I think I concluded there was maybe a data clean-up somewhere. It was weird that my street count and the total city street count reduced by exactly the same amount (given I’ve only completed just over 5% of my top level city - it’s a big, big city).

Right, now I remember this Pedestrian area - #54 by david3
So this was implemented Jan 4, which means all updates from that date and on may give a street decrease. I’ve only had a smaller city updated since then, and lost two pedestrian areas. I guess when Stockholm is updated I will also see a decrease.
A tip: set up Notification for cities you are interested in, then you will see exactly what is deleted (and added of course)

Are we “fine” that pedestrian areas are excluded now? As I said, I “lost” around 150 streets… :unamused:

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Can you set that up in retrospect? Just for curiousity’s sake I’d be interested to see what was deleted in my city.

FWIW, I don’t think removal of pedestrian areas explained what I observed. I don’t think I’ve walked many at all. But more relevantly, if they had been removed, I would expect the total street count for my city to have decreased by a lot more than my street count for that city. As it was, the decrease was the same.

No, I don’t think you can do it afterwards

I made my case for not removing them in the linked discussion, but it felt like a pretty lonely stand. In the end, the folks for a more narrow definition of running a city won out.

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I’ve not looked into it too closely as I’ve completed several cities around the globe (UK, Italy, Corsica) so it could really be any or a combination of those, but suspect it is in my home city of LA given the amount I’ve been logging here.

Well, LA has not been updated since Dec 15, so that shouldn’t be the one. But it has 13690 streets now, so check it after next update

Oh, it was updated tonight, and now down 10 streets, to 13680
And Stockholm was also updated tonight, lost 84 streets, down to 4249

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That’s bitter. I mean, we’ve ran all these streets and now they’re gone. Can we change that back? :smiley:

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I don’t worry about the total number, I just look at the percentage. I was at 100% in Stockholm, 84 squares deleted, new nodes added for two streets so now I’m at 99.95% :grin:

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That was crazy - I was wondering if your message triggered it :rofl:.

I lost a few in that tiny LA purge.

I’m feeling the same, but I don’t believe you can unless you try to rework the OSM itself.

Ah wondered why a few pedestrian areas in Portugal I had run got deleted. Also one in my home city which is basically a shopping center with some outdoor areas. TBH never made much sense to me to count that one as a “street” as recall almost randomly running around it to capture all the nodes on the notional “edges” of the area and I think, for a while at least, some of the “area” was actually undercover and so not freely accessible 24x7 and I feel everything we “do” should be else it is private or customers access not all.