Method

Screen setup

To map efficiently, you will need 3 windows:

It makes things simpler to spread them over multiple screens.

Two screens

This is by far the most common setup. Use 2 screens, either physical or virtual.

First screen Second screen
left screen right screen

On the first screen, open 2 browser windows. Give 50% of the screen to each of them.

On the leftmost window, open GoogleMaps with Street view. Give the top 75% of the tab to the actual street view, the rest at the bottom, to the map view.

On the rightmost window, open OSM with the ID editor.

On the second screen, open this website. Use as must space as you feel comfortable with. The goal is to find the tagging information quickly.

One wide screen

An alternative setup that is used on wide screens (UHD, 4K, etc.) is to open the 3 windows on the same screen, and give each of them 1/3 of the screen.

The screenshot below depicts this setup on a 4K monitor at a definition of 3840 x 2160 pixels.

one-screen-3-windows

Mapping

This method consist in using Google Street view to identify the street features described by the main tags in our guide, then report them to OSM using the ID editor.

The tasks can be performed at the same time or sequentially, as you prefer.

Example: E. M. Franklin Ave. between E. 12th St and Manor Road

Place the street view orange man at E. 12th St & E. M. Franklin Ave. Look North. You must start at one end, and go to the other end.

Start identifying the street features represented by the tags at the top of our guide. We can see the following ones:

Start moving North (use the mouse or the UP arrow ( 🔼) on the keyboard), and keep following the road until you notice at least one change in the street features you previously recognized.

In our case, nothing changes until we reach E. Martin Luther King Jr Blvd.

Passing the intersection, we notice the following changes:

We keep moving forward, and do not notice any changes until Manor Road, which is the end of the street we are mapping.

REMARK: We simplified the feature list a little bit here for the sake of this example. An experienced mapper would have added the following segments: 1) just after passing E. Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, our street has 3 lanes for a few feet 2) there are parking pockets all along our second segment.

During this virtual walk, we have identified the following segments and attributes:

We can now report them to OSM using the ID editor.