Slow execution of request for searching nearest street to GPS point

Question

I use OSM data. I need to find nearest street for GPS point. I wrote next SQL query:

SELECT 
     osm_id, 
     name,  
     ST_DISTANCE(geometry, ST_SetSRID(ST_POINT(37.72308, 55.47957), 4326), true) as dist 
FROM 
     roads 
WHERE 
     ST_DWithin(geometry, ST_SetSRID(ST_POINT(37.72308, 55.47957), 4326), 1) ORDER BY dist LIMIT 1;

But it's execution is very slow. It's take 7.5 seconds for not big territory. Table structure is next:

newdb=# \d roads
                                   Table "public.roads"
  Column  |           Type            |                     Modifiers                      
----------+---------------------------+----------------------------------------------------
 id       | integer                   | not null default nextval('roads_id_seq'::regclass)
 osm_id   | bigint                    | 
 type     | character varying         | 
 name     | character varying         | 
 tunnel   | smallint                  | 
 bridge   | smallint                  | 
 oneway   | smallint                  | 
 ref      | character varying         | 
 z_order  | integer                   | 
 access   | character varying         | 
 service  | character varying         | 
 class    | character varying         | 
 geometry | geometry(LineString,4326) | 
Indexes:
    "roads_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)
    "roads_geography" gist (geometry)
    "roads_geom" gist (geometry)

is there any way to increase speed of the query?

PostGIS 2.2 PostgreSQL 9.6

Answer 1

The problem is, that your query calculates the distance using ST_DISTANCE from your point to every road in a 1° distance (~ 100 km). This is slow!

You can instead use the <-> operator which makes use of indexes:

SELECT
  osm_id, 
  name,
  ST_DISTANCE(geometry, ST_SetSRID(ST_POINT(37.72308, 55.47957), 4326), true) as dist 
FROM roads
ORDER BY geometry <-> ST_SetSRID(ST_POINT(37.72308, 55.47957), 4326)
LIMIT 1;

From the docs:

The <-> operator returns the 2D distance between two geometries. Used in the "ORDER BY" clause provides index-assisted nearest-neighbor result sets.