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Re:TomTom announces new Maps Platform using OpenStreetMap by gambiting on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @04:04PM (#33442178)
In my experience - it's just frequently wrong, to a point where I don't feel confident using it. Telling you to turn where you can't, going wrong way up one-way streets, showing you that streets connect on the map where they actually don't.......I could keep going. I keep reporting errors and they never get fixed. Like I mentioned in another comment there's a road near my work which has a no-left-turn sign but Google maps still keeps telling me to turn left there - I've been reporting that error since at least 2018 but no one cares. One of my friends lives on a new(5 years old) estate and Google still doesn't recognize his address despite many submissions to Google to fix this. Another lives in a Victorian house that hasn't moved for over a century last time I checked, yet you won't find it on Google maps - Google still insists his address is several streets over.

Maybe it's just the UK maps and it works fine elsewhere, I don't know.

Re:TomTom announces new Maps Platform using OpenStreetMap by ThamesJ on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @04:52PM (#33442755)
It’s interesting how anecdotal people’s perspectives on Google maps navigation ends up being. Personally GMaps has never failed me (UK based) in the best part of a decade, if anything it has been consistently worryingly accurate, and everyone I know has had a similar experience. As I’ve seen others say in this thread “it just works” without fail. Due to that it’s unbelievable (to me) that others have had such an experience as yours. Do you think a fault in alphabet’s mapping processes in certain geographic areas may have caused this?
Re:TomTom announces new Maps Platform using OpenStreetMap by ddulaney on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @06:08PM (#33443598)
I've experienced both sides. My rough sense of it is:

If you're in a city or suburb with a Google office, it's spotless, including transit options that are often customized to the city itself.

If you're in a city or suburb without a Google office, it's reliable on roads but probably doesn't cover transit particularly well. I'm not sure if the Google vs. non-Google office is just a bias towards the kind of cities Google would put an office in as opposed to the presence of an office making a difference, but Pittsburgh is much better than Columbus or Jacksonville despite being a smaller city.

If you're in a rural area, it's much rougher. Private roads marked as public roads are the biggest thing I've noticed (presumably because aerial maps can't help much there), but also things like ATV tracks and driveways marked as roads and missing one-way indicators (i.e. routing the wrong way up a one-way street).

Re:TomTom announces new Maps Platform using OpenStreetMap by muti on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @10:11PM (#33446012)
There's no google office where I live, but google maps will show detailed transit information including exactly where on its route the bus you are waiting for is.

There's an attribution saying the data is coming from the local metro provider, who has their own interface for accessing the same data, but having it in google maps is nice as it integrates well with other navigation.

So I would say it comes down more to who has partnered with google to make the data more accessible.

Maybe more anecdotal, but I have had great mileage with google maps for navigation while driving too. The government department for land information does make almost all GIS data publicly available which probably helps too.

Re:TomTom announces new Maps Platform using OpenStreetMap by ddulaney on Friday November 04, 2022 @12:44AM (#33462299)
> The government department for land information does make almost all GIS data publicly available

That’s awesome! What country is this, if you don’t mind me asking? GIS datasets are really fun to play with.

Re:TomTom announces new Maps Platform using OpenStreetMap by mcv on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @03:48AM (#33528882)
I think Google has some kind of presence in Amsterdam (though not a big one), but they frequently have problems. I think there are two kinds of situation that Google Maps handles poorly:

* Bicycle route. They're just terrible at it. Better now than they were some years ago (when major bike routes were completely ignored), but still not great. They still prefer to send you along car routes instead of dedicated bike routes, even when those are shorter.

* Construction work (I don't think TomTom will be any better at this, though). Sometimes they do know construction work is ongoing; for example the Piet Hein tunnel near my house is closed for more than a year, and Google is aware of this. But they also don't show routes across the Amsterdamse Brug, which is still open, and the only real alternative. So instead they send you across crazy detours all over the city. But recently I was riding to Diemen along the Amsterdam-Rijnkanaal, and it turned out that dike was closed due to construction work. Big work with signs everywhere, but Google had no idea, and because there wasn't an easy way around, I had to take a big detour that would have been a lot smaller if Google had been aware of this.

Re:TomTom announces new Maps Platform using OpenStreetMap by scottLobster on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @06:33PM (#33443813)
It's not just the UK. I'm in the Philadelphia Area US and Google Maps has only failed me once out in the suburbs where it didn't know a road was blocked (and that was probably just timing/lack of reporting).

I use it daily to make sure my commute doesn't have any wrecks I'll have to work around, and any time I'm going somewhere unfamiliar. It really got stress tested on our way back from Tenessee during the eclipse exodus a few years ago, routed us (and lots of cars around us lol) through all sorts of Appalachia back-roads when the main highways were clogged and got us home just fine.

Re:TomTom announces new Maps Platform using OpenStreetMap by LAC-Tech on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @06:36PM (#33443838)
FWIW I live in a newer house on a country road, told google where it was and what number it was, and it was there on the maps a few weeks later. This was in NZ.

With the incredibly large sample size of two I have to conclude it's region specific.

Re:TomTom announces new Maps Platform using OpenStreetMap by jasonfarnon on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @07:41PM (#33444454)
does it rely much on user reporting? I figured google maps was smarter than that. it would have the data to see that no one takes a left at that no-left street you mentioned.
Re:TomTom announces new Maps Platform using OpenStreetMap by gambiting on Thursday November 03, 2022 @04:11PM (#33456802)
Except that people absolutely take that left turn despite the sign - it's just a very convenient shortcut, and UK has extremely lax enforcement on the road. The chances of getting a ticket for taking an illegal turn are close to zero. So Google will have the data that a left turn is indeed possible there, because clearly - people are taking it. Me reporting the "no left turn" sign is probably treated as malicious since clearly - in real life people are taking this turn all the time.