5 ms·

Google keeps adding the irrigation access road next to me to maps. This is both dangerous as its totally unprotected and a car could easily drive into the canal

Google keeps adding the irrigation access road next to me to maps. This is both dangerous as its totally unprotected and a car could easily drive into the canal, and its private, only the property owners and irrigation district are allowed to use it. I have reported it something like 10 times already and every tie it will be removed for a day or two and then instantly pop back into the map. I don't get how Google even thinks this is a road, or what data it is using to discover it. Its nowhere on any map that I know of!

trillic 3y ago
[flagged]
pard68 3y ago
They do that to us too. Google wanted me to take a detour over an access bridge that allowed a farmer to cross a ditch (man made creeks in the Missouri Bootheel).
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  There's a semi-maintained road that goes through a farm field between my parents house and my childhood best friend's house. Partway through there's a creek and the road just goes through the creek because it's usually dry or shallow enough you can drive through it with a truck. It gets pretty deep and wide in the spring though. Google Maps suggests that route. Also, I'm pretty sure it's a private road and likely not passable in the winter because it probably doesn't get plowed.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
AlotOfReading 3y ago
It's pretty likely that the road data source (e.g. the local government) marks the road without any restrictions. Data errors are shockingly common with municipal sources. Even if that's not the case and the source correctly marks the restrictions, maps will still route onto it for destinations "along" the road.
- mike_d 3y ago
  This is what I believe to be the cause behind most of the anecdotal stories in the comments here. Google Maps gets bombed with fake edits by people who don't want others using "their" road, so in the event of conflicts map providers have to defer to official sources. When I was at Google I tried to track down someone on the Maps team open to adding a "Jeep Mode" that would let you opt-in to routing via roads that were unavailable and telling you why (washed out, poorly maintained, etc). Nobody seemed to like the idea.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    Many people who haven't had the misfortune of working with geospatial data underestimate how unbelievably hard is to make a good map, let alone a global one.
    - ImaCake 3y ago
      Is this because of the data quality and difficulties with merging across CRSes or otherwise slightly differently aligned datasets? I dabble in geospatial data for my work in air quality modelling, accuracy for me means being within approximately 10-50 meters. Even under those very loose constraints I find the data handed to me by clients is often not good enough. Incomplete AutoCad dxfs, PDFs, and dubious SHPs all make the work much harder than it needs to be.
      - AlotOfReading 3y ago
        It's everything. The problem domain for Google maps is effectively "everything on Earth". I haven't worked with gmaps specifically and can't claim specific expertise there beyond some social conversations with people on the team, but some fun things I've encountered include: * Roads that have no physical delineations (e.g. an entire valley is the road). * Landscape features can change rapidly (e.g. forest fires rendering roads unusable on a minute-by-minute basis). * Landscape features can change slowly (e.g. erosion, continental drift) * Landscape features can change slowly and rapidly (e.g. features on glaciers). * Data that's flat out wrong for political reasons (e.g. disputed territories, GCJ-02, hidden "things"). * Data that's flat out wrong for technological reasons (e.g. GPS jamming). * Things that are named in languages without written forms. * Things that have official names other people consider offensive (e.g. Piestewa peak). When you make a map, all of these and more become your problem. Every edge case anywhere in the world is potentially something you have to worry about.
mjevans 3y ago
Clearly needs 'hazard documentation' features (legal, safety, otherwise) to prevent roads that shouldn't be used from being used.
manojlds 3y ago
Wonder if the people who do use it want it back.
- liquidgecka 3y ago
  The people that use it (legally) are the irrigation folks. They use it every day and the property owners can not block access. The private property owners are all commercial developers that have held onto the empty land for a few decades and seemingly have forgotten that they own it given that they never show up in the first place. I can't think of anybody else that would want that to be on maps at all.
bsder 3y ago
> I don't get how Google even thinks this is a road, or what data it is using to discover it. Its nowhere on any map that I know of! I suspect that someone holding an Android phone simply drives the path. If you're Google, which will you trust more: 1) A bunch of sources of varying correctness which may/may not have been tampered with. or 2) Actual GPS coordinates from your OS saying "Hey, somebody drove here."
- liquidgecka 3y ago
  I thought that too, but the irrigation district locked a gate when they finished up in October and yet it is still popping up. So if they are using phone traversals then its all foot traffic and that is more terrifying than it being detected via satellite images!
- thomc 3y ago
  I don't know if Google Maps pays much attention to Android users frequenting a particular path. Where I live you need to take a particular route else you end up at closed gates. Despite hundreds of people using this route every day for years Google will still try to take you via a different route that takes you to a closed gate. Other mapping software gets it right but we have to provide specific route instructions in case anyone uses Google and ends up at a dead end. I have noticed this all over actually, with Google trying to take short cuts that don't work vs following well-established routes.
- vanviegen 3y ago
  I don't think gmaps actually does that. We have a 20 meter stretch of road near our house that connects two other roads. Google, for at least the last five years, has refused to believe that this road can be traveled, having everyone take a detour. Hundreds of cars are taking this non-existing road every day, but Google still hasn't taken the hint. (Probably preventing quite a bit of through-traffic in our neighborhood, so we're actually rather happy about this. :-))
  - rompic 3y ago
    20 Meters is quite short, so assuming a certain speed, there might only be a few GPS probes for each pass, that might also look as if they were outliers.
Avamander 3y ago
Does it exist on OpenStreetMaps and has it been marked restricted there? I have a small suspicion that Google is cross-referencing itself with OSM and some changes stick if OSM corroborates. But it won't ever agree to the road not existing (because it does exist).
darkhorn 3y ago
I think you can fix it from Open Street Map. They use OSM a lot.

trillic 3y ago

[flagged]

pard68 3y ago

They do that to us too. Google wanted me to take a detour over an access bridge that allowed a farmer to cross a ditch (man made creeks in the Missouri Bootheel).

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
There's a semi-maintained road that goes through a farm field between my parents house and my childhood best friend's house. Partway through there's a creek and the road just goes through the creek because it's usually dry or shallow enough you can drive through it with a truck. It gets pretty deep and wide in the spring though. Google Maps suggests that route. Also, I'm pretty sure it's a private road and likely not passable in the winter because it probably doesn't get plowed.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

AlotOfReading 3y ago

It's pretty likely that the road data source (e.g. the local government) marks the road without any restrictions. Data errors are shockingly common with municipal sources. Even if that's not the case and the source correctly marks the restrictions, maps will still route onto it for destinations "along" the road.

mike_d 3y ago
This is what I believe to be the cause behind most of the anecdotal stories in the comments here. Google Maps gets bombed with fake edits by people who don't want others using "their" road, so in the event of conflicts map providers have to defer to official sources. When I was at Google I tried to track down someone on the Maps team open to adding a "Jeep Mode" that would let you opt-in to routing via roads that were unavailable and telling you why (washed out, poorly maintained, etc). Nobody seemed to like the idea.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  Many people who haven't had the misfortune of working with geospatial data underestimate how unbelievably hard is to make a good map, let alone a global one.
  - ImaCake 3y ago
    Is this because of the data quality and difficulties with merging across CRSes or otherwise slightly differently aligned datasets? I dabble in geospatial data for my work in air quality modelling, accuracy for me means being within approximately 10-50 meters. Even under those very loose constraints I find the data handed to me by clients is often not good enough. Incomplete AutoCad dxfs, PDFs, and dubious SHPs all make the work much harder than it needs to be.
    - AlotOfReading 3y ago
      It's everything. The problem domain for Google maps is effectively "everything on Earth". I haven't worked with gmaps specifically and can't claim specific expertise there beyond some social conversations with people on the team, but some fun things I've encountered include: * Roads that have no physical delineations (e.g. an entire valley is the road). * Landscape features can change rapidly (e.g. forest fires rendering roads unusable on a minute-by-minute basis). * Landscape features can change slowly (e.g. erosion, continental drift) * Landscape features can change slowly and rapidly (e.g. features on glaciers). * Data that's flat out wrong for political reasons (e.g. disputed territories, GCJ-02, hidden "things"). * Data that's flat out wrong for technological reasons (e.g. GPS jamming). * Things that are named in languages without written forms. * Things that have official names other people consider offensive (e.g. Piestewa peak). When you make a map, all of these and more become your problem. Every edge case anywhere in the world is potentially something you have to worry about.

mjevans 3y ago

Clearly needs 'hazard documentation' features (legal, safety, otherwise) to prevent roads that shouldn't be used from being used.

manojlds 3y ago

Wonder if the people who do use it want it back.

liquidgecka 3y ago
The people that use it (legally) are the irrigation folks. They use it every day and the property owners can not block access. The private property owners are all commercial developers that have held onto the empty land for a few decades and seemingly have forgotten that they own it given that they never show up in the first place. I can't think of anybody else that would want that to be on maps at all.

bsder 3y ago

> I don't get how Google even thinks this is a road, or what data it is using to discover it. Its nowhere on any map that I know of! I suspect that someone holding an Android phone simply drives the path. If you're Google, which will you trust more: 1) A bunch of sources of varying correctness which may/may not have been tampered with. or 2) Actual GPS coordinates from your OS saying "Hey, somebody drove here."

liquidgecka 3y ago
I thought that too, but the irrigation district locked a gate when they finished up in October and yet it is still popping up. So if they are using phone traversals then its all foot traffic and that is more terrifying than it being detected via satellite images!
thomc 3y ago
I don't know if Google Maps pays much attention to Android users frequenting a particular path. Where I live you need to take a particular route else you end up at closed gates. Despite hundreds of people using this route every day for years Google will still try to take you via a different route that takes you to a closed gate. Other mapping software gets it right but we have to provide specific route instructions in case anyone uses Google and ends up at a dead end. I have noticed this all over actually, with Google trying to take short cuts that don't work vs following well-established routes.
vanviegen 3y ago
I don't think gmaps actually does that. We have a 20 meter stretch of road near our house that connects two other roads. Google, for at least the last five years, has refused to believe that this road can be traveled, having everyone take a detour. Hundreds of cars are taking this non-existing road every day, but Google still hasn't taken the hint. (Probably preventing quite a bit of through-traffic in our neighborhood, so we're actually rather happy about this. :-))
- rompic 3y ago
  20 Meters is quite short, so assuming a certain speed, there might only be a few GPS probes for each pass, that might also look as if they were outliers.

Avamander 3y ago

Does it exist on OpenStreetMaps and has it been marked restricted there? I have a small suspicion that Google is cross-referencing itself with OSM and some changes stick if OSM corroborates. But it won't ever agree to the road not existing (because it does exist).

darkhorn 3y ago

I think you can fix it from Open Street Map. They use OSM a lot.