Parking lot roads I add disappear

[reasonerc]

In this case, likely Bing has the incorrect location for this street address. Can you try it at maps.bing.com? Can you post a screen shot of where the PIN shows on the Bing map in relation to the road and shopping center?

Bing maps puts a dot right on the building in question. I'd post a screen shot, but I'm on my iPad. Sorry.

FWIW, the Bing map does not depict the parking lot roads in that area.

[gettingthere]

Bing maps puts a dot right on the building in question. I'd post a screen shot, but I'm on my iPad. Sorry.

That is likely what is causing the issue. The PIN is on the building which is set back from the street. The PIN is likely closer in proximity to the freeway exit ramp than the street where the building is addressed.

Generally Bing has the PIN's along the street. This needs to be fixed at Bing.

[AndyPoms]

Bing maps puts a dot right on the building in question. I'd post a screen shot, but I'm on my iPad. Sorry.

That is likely what is causing the issue. The PIN is on the building which is set back from the street. The PIN is likely closer in proximity to the freeway exit ramp than the street where the building is addressed.

Generally Bing has the PIN's along the street. This needs to be fixed at Bing.

In Bing's directions for reporting problems with listings is "Drag the business marker below to the businesses front door". This seems that they would rather have the marker on the actual building rather than along the street.

If there is enough traffic to the business in question (i.e. a significant GPS presenece on the GPS points layer in WME) I would suggest drawing in a parking lot road...

[gettingthere]

In Bing's directions for reporting problems with listings is "Drag the business marker below to the businesses front door". This seems that they would rather have the marker on the actual building rather than along the street.

If there is enough traffic to the business in question (i.e. a significant GPS presenece on the GPS points layer in WME) I would suggest drawing in a parking lot road...

Yes, I understand that Google, Bing, etc generally want the PIN for POI's at the location of the building vs. at the road where the address is at the public street.

But in this case the OP is using a street address to route to this location vs. a POI. The street address should be located at the public street, not the building. That is the issue that should be corrected with Bing. Not saying I know how to do that, just that it's the 'right thing to do'.

Adding Parking Lot roads to route to a street address is a work around. Generally this would not be an option if it were a residential street address (I understand that is not relevant with this particular example). Should we be adding a parking lot road in someone's driveway or back yard to compensate for Bing having the PIN for the street address wrong?

Adding Parking Lot roads to route to a POI is acceptable based on how the POI data is stored with the external providers. So yes, maybe the Parking Lot road needs to be there anyway to make routing more accurate with Waze and the external providers POI data.

[mapcat]

Yes, I understand that Google, Bing, etc generally want the PIN for POI's at the location of the building vs. at the road where the address is at the public street.

But in this case the OP is using a street address to route to this location vs. a POI. The street address should be located at the public street, not the building. That is the issue that should be corrected with Bing. Not saying I know how to do that, just that it's the 'right thing to do'.

Realistically, there is no way to do that regardless of whether it's the right thing to do. If Bing says this is where the marker goes, and another company using Bing's data thinks that the marker should be somewhere else, it's the other company's responsibility to work around that. Moving the marker to where it works for Waze isn't the right thing to do if it goes against Bing's best practices, and eventually someone from Bing is just going to move it back anyway.

This is just another case where, when we finally get the ability to respond to users, we will need to tell them there's a limitation, and that they'll need to set their destination using the map in the client. Assuming that Waze will continue to ignore street numbers.

[jasonh300]

Adding Parking Lot roads to route to a street address is a work around. Generally this would not be an option if it were a residential street address (I understand that is not relevant with this particular example). Should we be adding a parking lot road in someone's driveway or back yard to compensate for Bing having the PIN for the street address wrong?

I've experienced this problem in residential areas. Throughout sections of Los Angeles, there are service alleys that run between the streets, behind the houses. They're all on the Waze map, I assume from the base map, and area managers of the past have marked most of them appropriately as Parking Lot roads with no name. I've followed suit on the ones I've encountered that were using other street types.

The problem is that Bing has the pin right in the middle of the house, and when Waze routes to those coordinates, the closest street is the alley behind the house. There are dozens of URs that keep coming back complaining that people are being routed to the alley. Nothing I've done, short of deleting the alley will stop this from happening.

There was one small section of New Orleans that was like this and having similar problems...I deleted all the alleys because I know that they're mostly only used by garbage trucks. But I'm not comfortable mass deleting alleys in a city 1000+ miles away, so there's not a whole lot that can be done until some local editors take over.

[gettingthere]

Realistically, there is no way to do that regardless of whether it's the right thing to do. If Bing says this is where the marker goes, and another company using Bing's data thinks that the marker should be somewhere else, it's the other company's responsibility to work around that. Moving the marker to where it works for Waze isn't the right thing to do if it goes against Bing's best practices, and eventually someone from Bing is just going to move it back anyway.

Are we sure that is also Bing's policy for correct street addresses? Although I believe that data can't be corrected at all in the Bing interface and needs to be corrected by their provider of data, NAVTEQ. And based on AlanOfTheBerg's past experiences with that, it is less than ideal getting a response or getting the data updated.

In any case it's probably fruitless and beyond the scope of Waze map editing to be dealing with correcting data with the external providers. It's a limitation of using external data (which is necessary or Waze wouldn't route to street addresses or POI's at all). Wazers just will have to deal with it.

In my area of San Diego, since the most of the San Diego metro area has been fully edited (every street, junction, etc) most of the Update Requests now are related to:

* External data that does not play well with the Waze map (street address, POI, etc)
* External data that has the POI or street address in the wrong location
* Turn restrictions that are being disregarded due to their low penalty and not another feasible lower cost routing option. Typically happens coming out of dead ends, Parking Lots, Private areas or areas that don't have other ways to route out.
* Client or other issues that get reported as Update Requests
* Wazers incorrectly using the Update Request function to navigate
* Wazers playing...

I'd say less than 10% of the Update Requests that are being submitted in San Diego are something that can be fixed with a map edit.

[FreeMan12]

In any case it's probably fruitless and beyond the scope of Waze map editing to be dealing with correcting data with the external providers. It's a limitation of using external data (which is necessary or Waze wouldn't route to street addresses or POI's at all). Wazers just will have to deal with it.

In my area of San Diego, since the most of the San Diego metro area has been fully edited (every street, junction, etc) most of the Update Requests now are related to:

* External data that does not play well with the Waze map (street address, POI, etc)
* External data that has the POI or street address in the wrong location

Four quick thoughts:
1) Congrats on getting San Diego that complete! I'd say that's a pretty big accomplishment!!

2) The two paragraphs I left of your comment seem contradictory. Since SD is now at the stage where waze is struggling with dealing with external data, now seems to be a good time to start addressing it. Whether we can correct it at the waze end, or we have to start requesting fixes with the external provider, it seems like that's where you're at with SD.

3) Mapping parking lot roads (correctly!) will help eliminate issues like this:

I've been seeing a fair number of system generated errors where people leave waze running while going through the drive through (bank or food) or getting gas. I think that it's a very reasonable thing to do, and when I see it, I'm mapping in a parking lot, so we don't get more reports of it.

4) I need to report this area for out of date imagery. The pictures here look like '40s quality spy photos! Anybody have any idea what restaurant that is? (I've been there, it's McD's)

[gettingthere]

2) The two paragraphs I left of your comment seem contradictory. Since SD is now at the stage where waze is struggling with dealing with external data, now seems to be a good time to start addressing it. Whether we can correct it at the waze end, or we have to start requesting fixes with the external provider, it seems like that's where you're at with SD.

We do not want Waze adding their own POI layer that needs to be maintained. As I see with a huge amount of editing, the Waze editors can't even keep up with Update Requests or fully editing the base map to make it work properly.

It's too much work to maintain and Waze has great options for this data. In my opinion the compromise of not having routing to POI's be 100% correct all the time is reasonable. I have tried many other GPS applications and none of them are any better (yes, it's a low standard). Most other providers do not control all of the data that is being used in their navigation applications.

3) I've been seeing a fair number of system generated errors where people leave waze running while going through the drive through (bank or food) or getting gas. I think that it's a very reasonable thing to do, and when I see it, I'm mapping in a parking lot, so we don't get more reports of it.

A couple of thoughts here:

1. The 'road missing' Map Problem type in WME has the primary function of identifying areas where the roads are missing on the map. They can't accurately tell if this type of issue is a missing road that is critical for the routing or a Parking Lot that is NOT critical for the routing. It's up to you as a Waze Map editor to use your best judgement. In my 'best judgement' most of these get closed out as not identified. You don't have to add roads every time you see this map problem. If that was the case Waze could just add them automatically. They need a human making the decision.

2. Due to the many problems with mapping Parking Lots (In my area were are getting just as many Update Request where Parking Lots are mapped vs. where they are not mapped) I have been reluctant to spend too much time dealing with Parking Lots. Waze has made some progress on some of these issues this week by changing the way Parking Lot segments route. There are still issues with turn restrictions not being respected when routing out of areas that have few options to get out. (not just Parking Lots, but Parking lots often have minimal options to route out of, especially when Parking Lot stubs are used or when the roads in the lot don't connect up to allow another path out of the lot at an unrestricted junction).

Once Waze fixes the remaining issues that affect Parking Lots, I will be mapping more of them. But I will be limiting my mapping of Parking Lots to large shopping center's and malls where they are helpful for navigation. I will not be mapping every small lot and gas station. Waze needs a better solution for suppressing traffic jams with small lots and gas stations. There is no way I am going to add tens or hundreds of thousands of parking lots just in San Diego to cover everything. My word for it is 'asinine'.

[gettingthere]

1) Congrats on getting San Diego that complete! I'd say that's a pretty big accomplishment!!

Thanks. I can't take all of the credit. The thousands of hours that have gone into this has been the work of multiple editors. Although the majority of the work has been done by myself, Anthyz, and Unwallflower. Although I haven't seen any recent work by Unwallflower and I don't recall a forum post from here in quite a while.

Thanks goes out to the many casual editors also. The work is not done, there are still some areas that need to be edited.