So, we need to get cracking and map our petrol stations! Waze have given us a head start by importing BP and Esso stations, though they may need tidying up. There are some new guidelines in the Wiki for adding petrol stations.
I suggest we start with motorway service stations, and major towns.
Also, if anyone knows of a rights free database of petrol stations, we can pass this on to Waze for importing.
hmmm. Well in my area I already have most petrol stations mapped, much to my surprise. Wouldn’t it be better just to switch on the functionality now and fill in any missing stations as we go. I’d rather start inputting fuel prices straight away.
Gloucestershire. Probably a fraction of the number of petrol stations that a city has but even so was surprised the number that have been added around here. The waze import of BP stations has helped a lot though.
I don’t seem to have the new version of WME. I can’t add anything to the ‘Gas Station’ landmark other than a name. Is it just the beta editor that’s updated?
A good source of reference is Yell, in that it presents a nice map to help you find the station, and gives you the name, phone # and address. It’s not perfect but it’s there:
Prior to the general release in WME I’d already done Lincoln and Newark using Yell for my research (backed up a by a few other sources), there are some missing from this but it would allow us to hit 70%!
[Edit: or you could even look in your Yellow Pages!]
There is a website called PetrolPrices.com which already gathers petrol price information. Might it be a good idea for Waze to get together with PetrolPrices and see whether the prices on Waze could be updated from the PetrolPrices database?
PetrolPrices has one great weakness at the moment, it can only search for cheapest prices around a location, rather than along a route. Since Waze knows about routes, Waze data could be used to enhance the PetrolPrices search.
If we’re looking for a common naming convention then I would suggest the name and “Petrol” or “Garage” or “Fuel”.
So Sainsburys Fuel, Tescos Fuel, Shell Fuel etc.
One has to ask why Waze were not able to change the “Gas” field in the database. It is a pretty much unique term to the US. Particularly as we have, I assume, a separate db to the us being on the “world” servers.
I don’t think we’ll really know the answer to this until we see it in action. My feeling at the moment is a) most drivers will be looking for specific brands, b) brands won’t appear in search results, and c) the real names of stations are not often on signs.
Given the state of the imported data, we’ll end up with a right mishmash anyway, so it’ll take some time to get sorted.
Brand is a data item, so if that is what people want to search on, it would be “easy” for Waze to provide a facility to search by brand. And any search on the “brand” data item would be much more reliable than a search for petrol stations containing a specific brand in their title.
