Anyone ever get to a friend or clients apartment community and then find themselves driving back and forth or in circles trying to find the building number between to carports and trees and other obstacles? Kind of frustrating to get to the address point of an apartment community to find the building numbers are hard to find once inside. The maps at some of these communities are not easy to remember, and while taking a cell phone photo makes it easier, not exactly easy. And not all apartment communities even have parking lot roads which would allow guidance to the proper address stopping point anyhow. (Such as condo’s or apartments with seperate street addresses)
Might be nice to have a visible cue on the map once inside the community. A point using places is invisible on the app. An area using places would use a polygon which would be visually confusing, but a number might be nice and could allow the driver to decide where to park instead of having the stopping point like on address points guide to an improper parking area. Maybe having an option in places to add a building number on top of a building instead of an invisible point, or a confusing polygon with a title that dissapears at the wrong zoom level.
Is there a public source of information showing address locations of apartment buildings? Most apartment complexes don’t publish a map of addresses or building numbers.
On the few occasions I called the management office requesting this information (explaining the purpose of my call, I get the equivalent of “blank stares” coming from the other end of the line.
In response to UR’s I’ve suggested that the OR could submit a report at several building entrances to populate Waze’s database.
Kodi75,
No, not a public source of address locations of apartment buildings. My point was many apartment complexes use a single address, but once inside there are building numbers which may not be consistantly placed on the building. At most complexes, there would be a public map at the front entrance. Might be nice to be able to edit in the building numbers attached to the single address at the apartment complex.
What would you use in places to identify the building entrances? Residence? I’m thinking it might be nice to have a visible number instead of a transparant polygon generated by using a place “area” or an invisible place “point” on the client map.
I understood your original post and agree with your suggestion. I was just lamenting the lack of available address data required to implement it (and hoping someone would chime in with a source).
In Nevada, We’ve posted our address information sources on our state Wiki page. None of them has building numbers for apartments. Some counties here use GIS where we can determine condo building addresses as they each have their own. But alas apartment communities do not.
I was searching for a way to do just this and was disappointed to find the capability does not exist. Guiding the user to the specific building within a large apartment complex could be a killer feature for Waze. It would simply need to work just like street numbers do. Edit the layer and assign locations to the apartment numbers. The Waze could use the private/parking lot road to guide the user to the location.
A quick thought. If all the apt’s or condos, and maybe commercial strip malls that share a common address. Add a box to check next to the address field, which when checked would allow the editor the ability to add multiple unit, suite, or building numbers. A save would then stack them, and the editor could them position and label similar to the places, even add photos? Positioning commercial addresses would allow the editor to add specifics to the business. As far as Apts, condos, etc. Forget about the 100’s of stacked addresses that really cause issues for addressing because of the odd / even issues. And really can’t be placed where they belong in some cases. If your apt address is 732 in a complex of 10 apt buildings with a common address, then more than likely its located at bldg #7 or #700. Complexes like this have a common mail box system so Mail carriers really dump mail at one stop in newer complexes. Any emergency vehicles etc will respond to a bldg number and approach accordingly.
You know with new places allowing pictures, we can take pictures of each building and a place for each building number sharing that same address. HOWEVER, I’m thinking of somehow having a brightly colored building number on the client map so the driver could navigate much closer to the proper building number in some of these huge complexes with 20-30+ buildings. Especially helpful at night…
It would need to be an area place to render on the app, and being a residence, someone will eventually tag it as “private residence” and at that point it reverts to being invisible to anyone not routing to it… and since the routing would go to the street address, they will never see the “Bldg-1” place.
We can’t use address pins because we aren’t supposed to name PLRs (And what would we name them? The name of the apartment building?), and even if we do name them, we can’t add letters except in specific locations… 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, etc… doesn’t work.
Why not map each building as an area, then, give it the category of Other and place the buildings number/letter in the name block. This will display in the app and help navigate a person to the correct location.
It was just to test it out in AZ for the Super Bowl. Only a few of the lane numbers would show up. I’m trying to see what the size limit is for being able to display all areas. More to test. You can do it too. Just find a location that isn’t popular, a small town, and test there. I’m going to see what I can come up with.
A typical CNG station (typically a pair of pumps on a single island) or electrical charging station are too small to render… in the case of the CNG station, that is about the size of a minor intersection… 2 lanes by 2 lanes or about 50ftx50ft.
So anything 66ft x 150ft will definitely render. That may or may not be enough to cover an apartment building or condo unit. My building (4 condos) is 18m x 26m
I’ll go ahead and pop one in and see if it renders.
I’ll check in a couple of days and see if it is rendering.
I left a [NOTE] UR so hopefully it won’t be deleted now that everyone in this area is hitting Places hot and heavy.
These are the lanes that I mapped. I made the area to go from one side of the parking to the other. So, two cars wide and it showed on the app. But I also made it the entire length of that lane.
Don’t forget that place areas will not render a tile update. I adjusted the PLR just north of the area to trigger a tile update and hopefully get it to render in a few days.
One possibility: I’ve noted several large apartment complexes in my city have the parking lot roads marked at “private road” if it is a gated community. And I can’t count the times I would have been grateful to know where building 23 was, especially at night when the building numbers are hard to see. If “parking lot road” and “private road” had something similar to “house numbers” that public roads do, to allow entering the “building number” then problem solved.