Just noticed a bunch of hazard reports around Uxbridge/Hayes that seem to have been imported from ELGIN which, like the recent addition of TrafficMaster data, ought to be a good thing…
…however, all of the reports I saw today were listed as having been reported 4 days ago, which could be something of a problem here given that one of them had a couple of comments attached to it saying the problem no longer existed…
and another set of lights which has probably been fixed by now…
and an accident which I’d ruddy well hope has been well and truly cleared up 4 days later!
So 10/10 for finally getting around to integrating ELGIN data, but 0/10 for the quality of the resultant reports. Bearing in mind I’ve been driving around this area all week and haven’t noticed any of these reports until today, and bearing in mind that the only ones I can find in this area are all 4 days old, I suspect they’ve only just shown up in the app today despite there being little or no evidence to suggest the data is still valid.
Thanks Twister. I had meant to post an announcement about it, but it slipped through the cracks of life.
If anyone else had feedback about the Elgin reports, please add it up this thread. Cheers.
Seems they’ve been around a while - one at the Elephant & Castle says it was posted 26 days ago :shock:
Having now had the chance to view more of these reports in the app and Livemap, one thing that seems to be quite consistent is that the rather wordy descriptions used by ELGIN often end up being truncated mid-word/sentence.
Also, one point about the way these longer-term reports (not specifically ELGIN ones) are handled in the app, is that it’d be useful for user comments to be timestamped with a date as well as the time, so that we could tell how recently each comment was added and therefore how valid it might still be. It’d also help to reduce the confusion currently generated when a report has multiple comments submitted over several days, which the app then correctly displays in chronological order, but where their timestamps seem to be all over the place…
The one in the first couple of screengrabs was still present on the map earlier today, claiming to now be 5 days old (as expected), but with no comments… There were also a few others around the local area which weren’t showing up yesterday, but which claimed to have been posted 2-3 weeks ago. Hmm.
I’ve had dozens of ELGIN roadworks messages pop up in my area (Devon and Cornwall) that have time-spans of a upto a year, just for a bit of patching works that may only take a few hours. They are cluttering up my maps and are virtually useless if they’re going to stick around for months and months. Please can someone start a campaign to get them removed, unless the timespans are tightly controlled to a few days only?
For example, I have one that says:
Construction
Short duration Road Closure for Surface Treatment scheme 1st April 2015 - 31st March 2016. Details will be updated when available. Please refer to local signing for specific dates & timing.
Reported by: Elgin
and others with almost no information:
Construction
Resurfacing 15 16.
Reported by: Elgin
whatever that means!
Regards.
I came across Elgin reports for the first time today. I think they have the potential to be useful, but so far they’ve been useless clutter. For example…
this one may possibly have had some useful information, but it’s so truncated that I can’t work out what it was trying to tell me.
and this one looks as if it refers to roadworks that finished 11 months ago - certainly there was no sign of any roadworks today
Certainly needs some work, in this housing estate, there are 11 reports of roadworks from Elgin, all for “Surface Dressing” which you assume would take a few days at most… all the reports are either 3 months or 11 months old!
It just fills the screen with out of date clutter.
I thought I had made a mistake of enabling this sort of report when I saw these icons for the first time 2 days ago. Glad I’m not only one then!
I would agree with others… these reports are days out of date - there must be a way for these icons to ‘expire’ when it has passed the end date, otherwsie the map view would end up being too crowded.
Tony
Thank you all, I have shared this feedback with HQ, which will be relayed back to Elgin.
Please keep posting examples of unhelpful reports.
:geek:
Hi,
I was driving to work last night, and I thought I was clearly following a very enthusiastic reporter, Didn’t notice when they had been reported initially.
However looking at the same reports today, they are also ‘2 months ago’
Looks like Crawley and the rest of Mid Sussex has come down with something aswell 
Hope these are of some, I’m sure I can find plenty more if not 
Phill87
I only recently noticed these myself, glad we’re getting construction reports now.
Got a couple not far from me which seem to be giving me detailed instructions on how to do the construction work.
I think the level of detail here is too much. all I really need to know if driving is “are they digging the road up?”
They also appear to be a day or 2 old, which I cannot say I noticed them yesterday when I drove up those roads. However most of them in the city centre are accurate. Just far too much detail in them.
Oh and this one is pretty useless too.
This one conjurs up some interesting mental images…
Wonder if the works are to install a new zebra crossing 
Drove past this one here today and the road was completely clear.
Oddly this is not currently showing on roadworks.org though. :?:
I’d be very cautious of Elgin data regarding long-term roadworks.
I’ve often seen entries on roadworks.org that are showing the dates of the TRO. This is the window of dates that permission for a closure has been given rather than the actuals dates the closure will happen, e.g at the Hindhead Tunnel on A3 there is an entry for overnight closures that runs for nearly 3 years from 6/1/2014 to 23/12/2016!
Hi,
This should be sticky as with the TrafficMaster error topic…
Des. . . 
Here are a few from arround Liverpool.
I’ve seen quite a few of these now, with varying results:
- Roadworks listed with absolutely nothing happening
- Roadworks listing severe delay with temporary lights: actual situation, gas pipe replacement at the back of a large pavement. Only traffic impact, manoeuvring past the occasional contractors vehicle who hasn’t used the pavement parking area very well
- Single lane closed for gas leak. Despite not being a closure, it’s very useful because it explains why there are heavy traffic queues most of the time.
- Road closure where there really is a road closure.
So widely variable reports, but there are 2 major problems with all of them.
#1 The text is useless. It’s invariably too long to show anything useful in the pop-up. Even viewed from the reports menu the text often isn’t very helpful.
#2 There are too many reports, too many of which are useless. As a result, they just can’t be trusted.
What I would like to see is for these reports to appear in the editor as some sort of Map Problem. It would be a much better way for us to find out about roadworks than trawling through roadworks.org - which is the same data anyway. As editors, we could then make the necessary changes to the map (closures etc), edit the descriptions into something app-friendly and confirm the reports to the map. Or, of course, delete them if they’re useless.
Hi,
Not sure whether it is Waze’s implementation of the information they are being given by Elgin or just rubbish information from them.
Their webside has the reports on a map app type thingy: Linky
Maybe we should send critical emails to Elgin about the rubbish data they are spreading…: Elgin
I sent a critical email…
Des. . .
2a. The large number of reports is partly down to the way works are entered in ELGIN, with individual entries for different parts of the same works, as well as individual entries for the same parts of the works if that part happens to cover more than one road. This then gives rise to clusters of exceedingly closely spaced markers, in some cases stacked practically on top of one another.
To me, this clustering behaviour feels a bit like a smack in the face for those of us who’ve regularly seen our own carefully submitted reports end up being merged with another several hundred yards away, thus preventing other users from being able to see exactly where the hazard/traffic jam/etc really is, and also making it harder for them to find any additional descriptive text we might have taken the time to include.
Now, I do remember what the map sometimes ended up looking like back in the days before Waze started merging reports like this, and whilst I preferred the overall improvement in data quality we had pre-merge I’ll admit that sometimes it seemed to encourage people to submit reports just so they could see their own report for something even if it’d already been reported, so I can understand why Waze wanted to start merging them.
But now along come Waze with an endless list of their own reports they want to add to the map, and oh no, let’s not bother applying the same rules to these as we do to everyone elses, let’s just carpet bomb the map with them no matter how many markers it might end up placing together… Not cool Waze, not cool. Either apply the merging rules consistently to both user and internally submitted markers, or give us back the ability to mark things accurately.
