Whilst I have never suffered from this myself as I know where I am going. I’ve noticed most of the routes to Gatwick Airport, take you to the south terminal.
Now you wouldn’t think this is an issue, until you realise it is actually trying to take you physically to the south terminal, that includes driving into the actual airport.
There are a few roads there which I think shouldnt be mapped, as it is just making it worse, like these https://world.waze.com/editor/?lon=-0.16081&lat=51.15448&zoom=5&layers=TBFTTFTTTTTTTFTTTTTTTTTTFTTTTTTTTTTTTT&segments=187944502,187944206,208119860
But I think that will just mean you will get routed to a similar place on a different road instead.
Looks like google has the same issue, but do we have a direct route to google to move the placemarks? or do we have to report through standard google channels, or are there any better ideas?
This is a fairly global problem - and it applies to things like large hospitals as well. Google likely have their point at the centre of the airport - which is probably nowhere near where you need to drive to. Similarly, in Waze, if you navigate to a landmark, the point will be the geometrical centre (centroid?) of the polygon.
One suggestion that has been made before is that a landmark should have a separate “navigation point” that we can control - similar to how a house number has a separate point place on a nearby segment. But we’re in the hands of the Waze developers there.
Another possibility is to place a relatively small landmark at the entrance to each terminal. You would still have to rely on a user seeing “Gatwick Airport”, “Gatwick North Terminal”, “Gatwick South Terminal” and choosing the right one. Also, I’m not sure how reliably Waze landmarks show up in search.
Then, of course, you have to consider separate departure & arrival points. Parallel roads at different levels is a problem being discussed at the moment for an American airport and I know from experience those exist at Heathrow. I think the best you can hope for is get a driver to the right terminal and let them read the signs.
I tried searching within waze, and found nothing, despite several landmarks being there. I know there have been some experiments in the US with such small landmarks, the only problem lies within the app, and whatever search it defaults to, if its google, people will just use the first result, and go. so it won’t help in most cases.
Perhaps this needs a larger discussion with the champs and waze and possibly even some involvement from google, but I would be surprised if this hasn’t already been discussed at least a little.
Personally it doesn’t bother me at all, as I just use waze for getting close to a place then follow the road signs where appropriate, but some people, as we know follow their sat navs blindly.
I created Coldharbour Leisure Centre a few months ago - back when default search was with Bing, which didn’t list it. At that time, the Waze landmark would show up in the default search list. Now that Google is the default search, that’s the entry that shows up. If you switch to Waze search, however, “my” one is still there (although with no name in the search list for some reason).
So landmarks are certainly searchable - but the number of threads I see saying they aren’t proves this clearly isn’t consistent. :roll:
A “navigation point” for a landmark apparently used to exist, but before my time. They were called “entry points” and, I’m told, didn’t work. :lol: We’ll try & ask HQ about trying it again.
Things are probably slightly confused by the fact that gatwick seems to have its own city area.
Seems most of the roads/landmarks have the city field set to Gatwick Airport, not sure if that was agreed upon or not, but might be confusing the searches slightly.
I just tried searching for some of the landmarks, and there is a drop off point which is in the right point, however the results are very mixed.
Searching for gatwick airport south terminal shows brings back two waze results (by default) but in the list it shows horley, which will confuse some people.
Searching for just gatwick airport south, uses google for default.
I don’t think there is a quick easy answer to any of this as its very varied depending on what you search for.
I would however expect if gatwick airport south terminal produces 2 results, I would expect even more from gatwick airport south as its an even more vague search.
Not sure if it’s active yet but waze plan to gradually learn where people actually drive to when routing to a particular poi, for this exact reason.
Sounds like that would do the trick, if done correctly.
Would that include locations provided by third parties such as google?
I thought they might go for something a little easier, such as navigation points which could be set for each POI in waze, obviously that wouldn’t work for google.
What was the consensus on the city name of Gatwick Airport?
Is that how it should be so its marked clearly on the map?
Personally I’ve got no problem with it I’ve seen it done on a couple of large industrial estates and it looks quite sensible in the client.
I was thinking it made sense, just wasn’t sure if it was an agreed process or not.
I was thinking it might be worth doing in bluewater.