If there is one area I wish I could just remove from London it would be Heathrow airport. As I’ve posted before (a long time ago!) it’s over-complicated and given it’s not a place I visit often (about once every few years) I can’t keep up to date with it. Anyway, in the spirit of getting something started I thought it might be useful to have a post here to collect issues that need fixing.
Shall I start? :?
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car parks galore - some mapped, some not, some over-mapped
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runways, parks, extraneous features - are they worth it?
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locking policy (eg I note a new editor has made some roads primary)
And a whole lot of routing issues:
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why does Waze route ok to “Heathrow Terminal 5” but not “Heathrow T5” when Google puts them at the same place?
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how to manage routing to all the individual car parks, other places of interest?
I’m sure there is much much more to do hence this post. There is not enough coffee in the world for one person to do this alone!
I feel for you David, if you want some help with the western side I know T5 reasonably well as I use it several times a month and only live 15 minutes up the road so it is my airport of choice. I travel quite a bit for work and try to stick with BA hence T5, I’m not sure that I want to apply for AM status (I might not get it anyway) but will be happy to pitch in if needed. I’d tended to leave it alone apart from a few minor edits as I thought you looked after everything inside the M25.
I only use the central area occasionally but when T2 opens which is fairly soon that may change depending on which airlines use it.
My gut feeling is you probably need 3 or 4 local AM’s, one for each of the terminal area’s and another for the airside roads and then (going against standard Wiki rules) lock all roads at a reasonable level to stop too much fiddling.
Many might say forget the airside; I have recently had a job airside at Gatwick and was jolly glad the roads were mapped, it all looks very different from low level in a car! Also finding the airside security entrance is much easier when it’s all mapped on Waze. Given the size of Heathrow it must be a nightmare for visitors not familiar with the site.
I guess the routing problems are partly due to people using postcodes, there is currently a live UR where the user has used a post code off the Heathrow website and then complained that it hasn’t taken him to the short term car park. Unfortunately it seems some people don’t understand the concept of postal codes, they are for delivering post not navigation, I don’t suppose many letters go to the car parks!
The Heathrow website does actually offer the following information prompting customers to follow the road signs when near the airport or use the Lat/Long coordinates.
We clearly signpost all our Short Stay car parks from the terminal approach roads. If you use a satnav or route planning software these details will help:
Terminal 1: Latitude: +51.47299. Longitude: -0.45426. Postcode TW6 1AP
Terminal 2 (opens 4 June 2014): Latitude: +51.47029. Longitude -0.45205. Postcode TW6 1EW
Terminal 3: Latitude: +51.47047. Longitude: -0.45546. Postcode TW6 1QG
Terminal 4: Latitude: +51.45857. Longitude: -0.44674. Postcode TW6 3XA
Terminal 5: Latitude: +51.47443. Longitude: -0.49087. Postcode TW6 2GA.
Andy that text is very useful and might find its way into a template answer for all things car parky at Heathrow!
Edit: do those lat/lons actually route ok in Waze?
Good question, I had tried in Google maps but usually lose the will to live if I try typing Lat/Long coordinates into Waze. Maybe I’m number dyslexic, maybe my fingers are to big or maybe I’m just careless but it never seems to work first time 
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Just tried the coordinates and the short answer is some of them work well. Having typed in the location for T1 car park the search returned “Received Location” (ooh err), selecting that took me to what I assume is T1 short stay car park although not 100% sure it was exactly the correct location. T4 likewise but location looked good.
T3 and T5 returned a list of roads to select, tried several and all seemed very close to where the car park entrance should be. I guess if we haven’t drawn roads exactly where Waze determines the coordinates to be then it will just offer the nearest roads.
I think with anywhere large like an airport we have to tell anyone who complains that Waze will get them near the correct terminal but then they have to start looking out of the window.
Look out the window? Good grief man!
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