Hi Tim,
when is that data from? Is it pulled from the live map or editor? I only ask because I went through Stafford and deleted a bucket load of car parks recently.
I did the same for Peterborough. But, with the current issues saving any place changes - not surprised if there’s a data sync issue somewhere and they still exist.
Schrodinger’s Carparks ?
Data is taken from the editor, and could be out-of-date by a few days. I checked Stafford, and there are still 21 unnamed (or [P]) car parks there. As NorfolkMustard says, editing of Places has been really unreliable lately, and some just don’t want to be deleted.
I should have some access to Bedford as I detoured near there to avoid yesterday’s accident on the M1.
Not home til the end of the week, but I’ll have a look unless someone else has jumped in in the meantime.
I’ve been working on Preston but the editor has been a real pain.
I’ve found that most of the changes I made did eventually stay. I revisited them today and they’re as I left them. Looks like it may just be a sync issue which gets resolved a day or so after making the change(s).
If you keep track of those you’ve updated - work methodically around a city for example - it’s possible not to get too frustrated.
Urgh, it would appear that all my place edits haven’t stuck. Although they did appear to do so as I was checking them after saving. Looking at them this morning though, nope!
I’ve been working through updating the town centre car parks in Basingstoke to match these guidelines. For the council car parks it’s fairly obvious but for the main shopping centre car parks it’s less clear.
This link hopefully shows the area in question.
The main car park is part of the Festival Place shopping centre with entrances from the South East (off Festival Way) and North (off Alencon Link). Currently the car park is mapped covering most of the shopping centre but the shopping centre itself is not mapped.
There is also an additional council owned car park over the northern part of the shopping centre (The Malls, again not mapped) which shares the same northern entrance as the Festival Place car park. The car park is currently mapped but only over part of the car park.
Currently navigating to Festival Place ends up in the middle of the dual carriageway that runs underneath the shopping centre which isn’t entirely helpful!
Any suggestions on how this should be mapped?
Hi there, T’m’s guidelines say:
“Do Not Map Car Parks, unless they are public access car parks
i.e. car parks which aren’t tied to a specific business or purpose
Do NOT Add “Car Park” as a secondary category; instead, tick the ‘Customer Parking’ option under Services
Special car parking areas, for example airports or malls, can be mapped with Points, E.g. car park A/B/C, short stay, long stay, drop off, pickup”
It appears to me from the aerial view that the car park is part of the building. I would tick ‘Customer Parking’ for the mall and put the navigation point half way between the two entrances.
If the entrances have clearly designated names, you could add them as point places so those who know what name they’re looking for can navigate to the entrance they want.
Others may have different ideas that could be better!
I’m wondering what to do about train station car parks as a fair number are mapped. They are public access and although they are intended for rail users there is no reason why you can’t just buy a parking ticket and then do what you like. I’m not sure that a tick in “customer parking” is appropriate for stations as you’d probably want the navigation point to be the drop off area and sometimes the car parks are quite some distance away.
On the one hand, I’d say that these should not be mapped, as no one would want to go to a destination in-town and end up paying station ticket prices…
…but this point is quite valid, and suggests that the app should be able to display two results: one for the station itself; and a second one for the long stay, or whatever.
York has a dedicated “Commuter Car Park”, which is situated near the railway station but is not ‘station parking’ per se. You wouldn’t expect to go there when shopping, but it also needs to be listed as a search result for anyone who is specifically looking for it.
Ideally the app will allow the user to review the nearby parking locations and be able to identify the right ones for their purpose. Ergo, they should have proper names, addresses and (if possible) descriptions. As long as there are only a few car parks like this which stretch the rules, then they will continue to be useful to users.
What would be really nice if car parks (points) could be associated with a specific destination, so that when driving to a station or airport you’d see all the relevant parking services only for that destination, and you wouldn’t see them when navigating somewhere else. #dreamon
tl;dr let’s keep station car parks mapped for now
Further thoughts (with input from iainhouse): To help disambiguate specialist car parks in the search results, several tricks can be employed when filling in the details of the Place:
- Concise place name, e.g. “Long Stay Parking” (fits on the user’s screen)
- Alt name matches the destination, e.g. “St Pancras International” (so it features in search results)
- Street name matches the destination, e.g. “St Pancras International” (adds context to result)
- Description has additional information to help user choose correct destination
This is just theoretical at the moment, so we’re doing some tests…
I’m still a bit struggling to map car parks for big shopping centre such as Metrocentre in Gateshead, Telford Shopping Centre or a smaller example York Designer Outlet. They have many car parks in different zone such as Yellow, Red, Grey, Blue car park etc. I feel they should be mapped separately with name, Yellow car park, etc.
Do they need to be mapped at all? Is there any reason why a user would want a navigate to a particular one? If they are driving to a particular business within the shopping centre, then the PLR segments should navigate them to the closest parking.
I do know that there’s a Park and Ride situated within the York Designer Outlet, so I would expect to see only that part of it mapped.
Should we be using “Long Stay Parking” or similar as the place name?
Most car parks have a proper name so I’ve been using that and then putting “Long/Short Stay” in the description where relevant along with type of parking (“Pay and Display”, “Pay on Foot”) and information about charging hours.
e.g: https://www.waze.com/en-GB/editor/?env=row&lon=-1.09019&lat=50.80370&layers=3557&zoom=7&venues=235209212.-1942809640.2523262
I’m gradually working my way through Portsmouth car parks - lots of private stuff to remove.
TIP: The URO+ script useful to filter just car park places - just tick car park and scroll right to the bottom and use the ‘Invert Place Filter’ option.
What you’re doing is exactly right.
My example above is for places that don’t have proper names, e.g. Stansted Airport Long Stay Parking, which is just a bit too long and repetitive.
Then the ‘Color’ Car park should be removed in Telford Shopping Centre, for example?
For myself, I get used to go yellow car park, for example, without particular business. Well, maybe it’s just me to do this :mrgreen:
I was having a think about this one, and while adjusting some parts of a hospital thought…
‘hospitals have named entrances, why not the same idea for carparks’
For instance the Royal Victoria here in Belfast has Gate A/B/C/D etc. these are added to directions given to patients so I started marking them as points and naming them thus. the same could be done with coloured/named/whatever car parks so if the user knows which one they want they can pick it.
Initial testing for the bits I’ve done is promising although this ongoing places nonsense in the editor is hampering progress somewhat. Another thing I was thinking of trying is adding the relevant departments that would use the appropriate gate.
It caused me other problem too. As I couldn’t edit one of the petrol station so I deleted it and created a new one. Somehow the app shows me 2 same petrol stations… :evil:
Back to the topic :mrgreen: , that may be a good idea but haven’t yet thought about how exactly do it. However, if we have an appointment letter from hospital, normally it will state which wing/gate the department is. So possibly marking the car park with wing/gate should be enough.
I’ve started on Bedford, but unfortunately I’ve only got rights to the west side.
For those who’ve been in and around Milton Keynes and Bedford, you’ll know our friend Fargus1969 who likes to add everything he can; paths, car parks, private car parks, etc.
The link below is just outside my editing area, but is a prime example of his work :