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[UK] - the M25 Project...

Post by zzyzxuk
Hiya...

I've been trying the last few days to sort out the M25's mapping.

Reason why? I think that we all hope that Waze takes off, and the key to that is building it's usefulness for UK drivers. As all Londoners know, the M25 is one of our most notorious traffic bug-bears, so having it mapped would be a good reason to get new Wazers using the client.

So - I've driven quite a bit of it, and have been fixing all the 'orphaned' road segments, building them into larger, proper segments that are lined up correctly with the GPS hits.

I've also been changing the road into a proper dual carriageway - with two, one-way road segments going in the proper direction (you'd be surprised at the times that it wasn't). I'm also working on connecting up all the bits so that it will route properly when asked for directions.

I've also done a few major interchanges (M25/M40), (M25/M4), and am about to do the M25/M3 interchange now that I've actually driven out there last weekend.

What I was hoping that we could coordinate though is getting the rest of it driven. I live in SW London, and was hoping to not have to actually drive all the way around the sucker - I know that there's a big gap in our mapping right now in the NE quadrant of London - so was curious if some brave soul would be willing to do the stretch of the M25 out East? After it's recorded, we can do the work of splitting it into carriageways and finally getting the whole M25 mapped. It would be a great milestone in the mapping of London, and as I said, should really help improve the appeal of Waze for our potential UK comrades. :)

zzyzxuk
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Post by Feathers44
Congratulations on all that work!

I'm off from London to Wells this afternoon (and back tomorrow evening) but as that's A3 and then (probably) M4 it doesn't look like I can add much value to the M25. Sorry!

FWIW I'll mention here that I'm currently working my way down the A3/A32 towards Alton. It's going to be a background task though.
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Post by huga
One problem I noticed with the M25 when Wazing round it last week (using it to route me)...

We we re going clockwise from Gatwick to Stansted (ish). Waze told me to keep going on the M25 for 30 miles or so, all the way to Dartford.

The issue there is that here:
http://world.waze.com/cartouche/?zoom=4 ... FFFFFFTTTT

The M25 is a TOTSO (turn off to stay on) junction - you need to take the left fork to actually stay on the M25 as it turns north. Waze knows that you need to turn north, but it didn't give an instruction to turn off left - it gave no instructions.

I've had a look at the junction there and there's nothing obviously wrong. Does anyone want to have a look to see if they can 'fix' it? Perhaps someone else can drive it to verify what I saw?
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Post by huga
On a similar note, I (mostly) fixed the Dartford crossing yesterday - it was labelled as M25, whereas in fact the crossing itself is the A282 to allow non-motorway traffic to use it.

I've set the road type as "Major highway" to reflect the difference too.

--
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Post by monosodium
I live out east (romford), but don't really use the motorway much. There are major works on the north-east section of the M25 and for the most part the entire section from waltham abbey to brentwood is best avoided where you can! :)

I'm currently trying to map my local area, but I'm sure I shall be taking a drive into central london at some point soon.

Out of interest, do we know how 'dynamic' the Waze maps are - ie how good are they at automatically picking up changes in route information like roadworks etc?
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Post by sketch
I would love to do it, but that's a bit of a commute for me! :roll:
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Post by sketch
zzyzxuk wrote:I think that if any of you have the opportunity, you should concentrate on getting the motorways in your respective parts of Britain recorded, then properly shown on the map (separate, one-way carriageways for each side, using the "Freeway" designation.

We need to work on getting the 'routing' working properly - and the motorways are the best way to do that...
This serves as good advice for any new user anywhere. If your city isn't working right, first make the Interstates or motorways or autoroutes or Autobahnen or autostrade proper, and everything will fall into place after that!
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ALL US EDITORS READ: New USA road type guidance
the guidance linked above is now almost a decade old, but the link gives me a laugh every time i see it, so it stays (:
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Post by zzyzxuk
Very pleased to report that the M25 is now finished!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, at least in this respect... the entire route has finally been recorded by someone, so we now have GPS traces for the entire route, and I've just now finished creating a dual-carriageway around the whole thing - with separate carriageways for each direction.

I've also checked the 'connectivity' of all the segments, and they (fingers crossed) should all link up properly now.

I think that if any of you have the opportunity, you should concentrate on getting the motorways in your respective parts of Britain recorded, then properly shown on the map (separate, one-way carriageways for each side, using the "Freeway" designation.

We need to work on getting the 'routing' working properly - and the motorways are the best way to do that - so... who's going to get the M1 recorded, and properly built???

Over the weekend, I'm going to ensure that the main motorway junctions on the M25 are properly shown, so that if you want to create a route from, say, Bristol to Leicester, assuming that there's no breaks in the motorways leading to and from London - you'll get SOMETHING routewise, using London as a kind of hub/spoke kind of thing - but this depends on the radial motorways now being mapped, which is too far from my area for me to do it... I have my hands full with London!

So who's up for some motorway mapping???

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Post by zzyzxuk
Here's an update on the M25 mapping:

- Both carriageways are now fully joined up and depicted.
- The anti-clockwise carriageway near the Thames estuary however is estimated in a few places because no one's driven it yet anti-clockwise in those areas. (it's fairly easy to give a good guess as to where the carriageway is as the other carriageway has GPS tracks, but the alignment will need to be "fine-tuned" as it starts to get driven - fortunately, Waze automatically does that.)

The following is the status of the junctions. Some of them are finished. Some aren't yet because someone hasn't yet driven a particular slip road, and I don't want to guess as to the location of those. So, if you're in the area, and can help take a slight detour down a slip road just for fun... go for it!!! ;)
  • Junction 1a (A206): No GPS tracks yet.
    Junction 1b (A296 – Princes Rd): No GPS tracks yet.
    Junction 2 (A2): 50% complete. Need more GPS data for remaining ramps.
    Junction 3 (A20): 0% complete. Junction located, but no GPS data for ramps.
    Junction 4 (A21 – Sevenoaks Rd): No GPS tracks yet.
    Junction 5 (M25/M26): 50% complete. Need more GPS tracks for remaining ramps.
    Junction 6 (M25/A22): No GPS tracks yet.
    Junction 7 (M25/M23): 25% complete. Need more GPS tracks.
    Junction 8 (A217): 12% complete. Ambiguous GPS tracks making ramp location unreliable.
    Junction 9 (Leatherhead): 0% complete. No GPS tracks yet.
    Junction 10 (A3): 100% complete!
    Junction 11 (A320): 12% complete. Need more GPS tracks.
    Junction 12 (M3): 36% complete. Need more GPS tracks.
    Junction 13 (A30): 0% complete.
    Junction 14: (Heathrow): 0% complete.
    Junction 15: (M4): 100% complete. (I’m particularly proud of this one!)
    Junction 16: (M40): 75% complete.
    Junction 17: (A412): 0% complete.
    Junction 18: (A404: 0% complete.
    Junction 19: (Western Ave): 25% complete.
    Junction 20 (A41): 0% complete.
    Junction 21 (M1): 0% complete.
    Junction 21a (A405): 0% complete.
    Junction 22 (A1081): 0% complete.
    Junction 23 (A1M): 0% complete.
    Junction 24 (A111): 0% complete
    Junction 25 (A10): 0% complete
    Junction 26 (Waltham Abbey): 0% complete
    Junction 27 (M11): 0% complete
    Junction 28: (A12): 0% complete
    Junction 29 (A127): 0% complete
    Junction 30: (A13): 0% complete
    Junction 31 (Thurrock): 0% complete
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Post by zzyzxuk
Update on the M25...

The following junctions are now 100% mapped:

Junction 10 (A3)
Junction 11 (A320)
Junction 12 (M3)
Junction 13 (A30)
Junction 14: (Heathrow)
Junction 15: (M4)
Junction 16: (M40)
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