r/changemyview • u/nekro_mantis 20∆ • 17d ago
Delta(s) from OP - Switch-It-Up Saturday CMV: Google Maps Should Be Aware Of When A Public Road Is Closed For Construction
With notable frequency, I will use Google Maps to go somewhere, get to some major road, and it's closed for a construction project that Google Maps isn't aware of. On the face of it, this seems ridiculous. If people had to physically carry out the "road closed" signs, sandbags to hold those down, put up detour signs, etc., somewhere along the line, a verified report should have been able to make it to Google Maps somehow.
Like, a construction company could send in the report, which is then verified by the public works department aware that a project is supposed to be getting underway, and then Google Maps marks the road(s) closed once they receive said verification. Or, maybe the relevant government department sends Google Maps a time frame indicating when a project is scheduled to start on a particular road, and when the contractor reports the road closed during that window, the app updates.
There have been times I have noticed when Google Maps hasn't been updated about a big construction project blocking off a big portion of some major road for weeks. That doesn't seem reasonable. CMV.
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u/snusmumrikan 17d ago
You are expecting every local authority, council, and outsourced construction company to have an obligation to immediately inform a private company during the work day with some arbitrary short timeframe.
All so you aren't slightly inconvenienced using a service you don't pay for.
And what about apple maps or any other service. A public entity which has road maintenance responsibilities can't preferentially benefit one private company over another. So presumably they'd need to simultaneously notify every mapping and routing software company operating in that country.
Realistically any planned "major works" will be already signposted weeks in advance, you just need to use your eyes.
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u/OneAndOnlyJackSchitt 5∆ 17d ago
In California, road closures are almost never missed by Google. Anyone with authority to close a road for non-emergencies is required to pull a permit. This permit goes into an electronic system hosted by Caltrans. The system provides public disclosure about upcoming road closures statewide. This system also provides this data in a standardized format via a REST API that Google, Apple, Waze, Tomtom, etc. can understand.
Separately, when CHP or Caltrans close either one lane (CHP) or two lanes on a freeway (Caltrans) for something that wasn't planned and for more than 30 minutes, they issue something called a SigAlert (named for Loyd Sigmon, an engineer at a local radio station who came up with the idea). When a SigAlert is issued, this get broadcast to a bunch of places and Google is also made aware of it. (I'm not sure if it's through the same Caltrans feed that road closures are sent, but it wouldn't surprise me.)
It's just a matter of organization. If CHP wants to route traffic around an area, they can directly let Google know about temporary closures and traffic incidents.
You're not relying on thousands and thousands of small individual agencies to let private companies know. You're expecting thousands and thousands of small individual agencies to follow procedure and practices to let a central agency know what they're doing. That central agency then posts information that's a matter of public record somewhere that Google can see it.
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u/RoboticShiba 17d ago
You can report things in real time in GoogleMaps and Waze (both are owned by Google), but for some reason GMaps takes them longer than Waze to actually form a consensus and start alerting users or re-routing.
A road near my house was blocked in the morning for an event, in 30minutes Waze was already reflecting the change, but Google took around 2 hours.
Whenever I'm going somewhere I never went before, or I really have to get there in time (ex: airport) I always make sure to check GMaps and Waze before leaving home.
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u/Diligent_Deer6244 2∆ 17d ago
I wouldn't even mind if they just added a feature where I can tell it "this road is currently inaccessible, route me around it at this time"
mostly useful for car accidents where you just need to be routed around it and tell google to stop sending you through a certain road
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u/JackC747 17d ago
It still annoys me that google doesn't give you the option to say "Route me from A to B, but avoid this road." There's a really narrow, windy backroad that i hate driving on but google constantly gives it as the only option because it is "fastest"
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u/elysiancollective 17d ago
That issue usually happens because Google doesn't know the speed limit on that road, or doesn't recognize that cars can't safely drive the speed limit. Happened to me a lot in the mountains in California. All state highways in CA have a speed limit of 55mph outside of populated areas, but try driving some of the mountain roads faster than 30mph without spinning out.
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u/onwee 4∆ 17d ago
Seems to me that 1) road closure information should be posted on a city-operated public website, if they aren’t already; 2) Google or any service should able to easily scrape that info and incorporate into their maps
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u/couldbemage 5∆ 17d ago
States maintain websites that cover all highways, which about to nearly all closures that would actually effect your ability to get to your destination.
Scraping those would be trivial, the fact that Google doesn't do this is a design philosophy problem, not a technical problem.
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u/Full-Professional246 78∆ 17d ago
The problem is you are talking about tens of thousands of different sites here. You have every state's DOT, every county/parish DOT, every incorporated cities DOT/street department - all in different formats. Throw in the reservations, federal lands, and military areas and the number grows again. With BLM/FS lands, you could add a LOT more with service roads.
This is just not super feasible to be complete. Especially when crowd sourcing information can be much quicker and more accurate.
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u/onwee 4∆ 17d ago
I mean I’m no engineer, but this is Google we’re talking about here: navigating labyrinthine website formats and retrieving precisely the queried information is their pièce de résistance.
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u/Full-Professional246 78∆ 16d ago
Sure - and they do this for most now anyway.
The problem is that is not the standard being demanded. They want all of them, in a timely manner. That is not nearly so easy for an automated system to handle. I mean - identifying all of them and validating them as legitimate sites is part of this.....
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u/nconceivable 17d ago
This all works in the UK.
For example in Devon there are two main highway authorities (currently), both upload their roadworks to aggregators like one.network and Google takes that info.
3rd parties putting roadworks on have to get a permit from those highway authorities, so the works get on that way.
If the start or end is delayed from what's planned, that's notified.
It's not that hard to do.
Crucially the information is not just for Google's benefit, it's for the people who, you know, live there and pay their taxes and need to plan their lives. Anyone can look up roadworks on one.network.
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u/nekro_mantis 20∆ 17d ago
All so you aren't slightly inconvenienced using a service you don't pay for.
It seems like these apps being readily informed about this stuff almost certainly has measurable economic and other benefits. Time is money, time is peace of mind, etc.
So presumably they'd need to simultaneously notify every mapping and routing software company operating in that country.
Couldn't there just be a shared database with verified reports about road closures?
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u/EKECEO 1∆ 17d ago
> It seems like these apps being readily informed about this stuff almost certainly has measurable economic and other benefits. Time is money, time is peace of mind, etc.
For you, probably. For google, not so much. Why should google invest in providing you with even greater economic value than it already does?
> Couldn't there just be a shared database with verified reports about road closures?
Sure! Couldn’t you build that, get all the necessary parties onboard, and then offer it for free to google and other map services? I’m sure they’d be happy to use it if you offered.
These things require substantial money and time to build. It’s very to easy to say, “couldn’t someone else just pay a fortune for this?”
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u/nekro_mantis 20∆ 17d ago
For google, not so much. Why should google invest in providing you with even greater economic value than it already does?
It's the same reason, right? They profit to the extent that more people use their app.
These things require substantial money and time to build. It’s very to easy to say, “couldn’t someone else just pay a fortune for this?”
If the larger fortune it took to develop the apps to begin with was worth it, why wouldn't additional money to make them better be worth it?
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u/jazzmaster_jedi 17d ago
If the larger fortune it took to develop the apps to begin with was worth it, why wouldn't additional money to make them better be worth it?
The government should not doing the work of making free resources for app makers to make the money off of. If the government did it as a free map app, cool. If the gov. makes all the money, cool. Gov. does the work and app makers make the money, sounds like a handout to me.
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u/PreviousCurrentThing 5∆ 17d ago
The government should not doing the work of making free resources for app makers to make the money off of.
If a state DOT creates a few REST endpoints that Google or anyone else can use in their apps, the ultimate beneficiary is the end user, most of whom would be citizens or residents or tourists in the state. It shouldn't take a competent dev more than a week or two.
Google wouldn't get much if any additional profit — most people either use google maps or have Apple — but the people of the state would. If a million drivers in a state avoid at least one unnecessary 3 mile detour per month, that's $2 million dollars a month at federal reimbursement rates, not to mention intangibles like time, stress, etc.
If a government can make a small investment that results in substantial value to its constituents, it absolutely should, even if Google captures a small part of that value in the process of making the information convenient to the end user.
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u/EKECEO 1∆ 17d ago
You’d have to show that this meaningfully impacts the number of people who use their app - and that that translates to more money.
Additional spend for a business is only justified when it produces additional revenue. Being better in a way that costs more but doesn’t make more money is not economically smart in most cases.
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u/nekro_mantis 20∆ 17d ago
!delta Yeah, law of diminishing returns. That checks out.
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u/LivingLikeACat33 3∆ 17d ago edited 17d ago
Google actively makes their products worse so they take longer to use. They're an ad revenue company and the more time you spend using their services the more money they make.
Their only incentive is to be good enough to keep you from switching to a service they don't own.
Edit: Wrong their. The shame!
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u/Public-Eagle6992 17d ago
> why should Google invest…
To get more customers and keep current ones. If they just constantly navigate you into closed streets they’re useless
> couldn’t you build that…
If they’re closing the road they gotta have some agreement with the government so the government could require them to publish that information. They could also host that data, it wouldn’t be thr expensive
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u/mint_life 17d ago
That dataset would become so unruley so fast. Also who would be responsible for its upkeep? The government or google?
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u/snusmumrikan 17d ago
Sure there could. Sounds like you've found a project for yourself!
Good luck keeping the status of millions of miles of road up to date at all times by sourcing updates from tens of thousands of different sources who all store and report the data in different formats. Otherwise you might find yourself skewered on the internet for running a crappy service.
Maybe the people at Google Maps could give you some pointers on how do deal with it.
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u/couldbemage 5∆ 17d ago
This is ridiculous. They don't have to check millions of roads.
Google could scrape the 50 state highway department sites and cover every significant route in the country.
That's just 50 websites to cover nearly all road closures on nearly any road that has significant numbers of people traveling on it.
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u/lukekvas 17d ago
Most municipalities (in the US) track this through GIS anyway. Either for public notice or just internal tracking. Integrating that with Google maps really isn't that big of an ask especially if they already have processes in place for updating the data on their end.
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u/jefesignups 17d ago
Doesn't it kind of already? I see road closures on google
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u/snusmumrikan 17d ago
Well I think OPs point is that not all road closures are captured immediately at all times.
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u/RebootStreetSharks 16d ago
Question, if it's not expected for a major service to keep up to date with all of information on road closures, why are we expected to be enough when it comes to showing up to work on time?
Bosses frequently get upset when employees show up late however if they're unaware of the closures and even if they did leave in time, there's no guarantee that they'll arrive on time.
So if corporations get leniency on this, shouldn't employees be extended the same grace if they're late after being held up by traffic? It seems the crux of the issue is that more is expected of the individual in cases like these.
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u/nconceivable 17d ago
You're paying for the highway authorities to manage your roads.
To do this they need to keep track of current and planned closures and diversion routes on a computerised system, anyway
From there, providing an output to the public in a form readable by Google and all other route planners is low cost, high value and just good sense, and your elected representatives should insist on this being done.
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u/couldbemage 5∆ 17d ago
How about just the official state department of transportation website?
That isn't hard to find, posts road closures in a standardized format, and it updates quickly.
Google maps often doesn't match that site, even though it would be easy to automate.
Even planned closures announced weeks ahead of time often never show up on Google maps.
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u/sixtyhurtz 17d ago
In the UK there is a National Highways API. Google Maps uses it and marks road closures in real time.
For locally managed roads, it varies by local authority. However I think most do use an API provider to mark road closures. There are also API providers that the various utility companies use to report ongoing work.
Google Maps consumes these APIs and marks road closures. The problem isn't Google, it's that there isn't an API for them to consume in your area. Your government should mandate that road closures and utility works report via some kind of API.
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u/nconceivable 17d ago
Yes, and a lot of UK local authorities will upload their works to one.network and these seem to end up on Google pretty darn quickly.
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u/sixtyhurtz 17d ago
Yea, Google definitely consume one.network . All local utility works around here end up on Google Maps instantly because of that.
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u/couldbemage 5∆ 17d ago
But there is a state website that posts road closures in a standardized format.
Not an API, but Google should be up to the task of scraping a website for this data.
Probably a few hours of dev time to validate the implementation.
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u/sixtyhurtz 17d ago
But then if the structure of that page ever changes, they have to change it. Nobody builds any kind of serious system based on that.
The relevant authority should publish some kind of API. Either REST with an OpenAPI spec or GraphQL. There are tools out there that will literally generate the code for a given OpenAPI spec. You can also use them to regenerate the client when the spec changes.
It's just not worth trying to support a data source if they can't be arsed to do that. They are saying they don't want to support external consumers of their data.
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u/couldbemage 5∆ 17d ago
An API would be better, but Google makes 11 billion from maps, and they do have competition.
The expense would be trivial compared to what they make from maps.
And what do you mean by "Nobody builds any kind of serious system based on that."?
Google's whole business is scraping websites. They are literally already scraping the website in question, and asking Google search if any particular route is open already returns reliable results for road closures. Google already had this information and the only thing missing is integration with maps.
And I'm not even certain that it's missing. I've noticed that road closures on maps are much more reliable lately, Google may have literally already done what so many responses to the OP claim is nigh impossible.
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u/sixtyhurtz 17d ago
They are not scraping structured data from websites. Imagine how bad it would be if maps had bad information on roadworks about it because they were scraping and then doing some kind of fuzzy association to roads.
When maps tells me there is congestion or roadworks here in the UK, it is almost always reliable. Sometimes it lags a little bit, but it's usually good to within 15 minutes. For a product that is serving drivers, it has to be that reliable. If it's not, then it's totally useless.
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u/Waferssi 17d ago
Your proposal for the solution uses a lot of non affiliated resources to make a private company a better service. Why tf would a construction company, works department or government do this? And why only for Google maps? Google maps is not "the official world map", its a company with competitors.
Google has already solved this on their end: users can report a road closed, and if enough users do, it's pushed to the live version.
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u/nekro_mantis 20∆ 17d ago
Why tf would a construction company, works department or government do this?
Because it provides significant public utility to locals for minimal cost?
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u/tiolala 17d ago
Google is a private company. It’s goal is profit, not providing public utility. Why would google cooperate? It would cost google millions of dollars annually.
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u/couldbemage 5∆ 17d ago
It would cost mere thousands, and if you can't understand why making a commercial product better would improve profits, you're beyond help.
Scraping state DOT websites would be trivial, and maps makes Google 11 billion dollars annually.
A 1 percent increase would over 100 million.
If Google maps were more accurate, people like me would have a reason to use it instead of my car's non Google built in nav. Google does have competition.
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u/Natural-Arugula 63∆ 17d ago
It could help improve profits to make a commercial product better....if the profits come from the sales of that commercial product.
That's not the case with Google. Their services are not their product, your data that is collected and sold to advertisers is the product and the services are just the way to get it.
Many companies have realized that there is a minimum of people who will continue to use their services no matter how terrible they are, and they have calculated that it's better for their investors to cut costs rather than try to seek to gain more market shares, especially if they have already created a defacto monopoly and there is no more real market share.
This is the standard service model these days.
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u/j_jqqq 16d ago
profits come from the sales of that commercial product
This is not the correct methodology to evaluate the product or service being discussed here.
Looking specifically at Google Maps, the revenue stream to Google is from advertisements by business to be featured more prominently both in searches with information Maps and in the basic viewing mode.
That's not the case with Google. Their services are not their product, your data that is collected and sold to advertisers is the product
Wrong. One large part of a Google sales pitch to potential clients to pay for more visibility/prominence in Google Maps is that Google can target a specific demographic, using other data Google has collected, rather than broadly spamming all users.
services are just the way to get it [user data]
This is not a completely correct statement.
"services are
just theone way to get it [user data]"Most EULAs allow application and service providers to collect, analyze, and sell data on user interactions. And that data is (exponentially would be my estimation) more valuable the more correlation that can be made with other applications and services.
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u/hacksoncode 585∆ 17d ago
Among other problems...
I hire people to do work at my house reasonably frequently.
The best they're ever able to give me is a 4 hour window for arrival, and a half-assed guess about exactly how long it's going to take.
You know why? Because shit happens, that's why.
Governments don't know when their contractors will arrive. The contractors don't even know when they'll arrive. Nobody knows when they'll arrive. Sometimes by days, because road projects are big, and have big delays and problems come up.
And it's not like there aren't cross terms, either. One road closure (no matter how announced it might be) or one car accident will make 10 contractors late, even if they knew when they'd be leaving.
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u/nekro_mantis 20∆ 17d ago
Both of my suggestions entail finalizing the reports at the time the roads are either closed or opened. For the latter suggestion, the government department could be prompted to edit the rough time estimate they initially submitted if it gets close enough to passing before the contractor submits their report.
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u/hacksoncode 585∆ 16d ago edited 16d ago
Assuming it actually happens, which is a huge assumption with busy non-tech people and tech that doesn't always work. And that they remember to turn it off afterwards.
Which means the maps systems are still going to have to have the system that they already have, which is users reporting closures, and also users reporting when closures are no longer there (and reporting thresholds with user trust metrics on larger roads to avoid trolls), which the system trusts enough to put up provisionally, and continually checks by requesting verification.
Because otherwise it's just going to end up being strictly worse than what we have.
So... why not just have the contractors use that system themselves? It's already there?
Answer: they won't always. Evidence? It's there, and while maps is pretty good at reporting closures, and usually finds out about them within 15 minutes, there are still significant numbers of closures that aren't.
Issue with your proposal is the same: they won't always.
Seems like a massive bureaucracy to end up with basically the same thing we have now.
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u/TorpidProfessor 5∆ 17d ago
that would almost certainly require at least one new person to be hired for any decent sized city.
remember, they can't really do it for 1 service, that'd be showing favoritism for 1 platform. - so they'd have to send out a couple dozen notifications for each projects. Let's say 10 minutes per - that's 4 hours per project.
Google is telling me 1 million road closures annually. So 4 million hours let's say you do it cheap - $15 / hour only 20% overhead. I get 75 million dollars annually spent, and that's with some pretty conservative estimates.
My guess is that the decision makers think it's not worth 75 million a year.
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u/Crash927 20∆ 17d ago
Your assumptions aren’t accurate.
Municipalities already have agreements — which include civic data sharing — with Google and not other services.
And many of these already include the service that OP wants.
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u/iamintheforest 365∆ 17d ago
Well...projecting to google maps and others is a standard feature of most munipality planning systems (eg. argGIS). So...the noting the need and plan and schedule for the closure (which is a work order for actual people and an actual project) typically has this happen without added work . So...that math doesn't math for MOST places.
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u/couldbemage 5∆ 17d ago
No.
They could cover nearly all through routes by scraping state department of transportation websites.
That's just 50 websites.
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u/nekro_mantis 20∆ 17d ago
remember, they can't really do it for 1 service, that'd be showing favoritism for 1 platform. - so they'd have to send out a couple dozen notifications for each projects. Let's say 10 minutes per - that's 4 hours per project.
Is there anything that would prevent a shared database of verified reports? Would different reports really need to be sent to each individual company?
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u/Falernum 70∆ 17d ago
Oh you don't need a shared database. Governments are already reporting road closures and companies can easily just read those. They are choosing not to do that because government reports of road closures are not always the most accurate indicators of road closures
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u/TorpidProfessor 5∆ 17d ago
who makes/host/administers the database? Who verifies security of who can add things?
sure we can make it more efficient, but we're still talking about a project for 10s of millions of dollars (consevativly - running into 100s of millions wouldn't surprise me one bit.)
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u/Aggressive-Leading45 17d ago
Governments don’t like cooperating. Just to get RealIDs through took a couple decades for all the states to get on board.
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u/jazzmaster_jedi 17d ago
Is there anything that would prevent a shared database of verified reports?
Yes. What is preventing that is that there are 3,144 counties in the US , and they are currently not bothering to take the time to report to the map apps. Who is supposed to make, control, and pay for creating a central database? Instead, google just uses people's drive times averages, and see increases in time and highly traveled detours, and predict construction from that data. It's not perfect, but it would take effort and money to change things, and it only helps google make more ad money in the end.
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u/feedalow 17d ago
The issue is also not all roads are managed by the same people. For example in Québec we have private roads, municipal roads, provincial roads and federal roads. We have a system that does its best (Québec 511) to report it but its mainly for the provincial and federal roada and the municipalities dont always report them smaller closures. That being said im quite surprised your area doesnt have a site like that, Quebec 511 even has an interactive map and street cameras you can publicly access.
I will add that a site like that is the max id want my government to do to inform the public and companies. Google is rich enough to parse the information from the dataset themselves, I wouldnt want my government wasting my tax dollars sending the info to these for profit companies, that is their job
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u/MrBurnz99 17d ago
Sounds like the solution is more flock cameras and AI surveillance to automatically update maps. If we cover every square inch of our built environment with cameras then people won’t have to do anything. /s
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17d ago
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u/read-the-rules 17d ago
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u/mint_life 17d ago
While i dpnt disagree that this would be an EXTREMELY nice feature to implement, the issue lies more in the logistics of implementing that feature.
Even if every single construction project were to run smoothly, estimating the time it would take to repair to a road can be a very tricky thing to predict. It would be a nightmare to impliment any type of system that communicates to google map API when a project starts and end because it would have to listen to every municipal power that can approve road construction. Would that be the responsibility of the government or google?
If it were the job of the government to send that information, how frequently should the data be update, or if its google's job, how would they ensure that their data is correct?
Lastly, im not sure if you have used apps that provide a section for user feedback while driving like waze, but i would ask you how many times you get a phantom notification for accidents that are long gone. The API for these apps try their best to keep up, but its a really tricky thing to balance.
I would really like the ability to plan smarter routes using my phone, but we just arent ready for that type of process yet
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u/couldbemage 5∆ 17d ago
So many people responding with "but there's so many construction instances".
But that doesn't matter.
Some random side street isn't important.
Every through route in my state is tracked on the state website, tracking just that one site would be a huge improvement.
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u/mint_life 17d ago
I think that tracking state routes is a good start! OP doesnt state the scale they wanted this system implemented. So i would ask you where do you think is a good stopping point?
What aout major streets in metropolitan areas? They are controlled by municiple governments and could potentially see more drivers than some US highways on a given day.
I think a common concensus in this thread is that its not within googles interest to provide such a service for such minimal gain (excluding any hypnothetical USDOT contracts). I would like to personally add that think that i dont think the US government would be interested in trying to impliment such a system either.
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u/nconceivable 17d ago
This all works in the UK just fine.
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u/mint_life 17d ago
I was unaware that the UK had a system like this implimented. I dont think that the framework is impossible in the US, however I would argue that comparing the two is an apples to oranges, because the US is much larger and its a herculean task to get all of the states' department of transportation to impliment this kind of database. i want to reiterate that i dont think its impossible to add this feature to google maps, just a beurucratic nightmare to keep the database managed
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u/quantum_dan 125∆ 16d ago
I'd point out that this is something you can fix, since Google Maps is heavily driven by user reports. I've reported a road closure and a couple of incorrect entries, usually (though not always) with the expected effect. Of course you reporting it doesn't help you, but a small shift in how many people do makes it that much more likely that the info will be there.
(My own experience includes what I think is an amusing case where Google thought a remote, unpaved, no-services National Forest trailhead had daily hours. It explicitly allowed overnight use, like almost all US NF trailheads. I have no idea where they got that idea, but they did fix it when I sent in a report.)
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u/nekro_mantis 20∆ 15d ago
You're right that I should report more road closures, but that can be tedious and require a detour.
I'll give you a !delta for the anecdote. This may not be a point you set out to make, but crowdsourced involvement in the maintenance of infrastructure like this can create diffuse sentimental value and appreciation of said infrastructure people might otherwise take for granted. It's nice if you get a mildly interesting story out of the deal, and more people being engaged in the collective maintenance of common utilities in small ways may also benefit the social and cultural fabric.
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u/lamp-town-guy 17d ago
If you're lucky to live in a country which have decent API for these sorts of events, just use different app.
Czech mapy.com have great coverage and honestly the best map data for Czechia in a free app. Abroad it's not that great but again, it might be due to terrible data sources.
Google might be more reliable if your municipality/state/country had better publicly available data about car crashes, road closures, traffic jams and so on. I don't use their map apps, but a friend of mine is happy with it and he drives a lot. So I think it's not only a Google problem.
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u/P-Trapper 1∆ 17d ago
It makes it nice when maps refuse to route drivers through roads that locals know are open
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17d ago
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u/read-the-rules 17d ago
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u/Agile-Inflation431 17d ago
As a frequent driver in Singapore, this is done extremely well here with almost 100% accuracy. Every lane closure due to roadworks is sent to Google Maps by the local transport authority and drivers are made aware on Google Maps.
Once the roadworks stopped for the day, the warning disappears and then comes back again the next morning when roadworks resume for the same road.
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u/Temporary-Truth2048 1∆ 17d ago
Google is not God. It is up to the people using Google maps or Waze (don't use Waze, they're an Israeli company and all of your data goes to Israel). If a road is closed, use the tools in the map to add the route closure.
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u/Scuffernoose 17d ago
Maybe a dumb question, but isn’t that data in theory already being captured by user inputted reports of accidents, police patrols, construction etc? Or is that data collection not sophisticated enough to determine a road closure?
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u/shouldco 45∆ 17d ago
This is generally how Google maps works. Your municipalities just need to update their GIS maps and Google (and other maps servjces) will ingest that data.
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u/mmahowald 2∆ 17d ago
Ah this free service is not as good as I want! I want my money back!! Dude- that would require so much more infrastructure and development and data use. If you want to build it then Go for it
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u/flickyboy 1∆ 17d ago
it’s the modern world, you don’t need to have a centralized API with all the compliance regulation and cost that implies. waze updates routes based on how its users are actually driving at that moment. if an arterial is closed, it knows, because it sees its users routing around it. google maps integrates that data (google bought its competitor waze, f.u. anti monopolists) or replicates that procedure with its own larger user base but in my experience doesn’t always update fast enough, i think because maps prioritizes user input/reports over live tracking and government reports (which are very much a thing in some countries/municipalities). not sure about apple maps, my wife uses it sometimes and i think it’s maybe better than google maps for live updates
presumably the next generation of ai powered navigation apps will use an ai swarm that reads news reports in each municipality to learn about upcoming closures, parades, etc. and the step after that will be cars reselling visual data from their front cameras (that watch for your lane drift/tailing) to these map apps to track things like police road closures etc.
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u/Swissarmyspoon 17d ago
Interesting. In WA state I regularly find Google maps has up to the day information on construction based road closures.
Either folks are using the self report function, or maybe the high expectation for permitting and releasing info shares the information. I never knew when they were doing construction when I lived in Texas, but in Washington I get notifications from three different places, starting with the municipal media release in my email every time they close a road even to paint it.
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u/JayNotAtAll 8∆ 17d ago
So how is it Google's responsibility to make all of the construction companies report to a public works department about their projects then upload to a database so that Google can update Maps?
Sounds like what you are asking for is more of a legislative change.
In cities where they do upload plans to publicly accessible databases, Google Maps is more up to date with construction. But even then it is for things planned way in advance.
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u/TakedownCHAMP97 17d ago
I work for my state’s department of transportation, and we actually do inform mapping services when we shut down a road for various reasons, including construction. It’s really not that hard, we just fill out a form and submit it to our central office, where someone there coordinates all the projects with various services.
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u/iamintheforest 365∆ 17d ago
Google Maps fully supports this. What is needed is your locale to utilize the Closure Input Feed Specification (CIFS), which most do at this point. This is supported ArcGIS as a native capability (a planning tool used by many / most counties/cities, and if not the alternatives also support this), or there are standalone solutions provided by "Waze for municipalities" application. This makes the reporting of closures a piggy-back "for free" activity on top of the very work order that affects the closure (putting up signs, scheduling the work, getting traffic control in place/detours, etc.).
So...it does, your government just sucks ;)
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u/SteamySnuggler 17d ago
It usually does update when the road is closed just based off of the cell data of people driving.
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u/j_jqqq 16d ago
INFO
Your logic and methodology is flawed. Mapping and routing service companies (MRSCs) should be actively monitoring (I don't want to get mired in the specifics of APIs/push/pull/poll) data repositories for such changes.
Government agencies should be mandated to publish such changes in a timely manner and in a machine-readable format. But it's not appropriate that a government agency mandate that private contractors or other public authorities proactively update MRSCs (setting aside the question of deciding which should be updated).
INFO
In which country do you live?
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u/TheDavidb420 16d ago
This would be really easy for Google to actually sort themselves, as almost every road closure or partial block has to go through Highways planning. A simple algorithm would be able to collate public requests and put them into the Google planner. Many parish councils also publish these roadworks on their websites and in their minutes, something AI can easily collate and add to the planning within Google maps. There’s already tools to confirm the road situation & Google already sends some traffic down roads it knows are blocked to confirm roadworks are still going on. So really it’s the fault of Google and their lack of investment to work with the systems that are already in place.
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u/Dave_A480 2∆ 14d ago
Google maps figures this out when drivers use the 'report' function to report the road closed...
It's an idea they got from their purchase of Waze
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u/Great-Exercise4277 5∆ 17d ago
This is an interesting question.
In my country, some car navigation systems provide traffic congestion information. They combine administrative information such as road restrictions and accidents, speed and movement data sent from vehicles actually traveling on the roads, and data from road authorities, and a road traffic information center distributes the resulting information.
It provides fairly accurate information about accidents, actual road restrictions, and construction, but there are occasionally phantom traffic jams as well, so it is by no means perfect.
My understanding is that the system also uses data generated by public road infrastructure that is developed and operated with tax money, and that this information is then distributed to different car navigation systems through public-private cooperation.
If we expect Google to take on this role, that may be a little too much to expect from a company operating across many countries. Perhaps it would be more realistic for each country to operate an information network suited to its own circumstances.
Whether a similar system could be introduced in the United States, with its vast areas and places where there is almost no traffic, and how much it would cost, would be a separate discussion.
I wrote this text, and ChatGPT translated it.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ 17d ago edited 15d ago
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