I've found the directions from Apple Maps to be far easier to follow than what Google Maps gives. Heck Google Maps gives plenty of nonsensical directions, even in cities where Google has an office! (Seriously though, wasn't the Google Maps team in the Seattle area for awhile? Why so many long standing brain dead bugs with local stuff...)
"turn left in 600 ft" vs "turn left at the Jack in the Box up ahead."
IMHO the single largest improvement to Google Maps in the last few years has been the inclusion of traffic lights on the map. Location data, especially in cities, is often spotty and can be plus or minus a block, knowing I should turn at the stop light, or one intersection before the stop light, is the single most useful bit of information Google Maps gives me, and it is unfortunate I have to look down at my screen to glean this bit of important data.
I've listened to the instructions Uber's mapping app gives to drivers, and it also seems to be an improvement over what Google Maps has.
> apple needs to do a much better job of getting accurate POI (places of interest)
Parking garages is a huge one. The day Google Maps added parking structure information for corporate offices (well over a decade ago) it became far more useful. It doesn't always have it, but when it does, super nice.
Google Maps used to also accept tons of community contributions, for better and for worse. I am sad to see them go though, some people used to update food truck information regularly, and still today you can see the last location a food truck was marked as being at!
Edit: Google Maps has also gotten pathologically obsessed with the "technically fastest" route over the years. At present, they will regularly direct drivers to do stupid things like turn left across 3-4 lanes of highway traffic, instead of going down 1 block and using an intersection that has a left turn signal. Are Google's directions technically 1 minute faster? Sure, at the cost of 1 extra white hair on my head. Not a good trade off.
At present, they will regularly direct drivers to do stupid things like turn left across 3-4 lanes of highway traffic, instead of going down 1 block and using an intersection that has a left turn signal. Are Google's directions technically 1 minute faster? Sure, at the cost of 1 extra white hair on my head.
Telling drivers to turn left across traffic costs far more than that. It contributes directly to gridlock, which wastes everyone's time and fuel.
It's inexcusable that turn-by-turn providers don't allow an option to disable or at least penalize left turns in their routing algorithm. UPS figured this out, what, 20 years ago?
At least Google maps usually makes it easy to compare 2 or 3 different route options and let you choose which makes the most sense. But I agree it should more heavily discount "dangerous" manoeuvres, or at least ones that could potentially take far longer than the average time.
As far as whether such directions contribute to gridlock, I'm not so sure - in principle if everyone followed directions generated by the same algorithm with access to "live data", it should significantly help reduce it. It'll be interesting once all cars are self-driving/self-navigating whether that proves to be true, and whether there might end up being fundamental conflicts between different algorithms used by different makes of vehicle.
It isn't the left turn that is the issue, if there is a highway in the middle there isn't much else you can do, after all if you are going to go across it you may as well turn left at the same stop light. I'm discounting the option of driving across all lanes of the highway without a stop light, since that is an even stupider plan than turning left to get onto the highway!
"turn left in 600 ft" vs "turn left at the Jack in the Box up ahead."
IMHO the single largest improvement to Google Maps in the last few years has been the inclusion of traffic lights on the map. Location data, especially in cities, is often spotty and can be plus or minus a block, knowing I should turn at the stop light, or one intersection before the stop light, is the single most useful bit of information Google Maps gives me, and it is unfortunate I have to look down at my screen to glean this bit of important data.
I've listened to the instructions Uber's mapping app gives to drivers, and it also seems to be an improvement over what Google Maps has.
> apple needs to do a much better job of getting accurate POI (places of interest)
Parking garages is a huge one. The day Google Maps added parking structure information for corporate offices (well over a decade ago) it became far more useful. It doesn't always have it, but when it does, super nice.
Google Maps used to also accept tons of community contributions, for better and for worse. I am sad to see them go though, some people used to update food truck information regularly, and still today you can see the last location a food truck was marked as being at!
Edit: Google Maps has also gotten pathologically obsessed with the "technically fastest" route over the years. At present, they will regularly direct drivers to do stupid things like turn left across 3-4 lanes of highway traffic, instead of going down 1 block and using an intersection that has a left turn signal. Are Google's directions technically 1 minute faster? Sure, at the cost of 1 extra white hair on my head. Not a good trade off.