Google Maps just fucking SUCKS now

[Daniel Fiddler]

In other news, I-42 is now complete between Morehead City and Raleigh.

It's not completely freeway though.  It's mostly freeway.  Unless google maps has not updated itself.

[SkyPesos]

In other news, I-42 is now complete between Morehead City and Raleigh.

And I-69. There was a new interchange planned for I-69 and I-465 on the south side of Indy, but I guess Google got exclusive info that INDOT did some changes here, so they rolled with it 

Looks like Google Maps have I-69 labels on IN 37 between Martinsville and I-465 now even though it's incomplete 

[sprjus4]

In other news, I-42 is now complete between Morehead City and Raleigh.

It's not completely freeway though.  It's mostly freeway.  Unless google maps has not updated itself.

It's not complete, there's still long stretches of non-freeway. But Google shows it as such, a full freeway.

[sprjus4]

In other news, I-42 is now complete between Morehead City and Raleigh.

And I-69. There was a new interchange planned for I-69 and I-465 on the south side of Indy, but I guess Google got exclusive info that INDOT did some changes here, so they rolled with it 

Looks like Google Maps have I-69 labels on IN 37 between Martinsville and I-465 now even though it's incomplete 

Google isn't listing it as "I-69"  anymore, but it is still a freeway.

[webny99]

I don't know about the specific examples, but I know I've seen town outlines in NY before, and now I don't.

Nevertheless, based on your counterexamples, it seems that Google will show boundaries if it happens to have the data, but otherwise does not. Why they have data on, say, Greenwich, KS I do not know.

And yet I doubt Google lost the data for the boundaries |vdeane| has noticed disappear.

Sorry, playing catch up here with all the activity in this thread:

Town boundaries in New York do show up, but only if there's no same-name village, hamlet, or CDP. In other words, ironically, they only work if you search for the place. Hardly any place that you'd click organically on the map provides the outline, aside from actual cities (of which there's only 62 in the entire state), and a few select suburban towns, such as Brighton and Irondequoit.* But if you use the search function, Perinton, NY works just fine, and so does Galen, NY - as those particular names only refer to the town.

Personally, I haven't particularly noticed that this has gotten worse recently, but maybe it's just happened over time. But I definitely recall being frustrated by this quite some time ago - at least 1-2 years, if not longer. (And of course, I freely acknowledge that I use Google Maps for looking up municipalities way more than your average person... and probably even way more than your average person on this forum.)



*Oh, and villages. Villages show up just fine. But they're also irrelevant as far as Census population data is concerned, since their population is factored in to whatever town they're located in, so I don't normally have much use for them.

[webny99]

Barre VT does show (the city), even though there's a town with the same name adjacent to it. Same with Rutland.

This happens in NY, as well. Batavia, Lockport, and Canandaigua, NY, are all cities with adjacent same-named towns, and the city outlines do show up.

And surprisingly, if you search "Town of [insert town name]" for any of the above, the actual town outline will show up, complete with the hole in the middle where the city is located.

[jakeroot]

It sounds to me like the Californians running Google Maps may be slightly confused at how municipalities work in New York, and the algorithms are not correctly processing town vs village vs city, etc.

[billpa]

Reminds me of Rand McNally with their metropolitan maps. The central cities are white and the suburban areas sort of a soft yellow/ gold. Suburban cities of a certain size get their own color but for some reason large (in many cases much larger) towns and townships do not.

Pixel 2

[empirestate]

Reminds me of Rand McNally with their metropolitan maps. The central cities are white and the suburban areas sort of a soft yellow/ gold. Suburban cities of a certain size get their own color but for some reason large (in many cases much larger) towns and townships do not.

That's cartographically traditional. Towns/townships are generally treated as unincorporated area, regardless of their governmental status, because they are thought of as minor civil divisions, distinct from incorporated places like cities, villages, boroughs etc.

[billpa]

It makes no sense.  Townships with close to 100k population with a formal government, police department, public works dept, etc. are 'unincorporated' but small cities with a few thousand are 'proper' municipalities?

[TXtoNJ]

It makes no sense.  Townships with close to 100k population with a formal government, police department, public works dept, etc. are 'unincorporated' but small cities with a few thousand are 'proper' municipalities?

It doesn't. Really, there should be a distinction between CSA/PSA, MSA, and municipalities.

[empirestate]

It makes no sense.  Townships with close to 100k population with a formal government, police department, public works dept, etc. are 'unincorporated' but small cities with a few thousand are 'proper' municipalities?

Mmm...not exactly. The comparison (again, cartographically) isn't between "unincorporated" and "proper", but rather between an areal subdivision of land (i.e., a town that is the subdivision of a county that is a subdivision of a state), and a concentrated settlement (i.e., a city or village, something that may be large or small, but generally has a centralized and relatively dense population).

So in that sense, a town can be just as "proper" an entity as a county or a state, while at the same time being no more comparable to a city or village than a state or a county would be.

Now of course, are there situations where this distinction gets very blurry, and do cartographers sometimes twist themselves into pretzels to depict them? Instead of answering yes or no, I'll just respond with "New Jersey." :-)

[hotdogPi]

It makes no sense.  Townships with close to 100k population with a formal government, police department, public works dept, etc. are 'unincorporated' but small cities with a few thousand are 'proper' municipalities?

Mmm...not exactly. The comparison (again, cartographically) isn't between "unincorporated" and "proper", but rather between an areal subdivision of land (i.e., a town that is the subdivision of a county that is a subdivision of a state), and a concentrated settlement (i.e., a city or village, something that may be large or small, but generally has a centralized and relatively dense population).

So in that sense, a town can be just as "proper" an entity as a county or a state, while at the same time being no more comparable to a city or village than a state or a county would be.

Now of course, are there situations where this distinction gets very blurry, and do cartographers sometimes twist themselves into pretzels to depict them? Instead of answering yes or no, I'll just respond with "New Jersey." :-)

This may be the case in New York, but it is definitely not the case in Massachusetts or New Hampshire.

In this map below, the ones in all caps are cities. There's no geographical difference between cities and towns.

[jakeroot]

fixed link...

In this map below, the ones in all caps are cities. There's no geographical difference between cities and towns.

https://www.sec.state.ma.us/cis/cispdf/City_Town_Map.pdf

[hotdogPi]

fixed link...

In this map below, the ones in all caps are cities. There's no geographical difference between cities and towns.

https://www.sec.state.ma.us/cis/cispdf/City_Town_Map.pdf

The image shows for me, despite ending in pdf.

[empirestate]

This may be the case in New York, but it is definitely not the case in Massachusetts or New Hampshire.

In New England, to a greater or lesser extent, minor civil divisions and incorporated places (I'm using Census terminology, but the USGS works similarly) are virtually indistinguishable. However, the distinction isn't completely absent everywhere.

In Connecticut, for example, unincorporated towns still legally exist, even where they are completely coterminous with incorporated cities–which is in every case save one (Groton). Connecticut also has sub-town level incorporated boroughs, and Vermont likewise has villages.

While Massachusetts (and Rhode Island) no longer has any unincorporated areas, some mapmakers have treated towns there, as elsewhere in New England, as "unincorporated" areas, to maintain the NY-style distinction between less centrally populated areas (towns) and denser ones (cities).

New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine all do also have varying amounts of bona-fide unincorporated territory, with Maine being about half composed of it.

[NE2]

And then there are the high tax and low tax portions of Rome and Saratoga Springs.

[webny99]

fixed link...

In this map below, the ones in all caps are cities. There's no geographical difference between cities and towns.

https://www.sec.state.ma.us/cis/cispdf/City_Town_Map.pdf

The image shows for me, despite ending in pdf.

The image isn't showing for me. I wouldn't have even known there was something there if you hadn't referenced it.

[dlsterner]

fixed link...

In this map below, the ones in all caps are cities. There's no geographical difference between cities and towns.

https://www.sec.state.ma.us/cis/cispdf/City_Town_Map.pdf

The image shows for me, despite ending in pdf.

The image isn't showing for me. I wouldn't have even known there was something there if you hadn't referenced it.

Appears to be browser dependent.  The image shows correctly for me using Safari (my normal browser), but it does not show up when I tried both Firefox and Chrome.

[empirestate]

And then there are the high tax and low tax portions of Rome and Saratoga Springs.

And Oneida.

[jakeroot]

fixed link...

In this map below, the ones in all caps are cities. There's no geographical difference between cities and towns.

https://www.sec.state.ma.us/cis/cispdf/City_Town_Map.pdf

The image shows for me, despite ending in pdf.

The image isn't showing for me. I wouldn't have even known there was something there if you hadn't referenced it.

Appears to be browser dependent.  The image shows correctly for me using Safari (my normal browser), but it does not show up when I tried both Firefox and Chrome.

No access to Safari but does not work on any browser that I have installed (Edge, Chrome, Firefox). (Windows 10)

[kphoger]

No access to Safari but does not work on any browser that I have installed (Edge, Chrome, Firefox). (Windows 10)

I just tried it in IE as well (because I figure there's a 50% chance not a single person on here even uses that browser anymore), and it doesn't render on IE either.  At least has a broken image icon, though, so there's at least some clue something's missing.

[johndoe]

As Google maps seems to get more and more advertisements I'm looking for alternative sites/apps.  I'd like to be able to view live traffic on both Chrome and Android.  Personally I don't love Waze as I never turn my "location" on for mobile...so it's a pain to view live traffic.  The color scheme isn't really very intuitive either.  Sometimes it feels like certain zoom levels on Google make it less "ad-intrusive"...thoughts?

[Scott5114]

openstreetmap.org

Wikipedia but a map, essentially. Doesn't have satellite or street view, but it does have county lines and the ability to edit out inaccuracies.

[jakeroot]

I use the app "OSMAnd" when I'm cycling. Helps me find the least-hilly routes here in my very hilly city. Naturally uses OSM as its base map.

Never used it for navigating by car, but it's definitely a feature. But I think, like others, it would want location. I don't know if it has traffic, but it does have a lot of other options for adjusting the map display.