How To Contact GPS Companies to Change Routes

[akotchi]

As part of a construction project in northwest New Jersey that my firm is providing engineering support, traffic patterns have changed that have made (among other things) a two-way roadway one-way.  The new one-way pattern opened yesterday.

The Resident Engineer's office called to note that a few wrong turns have been made since the pattern change, and suggested that part of the reason may be blindly following GPS.  Not a large problem, but accidents waiting to happen nonetheless.  One thing he has asked us to look into is contacting the GPS companies to update the routing.

My two questions are:  How does one get in touch with the GPS companies to initiate this?  and How long does it generally take for these updates to be live?

We are also looking at beefing up the roadways (still under construction) with additional regulatory signing in the meantime.

Any information or advice the community can provide would be greatly appreciated!

[jakeroot]

With Google Maps, which I think is probably the biggest source of directions, you can report a change from Google Maps' website. Go to the area with the road change (in NW Jersey, as you said), select the road, click the question mark in the bottom of the website, and select "Report a Data Problem". You can then fill in the info in the box that pops up. Bing Maps also works the same way (and those with Windows Phone devices use Bing Maps to navigate): click the "feedback" button in the bottom left, and fill in the necessary info in the pop-up.

As for standalone GPS units, such as those you plug into your car's DC plug (cigarette lighter) or ones that are built into a car, I'm not aware of any that can accept over-the-air updates. Most run off of SD cards or hard drivers. Some use DVDs as well, but the point remains that they cannot be updated without physically replacing the data within the nav unit.

[Brian556]

Quote from akotchi:

As part of a construction project in northwest New Jersey that my firm is providing engineering support, traffic patterns have changed that have made (among other things) a two-way roadway one-way.  The new one-way pattern opened yesterday.

The Resident Engineer's office called to note that a few wrong turns have been made since the pattern change, and suggested that part of the reason may be blindly following GPS.  Not a large problem, but accidents waiting to happen nonetheless.  One thing he has asked us to look into is contacting the GPS companies to update the routing.

My two questions are:  How does one get in touch with the GPS companies to initiate this?  and How long does it generally take for these updates to be live?

We are also looking at beefing up the roadways (still under construction) with additional regulatory signing in the meantime.

Any information or advice the community can provide would be greatly appreciated!

This is why people need to be taught to navigate the old fashioned way.

[akotchi]

Quote from akotchi:

As part of a construction project in northwest New Jersey that my firm is providing engineering support, traffic patterns have changed that have made (among other things) a two-way roadway one-way.  The new one-way pattern opened yesterday.

The Resident Engineer's office called to note that a few wrong turns have been made since the pattern change, and suggested that part of the reason may be blindly following GPS.  Not a large problem, but accidents waiting to happen nonetheless.  One thing he has asked us to look into is contacting the GPS companies to update the routing.

My two questions are:  How does one get in touch with the GPS companies to initiate this?  and How long does it generally take for these updates to be live?

We are also looking at beefing up the roadways (still under construction) with additional regulatory signing in the meantime.

Any information or advice the community can provide would be greatly appreciated!

This is why people need to be taught to navigate the old fashioned way.

No debate from me on that point!

[lordsutch]

Your best bets would be to report directly to the companies that compile the mapping data. I believe the two major commercial players beyond Google are Tomtom and Nokia's HERE. There's also OpenStreetMap, which is used by a lot of third-party apps.

Places to report these issues:

HERE/Navteq errors: https://mapreporter.navteq.com/#dashboard
Tomtom errors: http://www.tomtom.com/mapshare/tools/
OpenStreetMap errors: http://www.openstreetmap.org/note/new (or, better, fix it yourself!)

[Scott5114]

With Google Maps, which I think is probably the biggest source of directions, you can report a change from Google Maps' website. Go to the area with the road change (in NW Jersey, as you said), select the road, click the question mark in the bottom of the website, and select "Report a Data Problem". You can then fill in the info in the box that pops up. Bing Maps also works the same way (and those with Windows Phone devices use Bing Maps to navigate): click the "feedback" button in the bottom left, and fill in the necessary info in the pop-up.

As for standalone GPS units, such as those you plug into your car's DC plug (cigarette lighter) or ones that are built into a car, I'm not aware of any that can accept over-the-air updates. Most run off of SD cards or hard drivers. Some use DVDs as well, but the point remains that they cannot be updated without physically replacing the data within the nav unit.

And then Google's reviewers will decline the change because (insert arbitrary reason here).

[dfwmapper]

Changes to Google Maps made via the Report a Problem usually go through, or at least don't get denied. It's the changes made via Map Maker that get denied by idiot reviewers. Map Maker has been disabled since May 12, so that's not really a problem at the moment, though the stagnation of map data is.

[jakeroot]

Changes to Google Maps made via the Report a Problem usually go through, or at least don't get denied. It's the changes made via Map Maker that get denied by idiot reviewers. Map Maker has been disabled since May 12, so that's not really a problem at the moment, though the stagnation of map data is.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I've only had reports denied maybe a handful of times. Most of the time, I provide a secondary link to show them proof.