On December 13, 2021 I wanted to show how it is now possible to add roads in Google Maps with the new Road Editor for Desktop: Roads for Everyone - Helping others with the New Road Editor. The new editor was officially presented by @KarolinaPysz (whom we all know because she moderates the Road Mapper board) on December 8, 2021, inthe presentation video of this year’s Guiding Stars.
If you are still unable to add roads in the desktop version of Google Maps (I have added more than 750 roads since December 2021) you should read the post, to be ready when the update will also reach your profile.
In the meantime the program has undergone some evolution from the graphic point of view, and an incredible new function has been added: The possibility of correcting the shape of an existing road.
Fixing the shape of a road can be very useful, but it is a feature that should only be used when absolutely necessary. I usually use it in three cases:
- When I add a missing road, to improve the general information of the area. I don’t think doing this gives me extra points, but since I’m editing an area, I try to do it as best I can.
- When the area has completely changed (for example because new buildings have been built) and some roads have been moved to adapt to the new road system.
- When, due to the wrong shape, the Blue Line of Street View is fragmented.
In this post I want to talk about this last case, and that’s why I wanted to add “Follow the Blue Line” in the title.
Follow the Blue Line
It all started when, on December 21st, @L-C highlighted how the Blue Lineof one of the roads in the area related to my post was fragmented, and wondered if “With this tool would it be possible to edit the road shape to improve the map quality?”
At that time the new feature didn’t exist, and all I could do was report that the road was “Drawn Incorrectly”. My edit was “Not Applied” in no time.
On February 20, 2022 the new function magically appeared on my desktop, and the first thing I did was to correct the shape of that road.
The result was fantastic, and within days the street began to populate with Street View images. In the cover photo above you can see the street as it appeared before my edit, and during the edit operations. The blue line shows my drawing, and the dashed white line shows the “original” street.
In the screenshot below you can see how the road now appears in Maps, with the Blue Line fully visible and connected
Since that day, hunting for Blue Lines has become a passion for me. I have begun to understand the reason for the missing Blue Lines, and I am trying to fix them. I currently have numerous Pending Edits, and will update the post when they are approved.
What I want to show you below is one of the edits that took the longest, and that hasn’t been approved yet. I still don’t know how many points I will receive for this edit (maybe 5) but certainly seeing the Blue Lines reappear is a much greater satisfaction than receiving the points
Why does the Blue Line disappear?
If any of you also contribute in Street View by adding Photo-Paths and Blue Lines by uploading videos with the Street View App, you will certainly have received messages in which you are told that it is not possible to upload the video because the GPS track of the video does not coincide with that of the street.
In most cases this is certainly true, however the fact that this also happens to Google makes me think, and my conclusion is that it is often the shape of the road that is wrong, not the Street View GPS track.
According to my observations, when the shape of the road is displaced 10 meters or more from the actual position, the Blue Line does not appear. Below you can see a couple of examples, with the detail of the distance.
Obviously this situation is a pretty “extreme” example, and I’m curious to see how soon Google will approve my edit. I wanted to share this situation to make it clear how important it can be to make an appropriate edit.
Have you ever encountered similar situations? If so, I’m sure you too are waiting for the new Road Editor to be available to everyone.
