It’s generally a marker for the route of a footpath but often found as per the second image above where it’s at the end of a footpath or part of it.
Is it a “there’s a route here but this isn’t necessarily exactly it” indicator for when footpaths can’t be mapped accurately?
There are some of these I’ve asked to be added via the reporting mechanism in the past whereas others reported in the same way aren’t dotted so I was just curious.
I’m keen to have quite a few routes for foot traffic added in the future so am trying to get an understanding of things first.
As always any input is appreciated.
(Additionally are we not able to raise new posts in “Help Desk”?)
Thanks @KishorMali - I did find that particular link when originally looking for an answer to my question but didn’t see mention of the footpath feature I’m interested in. I’ll look again though in case I missed it
Thanks again @KishorMali - it’s not the timeline I’m looking at though or necessarily places I’ve been. It’s the route of physical footpaths or potential routes people can follow to somewhere that I presume become active if you navigate somewhere on Maps by foot.
I just wanted to try and understand what the dotted line signifies vs the regular one and my initial assumption is that it’s an unverified, but possible, route.
Maybe something we Local Guides can improve and add Streetview to later to improve things?
Hi @turbotapeworm if you see paths (and roads) marked that way when you search they are usually under construction at the time they were added to the Map. If you see them like that when in navigation it means that Google doesn’t know the exact path to where you’re going. A good example would be a university campus where Google gets you to the car park with navigation and knows you can walk to the building but doesn’t know an exact route.
There is no legend published for Maps that I know of.
Thanks @PaulPavlinovich and @ErmesT - I suspected as much with the “it’s possibly there but this might not be an accurate representation of it” for the dotted line but it’s nice to get some supporting feedback
I guess my next question around this would be… do we just leave them like this or, if we know the accurate path, should we report / update accordingly using the “Suggest an edit on…” option?
If we then “Add or fix a road” it becomes a question of do we go for “drawn incorrectly” where we don’t have the option to show the correct path or do we go for “Missing road” and then add the “road” as a “Biking / walking trail” over the top of the existing one on the basis the person receiving the report can then see the correct route?
Or do we leave them alone and at some point GPS paths from Maps users can be placed over the top (as they can in Waze for example) to show the average travelled path to update it via a macro algorithm / AI / manual process at Google?
I would mark it as drawn incorrectly and let the Maps operator take care of it @turbotapeworm if that doesn’t seem to produce any change (give them a few weeks) then you can take it to the Maps Support Community.
Thanks @PaulPavlinovich - they’re generally “acceptable enough” in that they link two places they need to link to create a valid walking route but in some cases it’s hard to see the real route from a satellite image etc as it’s obscured by trees or something else.
I’ll take a look at some of them and see what kind of outcomes I get from Google, one of the ones that’s dotted nearby is one I actually asked them to add some time ago and is a route I use a lot so hopefully that can be converted to a solid line as it’s highly visible on the satellite image and from Streetview at both ends.
