I became a Local Guide primarily to update details for the small businesses I work with, aiding their visibility and discoverability.
I soon discovered though that my real passion is in making contributions that improve navigation for Nigerian users of Google Maps.
While I love to improve the accuracy of business information and help people find unique places in Lagos, what fills my bucket is when I help someone to escape or avoid the various navigation traps in Lagos, and there lies the genesis of my battle with invisible street gates.
I live in an ultra-gated gated community, and everywhere you turn in my community, you find one street gate or the other. Actually, street gates are ubiquitous in Lagos: on the one hand, they are relics of security infrastructure deployed when Lagos was a “wild wild west,” on the other hand they are considered essential to privacy and communal control. So, like it or yes, Lagos street gates are not likely to go away anytime soon, and in fact, they are cherished by many, and their concentration is often an indicator of a premium middle-income neighborhood.
Street gates have some drawbacks though, especially for a visitor or tourist: Firstly, only residents tend to know which gate combinations are open at what time and for how long, meaning that visitors often have to do a merry-go-round before getting to their destinations. Some gates are open during the day and closed in the evening, while others remain permanently locked. Secondly, street gates can complicate the effort to find the shortest possible route to a Lagos location, sometimes turning a 10minutes drive to a 25minutes trip. Thirdly, possibly with the assumption that a preponderance of street gates is an oddity (notwithstanding being commonplace in Lagos), Google Maps does not currently recognize street gates - which makes the street gates the invisible enemies of navigation.
I remember the day I gleefully asked my friend to follow the direction on Maps to my office, he got to the street and drove up and down for a while wondering where my office was. It took almost 10minutes of a phone conversation, filled with descriptions of uncorrelated landmarks before I realized he was on the other side of a street gate. So, Google Maps directed him properly, but Invisible Street Gates (ISGs) stood in his path. This story is all so common now in Lagos, especially with the increased adoption of ride-hailing services dependent on Google Maps. Experienced hosts have to be proactive to direct their guests and their Ubers to alternate routes; otherwise, they will be frustrated by the almighty ISGs.
For me, aside from the unexpected and unmarked traffic direction in certain areas of Lagos, ISGs are the next menace that we need to tackle for an excellent navigation experience. And so started my battle with the Invisible Street Gates. This battle is critical, as the gates have been around for so long that leaving them out of the mapping in Lagos is making maps incomplete, for instance, the pedestrian and main street gate on Salaudeen Akano in Ogudu GRA has been closed since 2010 and 2012 respectively, as evidenced by these pictures below.
I initially started by trying to mark as “closed” the road sections where permanently locked gates are situated, but that method was fraught with challenges as it became apparent that other Local Guides (who are oblivious of my reasons for marking the road section closed) usually respond in the negative to verification requests, so the closures are not approved. Even when they are approved, I soon find that other Local Guides edit the portions to reopen the roads later.
When Google Street View was launched for large sections of Lagos, ISGs introduced further distortions into Google Maps, dividing single roads separated by street gates into totally disconnected portions which appear as dead ends on Maps. This is a logical way to interpret street gates for an algorithm since the Street View Truck had to make a U-turn whenever it encountered a locked street gate. The challenge comes on the days those gates are open, and most people are unable to use them because they are not even “expected” to link with each other. These lapses are over Lagos on Maps, especially in gated communities like Ogudu and Magodo GRA. See Maps screenshot showing Jemibewon and Abibat Ajose Street gates for example.
Presently, what I have found is that I could label the exact coordinate where the gate is as ‘closed,’ and add pictures to that label to enable map users to see the exact closure (see the gates dividing Jemibewon Street into two for example). I then share the labels publicly so the markers can be visible to all users in the area. See a screenshot below.
Next, I intend to explore the Maps list as a way of chronicling the numerous ISGs currently in Lagos, starting with my immediate neighborhood.
My greatest wish, though, is that I get an opportunity to be at Connect Live 2019 and that the event unearths tools and best practice that can help me win this battle, or at least the chance to escalate my struggle and its significance to Google Maps product champions. Till then, I’ll keep fighting, one mapped street gate at a time.