What’s the criteria for differentiating a private road vs a driveway? I’ve been removing driveways entirely from Maps, however, there are some driveways could be characterized as a private road instead and I’m looking for clarity. For example, if a driveway is sufficiently long enough and has more than one home fed off it, I label it as a private road.
Here is an example of such a private road that I haven’t added yet, 34.76257359285086, -86.78173677852581. This is a gravel road that feeds two houses.
Now, here’s an example of a private residence that has a shed in the backyard and GM has their driveway as a road. In my mind it should be removed entirely since the residences address is associated with Balch and it’s not a sufficiently long private road that feeds multiple homes. 34.76594968872338, -86.76805320574395
Hi @chart2006
A private road is a road inside a private property, e.g. a shopping centre, or a private condominium complex. It can be small or big, it really doesn’t matter, but most of the time what Private Roads have in common is that the roads are closed at the end, and most of the time they also have a gate.
Here an example of an housing complex in Google Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/hx12T3y6T4eS55Ba7
The entrance is closed by a gate
The example you provided is in my mind a very clear representation of what a private road would be but I would argue that it doesn’t require being behind a gate. If it’s a road that is not maintained by the city or local government in which it resides then that is a private road weather it has a gate or not. There are plenty of condominiums and apartment complexes that have private roads that are not behind a gate but are maintained by that complex. Now there’s another argument in differentiating between a private road in an apartment complex versus a parking lot as often times apartment complexes will have parking integrated into the road that goes through the complex but that’s another debate/topic.
Of course, @chart2006 , that’s why I said “most of the time” they have a gate.
And many times a private road has no exit (no connection to another public road) so it’s reserved only to the traffic of residents and visitors of a condominium complex, a resident area, an industrial complex, and so on.
But it happened twice to me, once in Bangkok, Thailand and once on Changsha, Cina, to use a private road as a shortcut to avoid the heavy traffic of the area.
In both cases we had to pay a ticket for them to open the gate, but we saved one hour driving.
It was before the Google Maps age, now it would not be possible, because Maps doesn’t suggest Private Roads for the navigation between public roads
Oh, before I forget, regarding the road subject of your question (https://maps.app.goo.gl/fVnGAmGfL2PrJuLo6) I would keep it, because it can be helpful for delivery people, just to give an example, even if indeed it should be flagged as “private”
I agree, and I did add that private road in this instance for that exact reason. That being said, it looks like it was added as a public road instead of a private one as I requested. lol
There seems to be an enormous amount of driveways being added over the last month. Is there a bot that is doing this? They are showing up in Google Maps as local roads, which is creating a lot of unnecessary work to go back in and mark them as private with the note it is a driveway.
Hi @El_M , welcome to connect and thank you for posting. Can you be more specific and provide a link to the area you are talking about?
Otherwise it will be impossible to check / fix them.
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s been over the last month but I agree there’s a lot of unnecessary driveways for whatever reason. I wonder if it is Google’s AI that may see it as a road and then automatically add it but I don’t know. Typically when you go in and edit a road if there is a pending edit from somebody else it will show that there is something pending. I have never seen a driveway addition pending when I go in and edit and I do edits almost every day for my area.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been focusing largely on driveways and parking lots trying to fix them. however what’s interesting is Google isn’t supposed to route you through those areas but just the other day it routed me through a car wash even though the LOI through the car wash was not a public road. In fact I went in to see if there was something wrong with the neighboring roads to figure out why it didn’t take me around the car wash on the actual public road and I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. The only thing I could think of was the business I was trying to get to there’s a small 10 meter segment that’s a one-way only. Google has it in there as a one-way but it doesn’t extend to the entire road just that one little segment. When looking at it There’s no indication that Google doesn’t see the rest of the segment as a two-way road so I don’t know what the problem was. I did do an edit and indicated the problem in the notes but I’m not for sure how they would even fix that.
Hi ErmesT,
I don’t seem to be getting notified of updates to this thread, so I apologize for the late response.
Here is an area, that the issue is not driveways, but is is parking lots showing up with a higher value of local roads. Previously, they showed as parking lots, but now they show as roads, and the connections for many of them is flat wrong. There is not connection between the El Vaquero parking lot and the Riverside Cafe.
Looks like to are at work already in the area, to fix the issues.
My only tip for you is: Editing a shape on desktop without adding a new segment of road has a low probability to be applied.
