Thanks for all the interesting comments and discussions under my previous post: Road Mapper reflections Version 1.
On October 25, 2026, with only 6 days to go in this year’s Road Mapper Campaign, I decided to quit and throw in the towel.
It started getting too boring and repetitive for me to draw Road Mapper roads every day. So I decided to stop. Below, I would like to share why.
With 2.745 kilometers and 3.496 completed challenges in October in South Africa, I’m proud of my efforts. And thanks to everyone who participated.
The above image shows where I added roads in South Africa. The screenshot below shows the nice round numbers for my total contributions on Road Mapper.
It was joyful to draw roads because I kept learning. But I hit a wall.
The problem was not:
- Related to how the TORM 26 campaign was organized. In fact, I found the new bookmark to upload daily achivements super helpful. Thanks, Marco.
- Related to how the Road Mapper website works. However, faster approvals and a feature to select the road type would be very much appreciated.
- Related to how much time it took to complete this many challenges.
Instead, the problem is the lack of Guidance from Google on how to draw roads. And it was the lack of willingness from Google’s side to engage with highly motivated road-drawing volunteers.
While drawing 2.745 kms of new roads in one country, the same basic questions kept coming back again and again. And there is nowhere to get answers. I feel we are left guessing all the time and/or building our own private interpretations of the missing guidelines. Such private interpretations can easily be wrong, and they are not shared.
This is far from being respectful of the volunteers and their time.
So the rest of this post is an appeal to Google:
Dear Google Team responsible for Roads,
Here are a few of the questions that need an FAQ or extra guidelines:
When is a road so insignificant/small/inferior that it should not be added to Google Maps?
I often see roads added that are just internal tractor roads on agricultural land without any public access. In South Africa, there are also many huge circles with irrigated fields. On the periphery, there is a “road” where the circular irrigation system is supported. Adding these circles to Google Maps as roads is not helpful in my opinion.
Here is an example:
Here is another example:
These are just the farmer’s internal borders of neighboring fields. Drawing 2 roads - one on each side - of a fence, as seen above, is very far from helpful, as these roads are not really roads that others can use and should navigate along.
I have also seen fences traced as if they were roads.
I wish the road team would engage in a dialogue with us to identify clear examples of what should not be considered a road. I’m sure we can easily organize our community to help collect such examples.
Another issue is how accurately roads should be drawn. Is it okay if roads are shifted 10 or 20 meters off due to bad alignment? Should we align them, or ignore them?
We now know that there will be Connect Live events in 2027, so maybe we could organize a well-prepared side meeting to discuss issues like these. And hopefully end up with a plan for how the needed guidance can be developed. Co-creation with the volunteers might make this easier for the team. Hence, I’m tagging @Kristen_NYC, hoping that this can be added to the agenda of one of the upcoming Connect Live events next year. I would be very happy to help prepare and facilitate this.