Ordnance Survey rescues rural towns from juggernauts

Killjoys at the Ordnance Survey are to direct heavy goods vehicle drivers away from narrow country lanes and high streets, depriving rural residents of the most fun they've had since fox hunting was banned. The government mapping agency has asked local councils to provide it with approved freight route maps. OS provides the …

[Anonymous Coward]

Parochiality

"...asked local councils to provide it with approved freight route maps..."

I wonder what level of oversight there will be. I can see the NIMBYists diverting heavy freight with goals other than stopping the SNAFUs that currently go on. You only have to look at the variations in road speed marking between local authorities to see how attitudes to road users stand.

And watch property prices plummet along those "select" roads. They'll have a field day. And so will the guffawing journos as large gaps appear in the nation's HGV grid...

[s. pam]

Do you know the way to San Jose?

seems to me unless the O/S instructions are in Polish, Welsh, French, Romanian, and Russian it'll be of little help....reading is a forgotten art now adays...

[Paul]

RE: Parochiality

I can see it being even worse than that. Lets just hope this goes to someone like local planning officers, with all there failings, one thing they cannot be accused of, unlike Councilers, is changing routes for political means. No Counciler is going to want to admit they alowed HGVs to go through there ward.

[paulc]

numpties

will still make stupid mistakes like typing in Lille and taking the one in Belgium instead of the one in France...

http://www.express.co.uk/printer/view/28204/

[Anonymous Coward]

God Help Birmingham

The City that closed the road next to an industrial estate for anything over 7.5 tonnes that had junctions that had been especially widened and sent the lorries down a narrow road, with a primary school on it and a tight T-Junction at the end. Needless to say EVERYONE ignored the No Right turns, the No Entries and central reservations (people just u-turned at the first gap)

The same people that 1 mile up the road, thought it was a good idea to put 3 sets of light 100 m apart, set to different timings and managed to cause 3 mile tailback over night.

This is just one of Brums many road cock ups.

Still great way to justify congestion charging.

[Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse]

I thought that...

Counciler was spelt "councillor"? Alternatively you can use the old English colloquialism "self aggrandising, arrogant, money wasting retard".

Well, that's how we spell it round my way.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sat Nav

It also will only help with Sat Nav units sold in the future, probably not for several years, as most never have their maps updated because of the cost of doing so (it can be cheaper to buy a new Sat Nav).

[SImon Hobson]

What's missing ...

... is a little more detail in the roads database.

I'm getting used to TomToms little foibles, but it's clear that there is insufficient data on the types of road - in my home town for example, it normally tells me to take a couple of very narrow back streets instead of the much wider main street. It's clear that the streets don't have different weightings to give the needed preference to the better routes.

The same applies to all the stories quoted, eg: if the database had indications that a road was not suitable for large vehicles AND the unit had settings for it, then it simply wouldn't have plotted the route as it did. So one extra bit of detail needs to be street width - then wider vehicles can avoid having routes plotted along those streets.

So three things are needed :

1) The roads database needs more detail, but given the number of OLD errors I've found, this isn't going to happen any time soon.

2) The units need more configurability. My TomTom for example doesn't have ANY settings (that I've found) for type of vehicle or preferred speeds.

3) You somehow need to persuade users to update their systems - as Brucie used to say Good Game, Good Game ! I recon most satnavs will NEVER be updated after purchase - just look at the price of mapping updates and I think you'll see why. Plus, why bother when your expectation is that most of the errors you've found will still be there - if they haven't been fixed in the last six or more years, why should they suddenly have been dealt with in the last 6 months ?

[Dave Bell]

It's all DEFRA now

And God help the farmers who have to get supplies in and produce out.

There's a huge gap developing in the range of truck sizes, has been for years, and a lot of places struggle with artics. I've had small consignments delivered by an artic doing multi-drop.

[Theresa Jayne Forster]

Sat nav Circles

I have an Alpine In Car Stereo/ Sat Nav.

I had just visited a friend in the Yorkshire Village of Todmorden and was heading off to a friend's in Bradford.

Sat nav sent me left into the hills (rather than straight down into Hebden Bridge.)

over the top of the moor, and back into the top end of Todmorden. - Then as I approached the junction again - Next Left - Needless to say I ignored the satnav and carried on into Hebden bridge and out of the Yorkshire Triangle.

That wasnt the only one. coming down the M40 to visit a friend in Winslow Bucks,

The Sat nav again sent me onto the A43, first exit left, right turn, right turn, at the roundabout Make a U turn then first exit left........

Strange thing is every time round the loop reduces the mileage until the destination is reached.... or are the machines trying to make us drive in circles until our cars run out of fuel then send in the robot killing machines now we cant run away anymore...

[Simon Cresswell]

There's this brilliant invention..

..called a map.

[Graham Dawson]

@Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

Alternatively you can use the old English colloquialism "self aggrandising, arrogant, money wasting retard"

Round here I think they're starting to call em Oldhams, after our erstwhile council leader (or maybe the nearby town, who knows?) who likes to name EVERY DAMN THING in the borough after himself and recently got in the paper for putting his house on a list of notable and famous places in the area. Right little stalin that one is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Farm access?

Its not just getting supplies that can be a problem for farmers ... a local council decided to reduce width of a bridge to car width to ensure that lorries couldn't use it - problem was at the time my father-in-law had part of his farm on the far side of the bridge and various bits of equipment would no longer fit. Only alternative route involved coming out of a lane onto middle of 60mph dual carriage way bypass! After raising the potential dangers of trying to move slow farm equipment this way he was advised that he should request a "police escort" any time he needed to take a tractor up to those fields! Not sure he ever did but suspect this was one of the reasons why he sold that land.

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction

"depriving rural residents of the most fun they've had since fox hunting was banned."

You mean the most fun since fox hunting was banned apart from fox hunting. It's only been made more fun it even more fun since it became an act of political defiance.

Not that I would know, of course. ACing just in case.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cosh the driver

"it will also rob the UK’s rural population of the joy of watching lorry drivers and assorted townies get their oversized vehicles stuck in narrow byways, rivers, and railways"

Perhaps we will see a new wave of "wreckers", who set out to deliberately misguide trucks etc in order to grab their cargo as booty. They will put up fake GPS satellites in order to lead people astray, and descend on their abandoned pallets like hungry locusts. It will be Branscombe beach all over again, but more sinister.

[Graham Marsden]

What would be useful...

... is if companies like Tom Tom actually provided a method by which customers could inform them of errors or changes.

One example is a route local to me that tries to take you down a street that has been closed off to traffic, another is where I asked it to direct me to the nearest petrol station, only to find that it had closed down.

In both cases I can find no way of telling Tom Tom that their maps need updating.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox Hunting in Norfolk

@AC - didn't I see you out at Wymondham last week? Had a good day but failed to set the hounds on Anne Widdecombe, more's the pity

[Dave]

Back in the Olde Days...

I remember asking an early version of Autoroute for directions to Southend to see how far it thought the distance was. It had a good long think about it, much more than I'd expect for a journey of that length and eventually coughed up a route to a place in one of the dangly bits to the west of Glasgow. Turns out I should have specified Southend on Sea (I didn't think to try the more obvious Sarfend at the time). I always prefer to see the entire proposed route and check it on a map and currently have no plans to own a satnav device.

[Anonymous Coward]

"dutifully"

"... only to see her car totalled by an oncoming express as she dutifully closed the crossing gate behind her ..."

You mis-spelled "stupidly." There's nothing on the sign that says you aren't allowed to cross all the way and then close both gates at once, and anyone who isn't bloody suicidal and is posessed of enough common sense to remember to keep breathing and walk around without bumping into lampposts should have been capable of thinking "Hmm, parking my car on the railway line would be a stupid thing to do, I'll park it just the other side and walk back".

Of course, that's not fair of me.

It might not be stupidity.

It might just be stupendous, earth-shattering laziness on the scale of "I can't be arsed to waddle ten extra feet on my stumpy great morbidly-obese legs, so I'll save myself a few seconds of effort by stopping just past each gate and closing them separately".

[steogede]

@Simon Hobson, @Simon Cresswell, @Graham Marsden

>> 1) The roads database needs more detail, but given the number of OLD errors

>> I've found, this isn't going to happen any time soon. (Simon Hobson)

>>

>> 3) You somehow need to persuade users to update their systems - as Brucie

>> used to say Good Game, Good Game ! I recon most satnavs will NEVER be

>> updated after purchase - just look at the price of mapping updates and I think

>> you'll see why. Plus, why bother when your expectation is that most of the errors

>> you've found will still be there - if they haven't been fixed in the last six or more

>> years, why should they suddenly have been dealt with in the last 6 months ?

>> (Simon Hobson)

I am the first to admit that all Government databases are doomed to failure from the outset, however, the only solution that I can see is for Ordnance Survey to A) operate a change management system, which requires all local authorities notify them of changes to roads before they happen. B) Ordnance Survey should be government funded so that their data can be put in the public domain.

I don't think that sort of system would add much of an overhead, surely councils need to maintain systems which detail their roads and associated width, height, speed restrictions. If the ordnance survey information was freely available, then we wouldn't have to deal with the crap data we get from Tele-Atlas. It would, also mean that in theory all sat nav updates could be free. Personally I think that it should be a legal requirement for sat nav companies maps to be correct and update their maps and for drivers to update their sat nav every couple of months (if only on the grounds of safety).

BTW, Tele-Atlas provide most maps for SatNav (they are probably cheap than OS) - which is probably why you find that roads which are less than 5 years-old don't appear on your brand new Sat Nav but do appear on your 3 year-old road atlas (most of which use OS data).

>> There's this brilliant invention.. ..called a map. (Simon Cresswell)

Yes and that is what Sat Navs use. If you are referring to road atlases, I don't know if you have noticed, but they don't include much by way of width/height restrictions (the point of the article) - that is mostly down to road signs

>> What would be useful ... ... is if companies like Tom Tom actually provided a

>> method by which customers could inform them of errors or changes. (Graham

>> Marsden)

TomTom, for one, actually provide that in their latest devices, by way of MapShare. With regard to your point about the petrol station, that is down to your Sat Nav's points of interest database (not it's map), which on most Sat Nav's has been user updatable for a long time. Personally I don't see why users should have to tell TomTom to update the maps, TomTom should be able to get free information about roads well in advance of them being changed - after some has to plan and keep records of changes to roads, they aren't organic lifeforms (the same goes for road works).

[Fred]

Is it just me...

But why do people obey sat navs when they know better? i keep hearing stuff like: " it tried to send me down the wrong road and not over that certain road etc etc"???

Says alot for the human race...

[Curtis W. Rendon]

Hmmm...

When using my satnav I've always found it useful to watch where I am going. Works for me when I'm not using it also.

In the states we usually have signs warning of narrow lanes, weak bridges, low clearances to help trucks avoid such, but that also depends on keeping an eye out.

[Andy Livingstone]

Ordnance Survey

Would not like to lie in the road too long while an ambulance took the "approved" route.

[Anonymous Coward]

@steogede

Firstly, to let you know, i am currently working at the ordnance survey as a temp, in their Data Enhancement business area.

Where do you think TeleAtlas gets their data from? That would be the OS. Unless its open source all geomatic data is generated and maintained by them. Oh and they are government funded so taxes pay for the maps to be made as well as what people pay for them.

The main problem is that the area of the company that takes the surveyors input and adds it to the map is made up mainly of agency staff. Part of my job is checking for errors in existing data and some of them are shockingly bad.

For example an infant school had been matched to a house the other side of an estate, I wonder how any ambulance or fire engine without a local driver would find it like that?

Oh, and that got past a quality control team.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the emasculated use GPS anyway

Face it, any man who still has his cajones doesn't need a map or a GPS sat-nav to know where he is, where he wants to go, and how to manage the bit in the middle.

These numpties getting lost are the same misogynist hairy-arsed truckers that would throw a fit if a woman tried to navigate for them using a map, yet they instantly hand over responsibilty for finding their way to an automated device.

Funnily enough the women they are married to probably get more pleasure from an automated device than from GPS using drivers.

[Anonymous Coward]

@steogede

"B) Ordnance Survey should be government funded so that their data can be put in the public domain".

OS was government funded so we all paid for the original base mapping e.g. landline, addresspoint etc. but it sure as hell didnt end up in the public domain. They still sold it (and couldnt even make a profit!) back to us - even though we had all paid for it in the first place!

Can anyone confirm if government money is still going into it? Not sure myself....

Also, last time I was there it was a right dump. Canteen looked like an 1960s school gym and the corridors were a cross between a russian nuclear bunker and a mental hospital. Maybe they have updated the buildings since as they now charge an arm, leg, kidneys and most of your toes for Mastermap.

[Graham Marsden]

@steogede

> TomTom, for one, actually provide that in their latest devices, by way of MapShare. With regard to your point about the petrol station, that is down to your Sat Nav's points of interest database (not it's map), which on most Sat Nav's has been user updatable for a long time.

Thanks for this info, I've now gone looking for this and found it, but they don't exactly make it easy to locate!

Perhaps they should improve their navigation...!

[Flocke Kroes]

You can update maps

At http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/

I have yet to find any evidence that you can download these maps onto a commercial GPS. I would be interested in a USB GPS connected to an XO, but I cannot get an XO here. Looks like I might have to search for the blond^H^H^H^H^H Eee PC.