It is very difficult to get taxis (or Uber) to come to the building I live in. The building is a half block up a long driveway. When you get to the bottom of the drive, there is a big sign with an arrow pointing to the building (by street number) but the GPS tells you you have arrived when you are at the bottom of the drive. Interestingly, if you use the street address to get a Google map, it shows the actual building. But the GPS instructions do not lead to the building, only the driveway.
Over and over I have tried calling a taxi and, when it doesn’t arrive I call back and finally get to talk to a human who claims the driver arrived but didn’t find anybody. I had a hospital appointment a week ago that I was not permitted to drive to and had to call a taxi twice and walk to the bottom of the drive in -10 weather to get one. And getting one to go to the airport is a nightmare.
GPS has no maps. It’s just a location service. GPS devices of any sort need some kind of mapping service. If the driver uses a phone, it’s probably either Google or Apple maps. If it’s a standalone device, or built in, hard to say–I believe TomTom is one of the bigger players, though.
I don’t know that there’s any universal way to issue correction requests. You’ll probably have to track down each service individually and file reports.
If you go to the Google Maps web page, you can place a point on the map by left-clicking, then right-click on the point and hit “Report a data problem”. I don’t know about the others.
For Uber and Lyft, you should be able to move the pickup spot by pressing on the pin and dragging it to where you are. When I drove, people would do this for when ballgames let out so as not to be stuck in a crowd at one of the gates.
Here’s a support article on reporting wrong directions. I’d expect in this case, reporting the last step as the wrong step (because it ends at the wrong place) would be what to do.
At least, with Uber (not sure of other solutions) you can let the driver know. Send a message saying, "its actually 100 m further and you need to turn left when you get to the GPS co-ords and drive a bit further.
Living in a third world country, this is not uncommon.
I mean, it is not great to type out all the extra text when I am drunk and want just to go home, but it is not a huge burden. And the Uber driver would prefer the lift to an apparent no-show.
Another, admittedly more difficult, option is to locate your residence on a map program and use the exact coordinates when you call a ride. I had to find my sister’s gravesite in a large old cemetery that didn’t have plot numbers. It did list satellite coordinates, and when I put them into Google Maps it took me directly along the multiple twisty lanes to the gravesite.
When you say “the driveway” , do you mean that your building is not actually on a public street and the directions end where the private driveway meets the public street ? So that the place where ethe directions end is actually where the lot your building is on abuts the public street? If so, that might be the issue and it may not be fixable.
Google and Apple maps increasingly show long driveways, private lanes, and parking lot aisles, especially in shopping centers, apartment complexes, and office parks. On the Google Maps website you can submit an edit to show this, including moving the pin for you address, then they’ll review it and hopefully approve. Beyond that, I agree simply giving additional instructions to the driver should be sufficient. When navigation says “you have arrived” and there’s a long driveway winding into the woods, they should know they haven’t actually arrived.
When I drove for Uber/Lyft they didn’t use the public version of Google maps (don’t know about Apple), they used a version that appeared to be made specifically for them. I often had issues with their maps when picking people up like say Target, it would direct me to the loading dock and not the customer entrance. I missed a few pickups because it took me the street behind the loading dock and I didn’t know the person was standing out in front of Target because it didn’t say Target in the pickup location. That over five years ago now, so perhaps they have improved things.
But as I stated before, it is possible for the passenger placing the request to either move the pickup point by moving the pin on the map or by contacting the driver with instructions.
Exactly. GPS is just a pretty clever way of using a bunch of very accurate orbiting clocks to determine where you are on the earth’s surface. All you usually get out of that is where you are, and an idea of how accurate that is.
If you get something like GPSTest on your phone, you’ll see it - it’ll tell you where you are in latitude and longitude, as well as how accurate it is, meaning that it may say you’re at X, Y point, but the accuracy is only 40 feet. So you’re within a 40 foot circle of X,Y somewhere.
The mapping/navigation outfits will take that information and try to correlate it with somewhere on their maps- typically it’s accurate enough to say “He’s probably on the nearest road.” if you’re in a car navigation app. But in something like Google Maps, the nearest road is probably very well defined, and in your case, is likely at the bottom of the drive, not up the driveway where the house is.
You probably see all this by looking at Google maps in your own home, and seeing that your location dot shows where you are accurately- that’s just the location service part. But the navigation apps only typically deal with what they consider the “actual” roads- your driveway is not considered a road for their purposes, so your address is the nearest point on the “actual” road in terms of the navigation app.
I’m with the others in that it may or may not be fixable; but Google Maps corrections page is a good place to start, in that if you can get it fixed, it’ll cover Google maps and Waze.
I don’t think there’s anything to fix. Your address is the intersection of the driveway and the road, not the physical location of the house itself. But in Google Maps at least you can pinpoint where the actual entrance of the building is, and it can provide additional instruction in some cases. And in the Uber App you can pinpoint your location if it’s “off street”, as long as your phone can accurately place you. But this seems less of a mapping problem and more of a Uber/Lyft driver problem since it seems pretty obvious that you need to go up that long driveway, especially with a helpful sign pointing the way and all.
I’m still pissed at Garmin who claim to want corrections but refuse to act on them. There has been a light rail spur for over a decade that connects BWI airport (Baltimore) with the rest of the light rail system. It crosses over several roads and when the gates come down, traffic ensues. The spur is visible on Google maps (and has been for as long as I can remember). I took a snapshot from Google maps and sent it to Garmin along with a detailed explanation of what was lacking. There have been dozens of updates to their GPS maps since I sent that report. Nothing. Now they do add things, like they added a new highway extension near my parents home. So it’s not like are just sitting on their butts. I hope someone here is an employee of theirs and contacts me.
I can verify FWIW that this works. For years, delivery drivers would call and say “I’m on your street but can’t find your house.” And no wonder; it turns out Google Maps had us in the creek behind the house across the street. I submitted a fix and it was corrected in a couple of weeks.
I did what you suggested and wouldn’t you believe it that the directions Google maps gave were correct. This is consistent with the fact that Google maps correctly shows the actual location of my building.
But the taxi drivers are using a different mapping program that does not show that last 100 feet where I am waiting indoors, sometimes with a suitcase. The driver reports a no-show since I was not at the bottom of the drive.
I guess I will have to learn how to use Uber. I am not comfortable with texting. Fingers are too large and a bit unsteady.
You got it. The building does not abut a city street, but is 100’ or so up a private driveway. There is, as I mentioned, a prominent sign at the beginning of the driveway pointing to the actual building.