Road work befuddles map apps

Do you ever worry whether you can trust your phone’s map app, or if it is more bewildered than you are?

Amid Central Florida’s blitz of highway construction, such fears aren’t off base. For example, a recently opened, 5-mile section of the Wekiva Parkway north of Apopka doesn’t yet exist on the Google app for Android phones.

When driving along the toll expressway, the app puts its blue arrow in open screen space, suggesting an uncharted voyage. The accompanying verbal commands are a useless spew of “turn right, turn left, turn right,” as the app notices surface streets along the way.

The new length of road also does not appear on the iPhone app.

Road builders are beginning to grapple with what to do; the rebuilding of Interstate 4, building of the Wekiva Parkway and widening projects along State Road 408 are to last for several

more years.

“A lot of people use apps to get around,” said Brenda Carey, a Seminole County commissioner and member of the Central Florida Expressway Authority. “But the apps don’t always put you on the roads you need to be on.”

Her specific concern was not about what apps are missing but what they are telling drivers that may be less than helpful, including dumping them off Interstate 4 because of construction onto local roads.

“It always amazes me when I-4 backs up and people get off and get onto Markham Woods Road, which is a two-lane road, 35 mph, because they don’t know what else to do,” she said.

Carey said there are locally known alternatives, but “the apps are not going to pick them up.”

Transportation officials have noted a paralyzing confusion that can arise for drivers when a map app gives a direction that is contradicted by highway signs.

Just such a circumstance exists on State Road 429, where the Google map app tells drivers to go straight to exit at U.S Highway 441.

But the exit is now to the right, as signs indicate, and going straight leads to the new section of Wekiva Parkway that opened late last month.

Another example: Map apps may suggest a link to I-4 eastbound from downtown Orlando by taking Concord Street.

But that would require driving through a deep crater where Concord was closed permanently a month ago to make way for new I-4 interchange ramps at Colonial Drive.

“The various types of data found in Google Maps come from a wide range of sources,” Google mapping spokeswoman Liz Davidoff said. “While we regularly update the map, the amount of time it takes to update varies. Fortunately, we have tools that users can access to speed up the process.”

Those include Google map links to Report a Problem, Suggest an Edit and Add a Missing Place, she said.

Mary Brooks, spokeswoman for Wekiva Parkway construction, said project managers did that earlier this week: alert Google and Apple to update their maps.

“Understandably, there can be a lag in this occurring once submitted,” Brooks said.

The same update also had been previously noted by HERE, a company formerly called Navteq, which provides map data to an array of users.

But rather than only counting on the big commercial providers of map apps to keep up with Central Florida’s torrid pace of road construction, local officials are wondering if there might be a solution closer to home.

“I can imagine easily setting up an app that our local residents would use that would alert them to changing traffic patterns,” Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs said. “I’ll have our IT folks who have designed a lot of apps see if there is any way.”

Michelle Maikisch, spokeswoman for Central Florida Expressway Authority, said the cost and challenge of creating and maintaining a traffic app can be significant.

“You’ve got to have the data for our system and all of the surrounding systems,” Maikisch said. “We are in a very preliminary research mode to see if we can partner with somebody and not necessarily do it ourselves.”

“When you start gathering all of that, it’s a monstrous project,” Maikisch said.