A GPS is Only as Good as its Maps

Or, You Get What You Pay For

Last week I tried out the Mapquest iPhone app. I'm a Google Maps man myself, but I heard that Mapquest had something Google didn't—turn-by-turn voice navigation. Plus, it's a free app. So, I figured I'd try it out, since turn-by-turn navigation would be a nice thing to have.

For the fun of it, I thought I'd let it tell me how to get to work the next morning. Of course, the map produced showed it was going to send me down the route I thought it would suggest, so I thought I'd throw a curveball at it and deliberately take a different route. Incidentally, this other route is the way I normally have been taking anyway, lately. After 8 years of taking the same route it's nice to have a change in scenery.

As anticipated, when I took the turn that it wasn't expecting I heard the words “Recalculating route...” come out of my car's speakers. But I was a little disappointed when I got to the place I needed to turn to get to the office, at South Fraser and Progressive, and it did not tell me I needed to turn there. In fact, after turning it proceeded to tell me I needed to make a U-turn. That was completely unexpected, since the office was only a few blocks up the road. I pulled over and checked its map to see where it was trying to tell me to go, and noticed that the street I was on apparently didn't exist.

Mapquest on the left, Google Maps on the right

Mapquest's map is curious for two reasons. First of all, the little bit at the end of Progressive way where it connects with South Fraser Way has been like that for quite a while. I don't know when they finally paved that, but I've been driving on that stretch since last April. Surely Mapquest could have updated their map since then.  Secondly, and even more puzzling, is the part of Progressive Way where it curves north. According to Mapquest, the street just comes to an end. But the road has been going through for quite a few years! Yet the map does correctly show the roundabout on Mt. Lehman Road and redirected South Fraser Way which was only done within the last couple years.

I'm really wondering where Mapquest gets their map data from. If they can't even get a street right that I travel down every day, it makes me wonder how many other streets they have wrong. The promise of a free GPS app with turn-by-turn navigation was nice, but I guess it was too good to be true. It looks like I'll be sticking with good old Google Maps for now and memorizing the route before leaving.