Google maps directions in Okinawa: Needs work
Last week I was taking my son to US Land. Unfortunately, our car's GPS is on the fritz. (My son broke it. He has this thing where he has to fiddle with every piece of electronic equipment he can lay his hands on, without the manual. No idea where he gets that from — must be his mom.)
So, I think, Google Maps to the rescue. And yes, Google found US Land for me, and showed it on the map. But then I saw a new feature for Googe Maps Japan: directions!
Awesome. But I was a little disappointed with the results.
It turns out that Google Maps in Japan only knows about two modes of transportation: trains and walking. It also appears to have a very simple algorithm: walk to the nearest train station, take a train to the train station closest to your destination, and then walk to your destination. And since Okinawa has only one train line (actually a monorail), and that's only in the southern part of the island, that ends up being a lot of walking.
Let me break down the information in the map. I'm starting at point A, and I want to get to point B. Google tells me to walk down to the train station (the purple train callout) — partway over the ocean and passing my destination on the way — take the train one stop over (the red line), then walk back up to US Land. Total travel time: 7 hours 30 minutes. On the bright side, the trip will only cost me 200 yen!
But Google isn't totally stupid — it did have an alternate route for me: walking the whole way. Total travel time: 3 hours 27 minutes — and it's free! Definitely an improvement (although I'm not sure if that includes the swimming time).
Far be it from me to complain, but Google's directions algorithm could use a few tweaks. For example, see that thick, squiggly yellow line between point A and point B? That's a road. In addition to private automobiles, buses travel on this road. So even if Google wants to limit its directions to public transportation, maybe it could widen the net to include buses. Or at least keep me on dry land.
It seems pretty obvious to me that this direction algorithm was developed for mainland Japan, where train service is very good and the coverage is pretty wide. Unfortunately, that doesn't work very well for Okinawa, rendering the service useless for anything but a few laughs.
But this story does have a happy ending. I chucked the directions, drove to US Land in about 30 minutes, and had a great time with my son. And we managed to stay out of the ocean as well. Not that we don't like getting in the ocean — I just try to avoid it while driving.
Interestingly, Google Maps only shows driving directions in the USA, even for, say, New York City. Though it does helpfully offer the “avoid highways” option for peds/bikes, and shows public-transit stops (though not routes).
Thanks for the New York example. It shows the case on the opposite end; a place where public transit routing makes sense in a country where it doesn’t.
In San Francisco, you can use the local transit authority to get public transit directions in the Bay Area. When I still lived there it was a human on a telephone; now I’m sure it must be computerized and net-ized.
As an(other) aside, I was in Tokyo a couple weeks ago, and noticed that the Information booths in the train stations have been replaced by computer terminals. You plug in your destination, and it gives you instructions on getting there, down to platforms and train times, with a handy receipt-like printout on demand.
Meanwhile, GPS is getting pretty common in Japan, so I guess Google didn’t see enough demand to roll out driving instructions in this country. Ah well :/
Apparently when google did their deal with zenrin, it didn’t include the street connectivity graph and since the street view cars won’t be making their way down to Okinawa for at least another 5 years, plus the great Okinawa map survey offset, you come the realization, very quickly, that Okinawa is the redheaded step child for mapping in Japan.
At least Google now counts the time spent walking when computing the total time for the trip. Before I met the guy in charge of that feature, it only counted train time. If you ran your query a year ago it would tell you train time 5 minutes, walking time 7 hours, total time 5 minutes. If you didn’t read carefully you’d be late.
The guy in charge of it also agreed with the idea of including bus travel, but it looks like that never got implemented.
@Norman
Thanks for the inside story. Hmm, one feature per year — where can I get that job?
I don’t know where you can get that job, but I know where you can interview for it ^_^
Ginstrom-san, does Okinawa have daylight savings time? Or where did the timestamps come from on our comments?
@Norman
Probably from buggy wordpress time/date handling.
Uhm.. Just out of curiosity, WTF is “US Land”?
@Merkin Fool
It’s an amusement center where you pay by the hour rather than per play. It’s very inexpensive — like around 500 yen for three hours — and you get to use nearly all the facilities for that set rate. This includes batting cages, ping pong, pool, trampoline, video arcade games, etc. There are also a couple of paid attractions, like pond fishing.
It gets pretty crowded, but my son’s school is on the US schedule, so I usually take him on US (but not Japanese) holidays.
No idea why it’s called US Land, though.