Who Makes MapQuest's Maps?

carpoolio writes "TechTV has an interesting story about the company that builds the mapping technology behind popular map services like Mapquest. The company, Navigation Technologies, is decidedly low-tech in its approach to making its maps: two people in a car drive around endlessly, inputting street information and landmarks into databases. Navtech's map databases are used in everything from Garmin GPS units to Alpine in-dash auto navigation systems. So next time you turn the wrong way down a one-way street, know that there are real people behind the controls."

Comments

TIGER

[mmdurrant]

It surprises me that they didn't use the TIGER data, available from the US Census Bureau.

Klynas Engineering makes a great product called Streets-On-A-Disk that covers any mapping need you might have. I used it as the mapping backend for a custom automatic vehicle location package I wrote. The software has a nifty API interface for external control and works great. The tech support rocks too - Scott, the president of the company and the guy who wrote the program, has provided me with tons of useful info. I have no interest in the company, I'm just a very satisfied customer.

Re:Wrong approach

[RealAlaskan]

What we need isn't a swarm of GSP receivers but get the information into once place and make it public. The information already exists in pieces and it needs to be coordinated and released.

We've already paid for that. The U.S. Census Bureau's Tiger map database. You can get the files on CD or DVD, or via ftp. You'll need GIS software. Try GRASS.

Re:They hire

[op00to]

"Tiger" data, by the US Census, has tons of free and open data for anyone to use. The accuracy isn't great a lot of the time, but then again, a lot of companies use this data....

http://tiger.census.gov

Re:Wrong approach

[Unordained]

isn't that information already required to be public?

however, i know from my own county (middle of nowhere colorado) that the maps are seldomly updated in digital format -- my girlfriend (IT manager for the county) was updating 20-year-old maps, putting the incremental changes back into the database. they were planning on printing new maps for surveyors, etc., and hadn't done it recently (20 years.) although the information is publicly available (and the paper maps are up to date,) there's no guarantee it's available digitally, or digitally & correctly. then again, most of this information was about property ownership and boundaries -- maybe they keep the road information more up to date. (i highly doubt it.) i know
the city disagrees with the sign on my street about where i live, exactly -- someone driving around would find information that doesn't match information given by the city/county, but might be more useful to help you navigate. (the UPS/Fedex people get a bit confused when you give them one address and they have the other one available to them in their mapping system.)

from what i understand, information of this sort is kept using fairly standard software like ESRI ArcGIS (unless it's just in the "road guy"'s head, as it is for us most of the time,) so most counties would have very similar (or identical) database layouts. shouldn't be too hard to coordinate. getting them to -send- you updates might take some convincing though, or even to make the updates digital.

but then, we have, what, less than a dozen paved roads in the county? =)