Despite my love of the Melway, there are some days when I can’t be bothered walking over to my bookshelf full of them and looking up a street, so instead I turned to the “electric street directory” that is Google Maps. However on this occasion, I was searching for a street so new I couldn’t find it on the map.
When looking for a major street like Bourke Street, Google beings up a page featuring a map, photos, and an extract from Wikipedia.
If you search for a minor street, you don’t get the photos, but you do get a map.
But in the case of Zacara Court in Deer Park, the search results were just real estate listings.
Until I reached the bottom of the first page, when two links to streetdirectory.com.au appeared.
I clicked through, and I was now looking at imagery from the 2010 edition of the Melway, and an empty paddock.
But when I zoomed it, I finally found the street I was looking for.
Is mapping really that hard?
The source of truth
I almost forgot about the official Victorian Register of Geographic Names – the VICNAMES database.
As you might expect for a public road, Zacara Court was easy to find.
Footnote
Thanks to Mike in the comments for picking up my incorrect use of Zacara Place instead of the correct Zacara Court – in both cases a Google Search doesn’t include a direct link to Google Maps.
Thankfully my confusion around the type of street doesn’t change the outcome of this blog post!
Place, or Court?
Thanks for the pickup Mike – Zacara Court is the correct name. I’ve just checked Google, and putting in the correct name string brings up a blank, so lucky for me on that front!
Google is quite reliant on crowdsourcing to keep its maps updated, via Google Map Maker. A lot of the newer roads and walking tracks you see near Deer Park station were put there by me, when I lived there. Since I moved I haven’t been doing it any more, and in any case that industrial estate was too far from my house. I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a long time for it to be added.
I’d hope that by the time Google deploys their self driving cars to Australia, they put in the hard yards to get their data right!
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/all-the-world-a-track-the-trick-that-makes-googles-self-driving-cars-work/370871/
Dealing with this problem at work right now! I’m on contract digitising drainage assets in 3D for a suburban council in Perth. Several new streets have been built as infill developments and as a consequence there is the odd street not on Google or Nearmap’s street overlay (or it is marked without a name).
A couple of time’s I’ve been lucky and the Google Street View was more up-to-date and I was able to get the street name from the sign without it being blurred out.
I’d almost forgotten about the Victorian Register of Geographic Names – aka the VICNAMES database. As an official listing of road and place names, any public road should in theory appear in it.
I’m assuming there are other equivalent databases for the rest of Australia, maintained by the relevant state government departments.
Fortunately I haven’t had to go that far yet – wanted the number the drainage structures with the street name prefix. Likewise I have a soft spot for Melway nerdery and quite a few directories!
My collection has only started spilling onto a second shelf of my study – but nothing older than the 1990s.
Alternative is the Register of Roads maintained by each local roads authority (ie Councils and VicRoads), available on their website. I believe this is legally required.
Melway pay at least 1 person to drive around Melbourne full time to check streets and stuff.
Google is so big, they should do the same.
Yes ironically the printed Melway is more up to date than the online Google Maps.
According to this article on Ausway, they now have five full-time researchers who spend eight months a year collecting data:
http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/smallbiz-tech/melway-mapps-the-future-with-iphone-innovation-20101218-191d0.html