Imagine that small country village with quaint cobblestone streets in the middle of nowhere in rural England.
Now imagine 1000+ heavy trucks driving through those streets every day - much to the dismay of the local residents.
The IHT has an interesting piece on how small towns are getting an unusual amount of traffic in their backyards and small streets, thanks to GPS calculated maps that show those streets as alternative routes to get to major destinations.
While the volume of the traffic by itself is a problem, another major issue is that many of these smaller roads are not geared to handle large vehicles.
It can all be summed up with these quotes from IHT. ( Full Article Here )
"We’ve said, just take us off the map, actually," said Geoff Coombs, chairman of the parish council in Barrow Gurney, a village that, despite being too small to have a sidewalk, is host to some 15,000 vehicles a day - cars as well as larger vehicles - whose GPS systems identify it as a good alternative route to Bristol Airport.
But that is easier said than done.
"We map the reality - the streets, the signposts and the road infrastructure as it is in reality," said Dick Snauwaert, a spokesman for Tele Atlas, which provides digital maps to portable navigation systems. "We cannot change that reality in our data base. Who are we to make a change and say, ’You cannot drive in that road’ if, in reality, you can drive in that road."
Snauwaert said that it was up to local communities to make it clear what roads were not appropriate for trucks, and to install signs saying so. The relevant information, including things like height, width and weight constraints, could then eventually be integrated into the data bases used for GPS devices, he said.
