There be monsters
By adamg - Tue, 02/26/2008 - 11:19am.
Third Decade wonders why so many streets outside of downtown Boston are not represented on the "street view" on Google Maps:
It just seems odd that the northern suburbs are well charted, while half of the city remains terra incognita. They may as well tell drivers that they'll encounter sea monsters and chimera if they take a wrong turn off American Legion or Washington Street.
Come to think of it...I bet some people would half believe that anyway.
If it's gray, stay away?
Ed. Street View note: Hey, my street doesn't represent, either! Not that I want people seeing how we need to get the house repainted, but still.
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Missing streets in StreetView
It may be something as simple as a street being blocked off by construction or moving trucks on the day that the StreetView car tried to drive down it. A friend of mine tells me that's why Farragut Ave in West Somerville has no StreetView, when every other street around her does.
I'm thinking ...
That the entire southern half of Boston was not closed for construction during the fall of 2007. I know my street wasn't.
Suburban StreetView coverage
also seems pretty arbitrary. Why go to Malden, Medford, Melrose, and Arlington, but not to Lexington, Waltham, or most of Newton?
I used to live
on Farragut Ave. Just, um, 20 years ago.
I'm sorry to hear it has been erased.
No Construction Blockage
No Ron, the streets were simply skipped. You can actually see my house on street view, because it is on a street off of one of the arterial roads that they included, and the street is clearly navigable. I wish I could see my house from the actual street, though, that would be much cooler.
I would guess that Street
I would guess that Street View remains a work in progress and nothing more nefarious is afoot. They seem to be working their way south from the northern burbs -- and, for that matter, west from Quincy Shore Drive. Google most likely made the decision to post the map with the areas that had completed to date -- with more to come. So don't forget to paint your house soon!
My entire street is little
My entire street is little more than a sun-drenched blur.
Except for my apartment. Go figure.
Old video
Between 1980 and 83 or so, Kevin White had film crews filming the streets. I was home in my driveway (in HP), by chance, when they came by, with a real video camera on a tripod in the back of a pickup. Seemed kinda spooky at the time but I waved anyway. I know the films exist, maybe stored in some obscure archive. Anybody have any info on that?
my street is there
Adam, my street is viewable, but the portion of Roxbury on the other side of Washington remains uncharted.
Lucky son of a gun
In any case, fixed; sorry about that.
I think it is random also, or at least nondiscriminatory
If the implication is that Google is staying away from poorer areas, click on the map. They have also skipped Chestnut Hill.
linked to usage / search-y-ness?
I would imagine the number of internet-aided drivers looking for routes in cambridge & somerville is higher than the number of routes searched in dorchester or west roxbury. I say this as someone from dorchester, knowing my parents (most of their friends, and many of my cousins) would never consider googling an address or a driving route (well, they might look up cambridge, it being on the north side of boston, which most of them have never visited).
Google may have applied this logic to provide street views to more popularly viewed map areas first.
Do people actually use Street View for driving?
Because I find that a lot of times, when I type in an address in Google Maps and then click on Street View, Little Orange Guy shows up someplace other than the address I entered.
Street view has its uses
Street view works well when you take the T to a new place and want to know where to get off or what the area will look like when you exit the station.
As for the little orange guy, just drag and click him to the spot you want to see.
not so much for driving...
but for knowing what the building/house at the address I am going to looks like? yep, whenever I can. Street numbers on buildings/houses are either nonexistent or incredibly tiny, so if I know I'm looking for the red house on the left about halfway down? I'm way more likely to reach my destination without stress.
I agree they're usually off by a couple of numbers, but that can be close enough sometimes.
I've found it useful on more
I've found it useful on more than one occasion when venturing into a hitherto unknown nabe (generally in pursuit of some craigslist booty ...) -- even, come to think of it, in relatively known nabes.
I suspect the answer is that they simply missed a turn here and there. There actually are streets in, say, the Back Bay area and downtown that are unrepresented. In one instance you can clearly see detour signs for construction (somewhere around the Pru, IIRC). They'll probably get around to backing and filling some day.
Or not.
(One curious anomaly: try "driving" along Mass Ave from Cambridge into Boston. There is a point in the Back Bay at which you can not go any further. You have to return to the map and sort of jump over the invisible barrier. What's up with that?)