Truck Routes Not Updated in Timely Fashion Anyone Else Frustrated ?

Even though the exit was gone, this is considered construction to a mapping company. Until the final construction is done and signed off by the state the mapping company will consider this construction. After the final work is done it can take about a year to get this new info into the mapping database.

 

Although I actually have on occasion found Google maps be wrong in terms of an address or a road, it is much less likely to happen than on a stand-alone GPS unit or 3rd party app. Other's are hitting on some the reasons why here. It sounds like you are actually interested in the nuts-and-bolts of the actual answer, so here it is, and it has multiple reasons, not just WAZE or any other one thing.

1. Google currently makes over $65 Billion (with a "B") in annual revenue. So first thing is to realize the enormity of it's raw "buying power" in ANY commercial segment that it plays in. That is more than every other GPS maker combined times 10. Naturally, Google does not spend it all on map-making, but you get the first point here.

2. Google owns it's own satellites. No other GPS maker does. It literally continuously maps the planet.

3. Google "street view." You've seen the "Google-mobile" with the big cameras on top continuously driving around mapping and filming every road in the country, right?

4. ANDROID. 95% of Android phones and devices have what is called "location services" enabled as default. For instance, every time a driver on this very forum talks about a "coops app" or a "traffic app" etc, they are using apps that do not function without location services turned on. You know those pesky license agreements that none of us read? Well, location services feeds an ENORMOUS amount of data to Google in terms of GIS data on every level. Apps like WAZE just put icing on that cake.

Now, take all of this REAL-TIME (or nearly real-time) GIS data and feed it to a billion-dollar enterprise.

5. And finally, spit it back out in nearly REAL-TIME. Google does not "install" maps on your phone or computer or tablet. Those maps, traffic info, construction zones, street names and numbers - they live on thousands of servers that are being updated thousands of times PER DAY. You are just viewing what is on the sever as "Google Maps" right now. In an hour, it has all changed/updated with new info. And in another hours it has evolved again.

Real-time input + a billion dollars + everybody and their dog using Google-fed apps and location services = the most accurate maps. Period.
In fact, if Google chose a business decision to add trucking overlays, there would be serious trouble for truck-specific GPS makers. But I don't see them doing that. And, there is no standalone GPS maker ever going to have as many devices in consumer hands as Android. So they are not likely to lose their map edge unless they themselves decide to.

 

Nice nuts and bolts...

This is pretty much what I was getting at with my post, Google has the money to do it, the users and equipment.

Rand McNally, looks at Google in complete bewilderment and awe...

 

Google is just "seeing" the roads. To add Truck attributes means breaking the road into segments and adding all the info to each segment. This would be an enormous undertaking.

 

RM gets their maps from HERE (NavTeq) along with several other GPS manufactures.

 

I have spent some effort crunching this one too. So here are three points:

a. Google's autonomous vehicle is what techies call a "moonshot" project. It means that they have the money to try nifty new ideas and then scrap them entirely if they decide to. Most companies do not have this luxury. They have many of these going. (here is an interview with them about it if you are so inclined Google Moonshot projects.) This is a big reason why they are splitting the company now into Google (for core business) and Alphabet (as the mother, including moonshot projects.)

b. The autonomous vehicle project is a moonshot that even they don't know yet where it will go. But as you can imagine, their mapping is massively connected to its success. Most newer vehicles right now have "detection" computers and cameras built in. I was in Ford Explorer the other day that detects, brakes, and vibrates the steering wheel when you start drifting or come up too quickly in an imminent rear-end situation. I think that at a minimum, Google's autonomous work will also make its way in some part into the general auto technology before too long.

c. Truck routing inherently carries with it some pretty enormous liability differences though. The mere physics of a big truck and load requires a human behind it and always will (unless you put it on rails.) But a passenger car - not so much. AND, I think you will see the earliest autonomous vehicles actually used in public transportation sectors and not out taking the mini-van on vacation while you snooze in the back. It makes logical sense to begin with programming buses, trains, and taxis to take ONLY pre-programmed routes in cities at first. Then it will keep expanding out further. The commercial viability is already so huge in the private and municipal sectors that Google's radar is not on trucking.

 

The other problem with truck routing software for google and every other map making company, is their is no way to automatically collect the needed data on what is restricted to trucks, as that information all comes from legislation.