Neil's News

Map Maker

26 October 2015

Railroad and streetcar tracks are poorly represented on most maps. Bing Maps doesn't even try:

Apple Maps prioritizes roads over tracks, so one occasionally sees tracks peek out from behind intersections:

Google Maps often looks like a child drew them:

I've spent considerable time fixing railroads and streetcar tracks in Google Maps. After over 2000 edits across the US and Canada, things are starting to get a little better. Here is the same intersection now:

One of my favourite additions is this roundhouse in Memphis:

Take a look at your local neighbourhood's tracks in Google Maps. If they could use some improvement just go to Map Maker and start editing. One of the tricks is avoiding these pesky overlap errors:

The solution here is to temporarily create tracks that intersect at a more oblique angle, then rearrange the control points to arrive at the desired geometry:

Any questions regarding railways in Map Maker, I'm happy to help. My username is Railroader.

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