an interesting observation

[winterbadger]

I've been building a map in GoogleMaps, and I had it set to most of Scotland. I idly flipped on "traffic" and saw that bits of the Central Belt lit up, mostly green (it's the middle of the day, so that makes sense) but nowhere else much. I can see that making sense; there's probably less traffic in other parts of the country but also less infrastructure for reporting traffic.

Then I scrolled the scale out to show all of the UK. The image is kind of striking. There's traffic data that run right the way from Penzance to Newcastle, but it stops dead at the borders of England. Funny.

Then I scrolled out further to see all of western Europe. *No* data anywhere, except for France. So this is clearly an artifact of information-sharing agreements (I'm sure Germany has both traffic and the ability to monitor it).

Comments

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

Zooming out to the world, I see that only three and a bit countries are in the scheme: the USA, China, France and England. (I see that Wales and Northern Ireland are excluded. Presumably they're also considered not important enough by someone or other in UK officialdom!)

[winterbadger]

(I see that Wales and Northern Ireland are excluded. Presumably they're also considered not important enough by someone or other in UK officialdom!)>/i>

Could be, but I rather suspect it's more a matter of who's signed what agreements, possibly even a matter of paranoia (like the anti-Streetview people) or feeling that they shouldn't be providing public information to a private company that (however remotely) will profit from it.

I also thought it kind of interesting that data from Scotland apparently gets piped in from the Glasgow-Edinburgh corridor, but nowhere north or south of it. What's even funkier is moving the map around and seeing at what point the "traffic" button simply disappears. If nothing south of Nether Urquhart is showing--no traffic button.

And the Debateable Land (appropriately enough) is a dead zone between Gretna and Abingdon. Maybe the Grahams and the Armstrongs have stolen all the cameras!

Though another oddity shows up--there's a traffic band on the A702 between Biggar and Lamington (Frances Crawford country :-) that doesn't show up above the 5-mile scale.

[cmlc.livejournal.com]

How odd!

And it doesn't even correspond to motorways either - segments of Scotland's busiest motorways aren't covered, but some other roads are. But most are just missed out.

Oh well, it's not as if I go to google maps before getting in the car, so what do I care :-)

[winterbadger]

I actually do, if I remember, since it covers routes I commute on. And the radio coverage of traffic around here (at least that I hear) is laughable--it's usually half an hour old or more.

But the tricky part is remembering. :-)