PLEASE add the ability to "drive" new roads onto maps!

I use both Microsoft Streets and Trips and DeLorme Street Atlas. Each program has features that make it better than the other when using that feature.

The BREADCRUMB feature is nice, but as long as the program is drawing a LINE that my vehicle is driving along, WHY can't it draw a STREET that is then added to the database, a street that can then be "seen" by S&T for future route planning?

I see it working this way. You turn on breadcrumbs and hang a right into a new development that does not appear on the map. You drive to the address you seek. When you stop, S&T pops up with:

Convert breadcrumb trail into navigable road? (Y/N)

Click on "Y" and then:

Enter NAME for this road: ______________________

Select (ST,RD,AVE,BLVD,LN,CT,TR,TRL,PL)

"(new street name)" has been added to map.

I know you guys can do it.

Hi Joe,

We would all love the ability to use Streets & Trips to create our own roads. I think the problem isn't technical. I suspect Microsoft would have to pay Navteq more money for the right to add such functionality to the software.

DeLorme is free to have such feature in its Street Atlas, because DeLorme makes its own map data.

Microsoft licenses map data from Navteq. Disadvantage of licensing maps from another company is that you are limited in what features (related to the map data) you can implement in your software. If you wish to use the map data to implement more features, you may need to go to a higher level of licensing (and pay more money).

Advantage of licensing map data from Navteq is the quality of the product.

It wouldn't need to be a modification to the map data. All they need to do is give us the option of taking a particular portion of a route, between two routepoints, and allow it to follow a straight line, offroad. That would help us handle a missing ferry (which I have encountered before) as well as to accommodate a true offroad shortcut (not unheard of in some areas). As well, of course, to force a route to follow the path of a road that is missing from the data.

It's not creating a new road in the map, just allowing an offroad route option. They could put it in the "segments" tab of the "More Route Options" popup, and add "Straightline Offroad" to the current choices: Quickest, Shortest, Preferred Roads.

Well, as to the price, I would rather pay four times the price for S&T with a few added features, draw roads, multiple simultaneous routing and other features I (and others) have suggested in the wish list, than to celebrate the low $39.00 price for a product that leaves me wanting. Even at $180.00 for a new version, that is about fifty cents per day for a GREAT map program, rather than 11 cents per day for a fairly good program. My PC in my truck runs 18 hours a day, and S&T makes me money when I save time getting to a location. I really don't CARE what the software costs. I care more about what it does.

In some parts of the country, things don't change quickly, but here in Commiefornia, you can go to sleep one night and wake up to three new on/offramps in your neighborhood the following day. Entire new neighborhoods pop up in those "off road" areas in 3 to 6 months, and what irks me MORE than the thought of paying $100 or $150.00 for the "latest and greatest" version of S&T is driving onto Camp Pendleton (which is FAMOUS for not having accurate street maps), being called to a new base housing development to pick up a vehicle, and having NO CLUE where the place is, because it was built only 3 months ago, just after the new S&T 200# release.

Cellular service on Pendleton is spotty AT BEST, and the gu'mint occasionally jams the cellular service when they are doing something secretive.

Yesterday, I drove onto the base, and when I finally found a guy in a truck who was working on new water pipe installations for yet another new development being constructed, he pointed me in the general direction of the street I sought, and from there I was able to find the street and house I needed. So I loaded the disabled vehicle and then spent an hour laying "breadcrumb trails" up and down every new street I could find in the area.

So now I have this pretty blue community of spaghetti streets drawn with breadcrumbs, but I cannot name the streets, and I cannot route over the breadcrumbs EVEN IF I put a pushpin down where the customer's houses are located IN those breadcrumbs.

The best I could do, was to put a pushpin at the point where the breadcrumbs turn off of a navigable road, and type a reference name to an EXCEL spreadsheet that lists the names of the streets in that breadcrumb-drawn community. Clicking on the push pin "show information" gives the name of the spreadsheet I must open in order to see the names of the streets in that new community.

Come on Microsoft! Talk with Navteq and twist their arm a bit. They'll let us "draw navigable roads". Heck, even Wal-Mart TELLS their suppliers how things are going to be because of their buying power. Is Microsoft less powerful than Wal-Mart!?
GOD FORBID!

bikerjoe said:

In the meantime this beautifull option is added, to ease your work a little, you can use an url link to a file on your computer that will open directly the information instead of doing it manually as your post is suggested...

See this tip:
Using an url in puspin

Hope this help you wait the feature a little more

Okay, I'll try that, but this doesn't mean I'm not still wanting this feature!

Now, if MONEY is an issue, perhaps Microsoft could put out two editions. The STANDARD S&T 20##, and the ENHANCED edition, for say, three times the price with all of the added goodies!?!? I'll GLADLY pay more money for a version that has the three enhancements I want!