Confused by how people use Map Creator

My first post. I bought two new GPS car units last week. I returned the first one because it produced some pretty ridiculous route choices in my area. But the second one of different brand did the same thing. Garmin looked into it and declared that a street near me was classified as “local traffic only” and yet it is a busy through road. Long story short, I discovered Map Creator – an amazing product indeed – and had a look at the streets around me. Sure enough, while my little cul-de-sac was NOT a local traffic only” street, the through road near we WAS! And this caused both GPS units to take me the long way rather than travel on that road which was very direct. We have another longer road to get to another destination. Both GPS took me down that road until near the end when, instead of joining a major road directly, the GPS said to turn off early, go up a small street and join the major road further up. Quite absurd. Well, I checked this road on Map Creator. The entire length is not a local traffic road EXCEPT for that last 100m section of road which was indeed ticked as a “local traffic only” street. HOW? So, my question to Map Creator is, can people fiddle with the designations of streets just to cause people a big headache? If someone wants to stop traffic in the area, can they really mark a section of the road as local only and then this updates on HERE and then it updates on all the GPS units? I’ve changed my sections of road back to NOT local. Will this change actually go through? When would the changes be sent to GPS units? Does HERE check and confirm updates put in by the public? It all seems so unreal. I note here that my old Garmin of many years ignores these local traffic status as does Google Maps which both show the correct and direct routing. I hope someone has some answers to my concerns.

Hey Bill,
Yes, you have the gist of how it works.

You make updates in MapCreator and these changes go through an approval process and are subsequently reflected in Here maps. GPS vendors take updated maps including roads, points of interest, etc. and make these available to their customers who use standalone GPS units or those built into vehicles.

Now for the reality check. There is little transparency on the progress of updates and the time it takes for changes to be approved can be lengthy. If and when these updates appear on your GPS device takes even longer and is partially up to the whim of the vendor.

Personally I have a couple of Garmin branded devices which uses HERE maps as their source. I get updates to these devices every couple of months or so. I don’t get to see what these updates contain so unless there is a specific change you are looking for it is very difficult to tell how long it takes form start to finish.

It appears that HERE maps is very under-resourced based. They do a great job but do not appear on the forums often.

I have spent a lot of time updating maps in the past (not as much as others) but honestly do not know if it is worth doing so anymore. Your experience may be different, so good luck!