Once we were trying to arrange, while in southern Spain, train travel from Barcelona
to the French city of Avignon,
and the gentleman at the ticketing office tried very very hard to tell us that
it was impossible. It’s a hilarious scene, when we thought back, that he, the
one with the important information (for us) and the mastery of the Spanish
language, would be stuck in such an intractable position that sweat beaded down
his balding forehead, while the two of us, unable to understand the predicament
we were in, insisted on the impossible.
Fast forward a few years, and now we seem to run into a few
computers, and the mightiest of them all, hiding behind the clouds, telling us,
in cold patience, that we couldn’t get from point A to point B.
We are talking about Morocco,
a country purportedly with the best road network in Africa.
And about the giants in modern mapping, Google maps and its brethren.
You can see this from this map, the road seems to be totally
chopped up—at least according to Google. This is the map we got when we asked
for routing from Chefchaouene to Tanger. And interestingly, while we are
mapping Morocco,
there is no link or button to report a problem to Google.
Here is another interesting case, where we asked for routing from Marrakesh to Ait Ben
Haddou. According to Google, they are not that far apart, but we just can’t get
from point here to there!
Mapping software is supposed to be an improvement over paper maps. But from what we see here, more improvements are still needed. Does anyone know someone at Google?