Why Waze is so popular in Costa Rica (2014)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/10/27/why-waze-is-so-incredibly-popular-in-costa-rica/

by hownottowrite • 11 years ago

54 38 11 years ago

beering2• 11 years ago

I'm always impressed by how hard people will work for a for-profit company for no pay. Anyone here ever work for CDDB back in the day?

maxerickson3• 11 years ago

I wouldn't do it either, but it sounds like they are solving a problem for the people around them.

(A simple way to look at it is that if Google/Waze manage to extract some amount $X in profit because of their effort, it is very likely that the people using the product derived a benefit greater than $X from that same effort. It's also possible that some benefit is delivered to the users from things that Google/Waze doesn't manage to profit off of.)

thekaleb• 11 years ago

There is return on investment even if it is not monetarily. Users or reCAPTCHA or Duolingo also do work for for-profit companies as well.

From the article:

“Some people ask ‘Why do you work for free? Why do you spend so many hours a week doing this mapping?’ ” Hidalgo said. “You feel good about knowing that the people who drive around everyday save time because you are investing your time in fixing the roads and doing this mapping.”

fit2rule• 11 years ago

.. and before CDDB, it was Viewpoint Data Labs .. its a part of the heritage of the Internet at this point.

resu• 11 years ago

This really shows how using technology can leapfrog very costly gradual infrastructure upgrades in terms of both time and cost. Amazing!

It does make we wonder though... Google Maps / Waze must get a decent amount of information from tax funded sources. Do they give back helpful information such as e.g. traffic flow/conditions in this example as well? Without having to participate in a special 'campaign'?

mullen• 11 years ago

“Most of our streets don’t have road names so a lot of the addresses end up being very much next to some kind of landmark associated with it, and that’s how we give directions,” Urbina said. “There’s never been good maps generated to be able to get to where you’re trying to go.”

How does a country not name its streets? I just can not wrap my head around that very concept. Here in the US, we name hiking trails and put it on the maps.

pmastela• 11 years ago

Japan, for instance, numbers blocks and leaves the empty space between them nameless.

cdelsolar• 11 years ago

I walked around Tokyo a bit last year and without my phone + Wifi I would have been horribly lost. There are no street signs anywhere.

dmaz• 11 years ago

Japan does not use street-based addressing:

http://www.planettokyo.com/trip-planning/getting-around/the-...

nickysielicki4• 11 years ago

I wish they'd have contributed to openstreetmap instead!

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

cake• 11 years ago

Pretty sad that they contributed hundred of hours of their time that they could lose any second if Google decided to ditch Waze.

Openstreetmaps allows you to download all the data for free.

nickysielicki4• 11 years ago

Yup. And it's really great data, too. Building names, classification of building types, etc.

I did a project with a friend last semester using PostGIS with data from OSM and google glass. We learned a lot.

http://www.madisonar.com/

eli2• 11 years ago

Presumably Google would incorporate that data into Google Maps if it's valuable, not simply delete it.

forrestthewoods4• 11 years ago

And I wish open street map was licensed in a way to make it more usable and useful to the world.

nickysielicki4• 11 years ago

What's wrong with the licensing?

Randgalt• 11 years ago

Same issues here in Panama. We love Waze in Panama!

plumeria3• 11 years ago

Waze is very useful here in CR. Many businesses here even put a Waze link on their contact page.

TheCowboy• 11 years ago

Do you know why they favor Waze over something like openstreetmaps.org? Is it related to the tooling? Did it just become popular first?

albemuth• 11 years ago

Voice turn by turn nav and traffic updates and reporting cops, roadwork etc. I use it even on my commute just to get those alerts.

plumeria3• 11 years ago

Yeah, I think it is, in fact, because Waze is very easy to use for everyone, especially for people with non-technical backgrounds. The support for Spanish locale must be another reason.

Note however, that I haven't used OSM myself, so I can't truly compare them fairly.

dedward2• 11 years ago

Does openstreetmaps have a proper cross-platform phone app with turn by turn instructions while you are driving that works well - and does it have a good majority of costa rican roads?

agentCR• 11 years ago

Costa Rican here. The article doesn't come close explaining the complexity (and inconvenience) of addresses in Costa Rica. We even use landmarks which no longer exist (e.g. from the old pharmacy in X, take a left), or use any distinctive surrounding object for official guidance (trees, fences, wall color).

Landmark usage for directions is greatly due to poor city planning throughout the last century and the address culture grown around it. Most city streets do have names/numbers, but are pretty much unknown to the common citizen. Waze and its contributors have done a truly amazing job. I believe OSM has lagged behind Waze because Waze was the first GPS nav system that actually worked in the country, and was therefore so greatly welcomed.

P.D. Nokia maps also worked decently, but GPS-capable nokia phones were scarce in the market.

eli2• 11 years ago

Nokia's map data lives on as "HERE" https://www.here.com/?map=9.9258,-84.0787,8,normal

maxerickson3• 11 years ago

In the US, there were some pretty significant efforts to standardize road names and house numbering (this largely happened at the county level). One of the big reasons was to improve fire response, which was largely accomplished by pushing the system in the direction of being logical (so roads in a county will often be numbered sequentially and the like).

Are there agencies in Costa Rica that would push such a standardization, or if the existing names and numbers are already reasonable, push the use of them?

plumeria3• 11 years ago

I think the use of road names will depend a lot on the local governments (called municipalidades). Many streets don't have signage labeling them with their names. Much recently (a few years ago), the Municipalidad de San José started putting street name signage, bus route signage, etc.. So I think we will eventually get there somewhere in the future. Regarding postal codes, Correos de Costa Rica already publishes codes at the Distrito level (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_codes_in_Costa_Rica)

Plus, Waze is helping also. Every time I use it, I can hear a street's name.

ghaff2• 11 years ago

My understanding in the US is that a lot of the naming rationalization was done as part of the E911 location-aware service. This included giving numbers to properties that either didn't have them or at least didn't commonly use them (like summer cottages). It also involved, for example, giving segments of roads different names if they weren't connected or if they had multiple branches. It also largely rationalized cases where roads had different names in the USPS database and on local maps. (My house effectively had two different addresses when I moved in and I always needed to make sure local service people knew where was house was; on more than one occasion I was accused of giving someone the "wrong" address for my house.)

This largely happened before the widespread consumer use of GPS, but it certainly helped when GPS rolled out.

dedward2• 11 years ago

I have quite literally used "Left at the spot where there is usually a cow grazing next to a bus stop" to tell people to find my house.

sokoloff• 11 years ago

I spent 10 days in Costa Rica last month and didn't have a data plan with me (so Waze is way less useful).

I used (and liked) the maps from Cenrut.org, which are easy to install on a Garmin device I brought with me. You can also rent GPSs from the car rental places, but for a long stay, it's just as cheap to buy a Garmin here in the states and install the free Cenrut maps.

The Cenrut data wasn't perfect, but it was way more than adequate. It would be madness to try to navigate the country from only a printed street map!

Why Waze is so popular in Costa Rica (2014)

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