Ghaziabad: It’s taking some commuters much longer than an hour to travel from Delhi to Meerut on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway (DME). It’s not a problem with the road but Google Maps that commuters say is leading them astray.
With the Maps route not synced to the expressway route, which opened for full traffic trials last week, Meerut-bound commuters using the app are being guided towards Hapur and vice versa. NHAI says they have installed signage at important points to direct traffic in the right direction but commuters tend to still rely on Google Maps, which shows the older route.
“Being the most popular navigation tool, I use Google Maps whenever I am commuting long distances. So when DME was opened, I took a trip to Meerut using it but ended up going half way to Hapur on NH-9 instead of DME,” said Vaibhav Choudhary, a commuter. “That moment I realised that the Maps are not guiding us in the right direction. It still shows the section of DME in the construction stage, hence diverts us to a different route.”
Amit Gupta, another commuter, said the drive on DME from Akshardham to Dasna is a smooth one, but the problem starts at Dasna. “The Akshardham to Dasna stretch is straight and there are no diversions, but at Dasna which branches out to Hapur and Meerut, we face real problems,” he said.
“Since the expressway has just opened for trails, we are still not used to following the signage, so we depend on Google Maps. However, on Maps, it still shows that parts of DME are still under construction. As a result of which, we are guided towards Meerut. And by the time commuters realise their mistake, they end up moving towards Hapur. It is a waste of time and not to talk about inconvenience it causes to commuters,” added Gupta.
An NHAI official admitted that they have been getting complaints about the same from a lot of commuters. “We are still in the process of streamlining the movement along DME as it has been opened a week ago but when commuters pointed out to us that Google Maps is not leading them to the desired route we checked for ourselves and found that the problem is for real,” he told TOI.
“The Google Maps is not updated, so we have installed more signage at Dasna and apart from that, we have also deployed volunteers to guide commuters,” he added.
The official said that the satellite data on Google Maps is about one to three years old. “We are given to understand that Google Earth Blog updates data normally about once a month and in the DME case, it has obviously not happened. We are trying to communicate with them at our level to get the data updated,” the official said.