‘MY STRUGGLE’ TO MEND BEDFORD’S BLIND SPOTS
A former Mayor of Kempston is celebrat- ing after winning a year-long battle to get Bedford back on the map.
A longstanding NPHA member, private hire driver Lewis Williams was helping a friend to upgrade her sat nav system last year when he spotted that some newer and established areas of Bedford Bor- ough were missing. He told the Bedford- shire Times and Citizen: “I was looking for a street and noticed that it wasn’t on the sat nav at all. We then did a map check on the internet sites Map- quest and Google Maps and the road wasn’t on there either.” Mr Wiiliams then did some research and found that other areas
Photo courtesy of the Bedfordshire Times and Citizen
were also missing from major internet route planners as well as sat nav routes. He said: “It was really surprising because it made me think of all the delivery drivers that use sat navs and even people visiting who would get lost.” On July 2 last year Mr Williams contacted Bedford Borough Council hoping that they would be able to address his concerns.
In October he received an email from the Mayor of Bedford, explaining that the com- panies that provide the maps are commercial operations, although he would inform officers, they would not treat it as a priority.
Mr Hodgson also advised Mr Williams to go to the local papers as he thought they would be able to get to the bottom of it. Mr Williams said: “I was
shocked. The council would have known who to call straight away to get this sorted but they chose not to do it. “It has taken me months of research to sort out what they could have done because they knew who to call.” Mr Williams eventually solved the problem himself when he con- tacted the AA and got through to cartograph- er David Arnold. He said: “Mr Arnold was brilliant and helped me straight away. He saw that there was a problem with mapping in Bed- ford and, since I have checked, all the roads I have mentioned are back on all the maps.” AA bosses reviewed Bedford on their maps and have updated newer and missing
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roads, thanks to Mr Williams’ campaign. A spokesman for Bed- ford Borough Council said: “Bedford Bor- ough Council works constantly with all major mapping com- panies when they are
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updating their maps. “Difficulties arise because satellite navi- gation systems cannot deal with schemes that are under con- struction, and they are usually only updated once a year.”
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