Rest Areas Combined - CSV version

Reported on http://www.poi-factory.com/node/45332 .I use the contact form to notify file owner about a problem.

The question is, did you download the file BEFORE or AFTER the following update?

It looks like the Nov 2 file no longer has the info which recently was merged in column C nor in the original column D.

Maybe for those who use the extended info, they should not update the old POI with the new file.

I have not updated mine.

I agree with you, pb46. Although I downloaded the new RA file, I decided to keep the old one.

Phil

I am keeping the old file as well because I find the list of services to be very useful. I realize however, that at some point the file will be too out of date to be reliable.

I'm not sure that my two attempts in the past 2+ weeks to contact you have gotten through to you, Vito. You may want to check your email address in your account here to make sure it's correct or to look to see if your email account is moving POI Factory members' email contacts to a spam folder or some such thing. Or possibly JM or GlobeTurtle could try contacting Vito directly.

In any event, I have three corrections to post to the Rest Areas Combined POI file. And with all the holiday traveling going on (and all our Canadian 'Neighbors to the North' driving to their winter homes in Phoenix ), POI Factory members may wish to edit their file with the corrections before the file is revised by Vito.

These are not new locations but are refined latitude/longitude values to take care of problems. The three POI lines' descriptions remain as they are now. You can find these three existing lines in your file by searching for 'I-17', then can edit the two numeric values in each line to the values below from what they are now in the currently-offered file:

-111.613011, 34.815861, TURNOUT SB I-17 MM312
-111.777471, 34.670907, REST AREA NB I-17 MM297
-111.767246, 34.674744, REST AREA SB I-17 MM297

The reason for the 1st line is that the old lat/lon was too far off the roadway and would not sound an alert for those who have set alerts as they approach the turnout. This is a great scenic view and a place to check your brakes before a long downhill.

The 2nd and 3rd lines are rest areas on opposite sides of I-17 in a very narrow area where the north and southbound lanes are separated by a very narrow median strip. The issue here is that for folks who set the file up to offer alerts as they approach the rest areas on I-17, they will get both the northbound alert and southbound alert regardless of the direction being traveled. I slightly altered both locations so that now an alert will occur for the single appropriate rest area and not alert on the one for travelers in the other direction.

All three lines locations are set at the beginning of the entry lane to the rest area as MrKenFL had done for other areas in this file.

I have test driven the route in both directions and in each case, the alert sounds as it should with these revised lat/lon values.

Hi Craig~

Vito is on the road a lot for work so it sometimes takes a couple of weeks for him to get back to us. He indicated that his intention was to update the file about every two months.

We’ve gone ahead and made the suggested edits for the three I-17 locations, and will pass this info on to Vito.

~Angela

What you just did is a valuable service for members.

In several FAQs, I have encouraged readers to report situations when they get an alert for a Rest Area that is on the other side of an Interstate. They could ask one of their passengers to make a note of the Interstate mile marker so they can later do just what you did - determine where to place a 100 foot "circle" on the off ramp such that it does not include any portion of the other side of the Interstate.

I use 100 feet because -according to Garmin - alerts will only sound is the distance from the road on which one is traveling to the coordinates of the POI is within 30 meters - which is 98.425197 feet.

I have often wondered about those situations where some members say that they get "alerts" for a redlight camera when there is not one in the direction they are traveling or on the road they are traveling. If members would make specific comments about such problems - maybe a tweak of coordinates would solve it.

Thank you, jgermann (ditto for GlobeTurtle and Vito, as well as MrKenFL!)

It was a recent post of yours mentioning the magic 98.4-foot circle (so close to 100 feet that it's easy to remember) that made me think of the dual North/South alerts and that I could finally alter the two I-17 rest areas to avoid double alerts. It was also fun to use Google Earth to determine the revised locations after I found and used Google Earth's "ruler" tool set for feet.