Finding a location in unincorporated (rural) areas

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Jan 17, 2007
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As an emergency coordinator in a somewhat rural area, I was hoping my new TomTom GO510 would be the answer to finding locations. Unless you know the city or incorporated area, it's useless. We still have to have a paper map/atlas to look up the address and then figure out what "city" it falls in, if any. If we are lucky, we can determine the city after a couple of failed attempts and find our destination. Should it be outside a known city, then we can not use the TomTom at all.

Perhaps an optional "advanced" search option might be in order, such as asking the STATE, COUNTY, STREET/ROAD and NUMBER, then it would give CITY options from which to choose if more than one occurance of the street/road name appeared. We usually have a vague idea of the destination location. A simple "back" would work if the wrong city was chosen. This would sure help speed up the location-finding and driving directions capabilities of the TomTom.

Since the USA map is one huge file, this should only be a search sequence change. Of course, Lon/Lat are unknown as doing a "browse" map function would not help if you don't know exactly where you are going in the first place. Does anyone have ideas on getting around this problem away from a computer with internet where Google Maps could be used?
 
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Would using the zip code option help? You can "navigate to..." then choose "address", and then "zipcode". At that point it asks for the street name, bypassing needing the city.
 
Entering the zip code is similar to entering the city. It still limits you to the streets that fall (start or end) within that zip code.

The area that I used for one of my "tests" was in a Rural Fire District and not a community as such, espeically one with it's own zip code. It actually lies outside any city limits even though it has a zip code from an adjoinging postal office.

If I could just input the first two or three digits of the zip code and then select "anywhere" within that zip code range, it might find the road, but since it's not in a defined zip code area, but a Rural Route, I doubt even that would work. Again, a State-County-Street look up would work and that information is surely available in the map data base on the GO510.

Thanks for your reply. Maybe it will get others thinking.
 
I'm a little confused as to exactly what your problem is. I live in an area where I am technically in the City of Marana, My zip code is listed as a Tucson Zip code. You can find my address by putting any of the three. That is Tucson, Marana or the correct zip. TomTom seems to find the address without any problem.

Are you trying to differentiate addresses that are within a city's boundary from those in unincorporated area?

BTW, I have a little experience w/ fire protection issues and response problems. Forty years in the Fire Service in three different states w/ the last ten as Fire Chief.
 
OK, here is what's up. Last night I received and loaded the new maps (v665+) from TomTom, things changed.

My lost roads are now findable by either the nearest real city or zip code, as you suggested. They have also removed the "fire district communities" as well. When I do a city search, they no longer show up. This might just be the way the maps were processed for my state (or county) in previous versions.

It now looks like they have mapped the postal zip codes so they now touch thus eliminating the "Twilight Zone" areas. I also noticed roads that cross the zip code boundaries, like yours, also are accessible via any zip code where they may fall.

To check, I reloaded the original maps that came with my GO510 and the roads I checked were again not able to be found by the methods used for v665+.
 

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