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By The New Mexican
Luca Comi drove into Santa Fe on Monday in a bright orange van with four cameras and a Global Positioning System mounted on top. In about an hour, he fixed three minor mapping errors that will make it easier for Internet users to navigate the city.
Comi discovered he needed to change Marcy Avenue to Marcy Street, that drivers should take a right after the Old Pecos Trail exit off southbound Interstate 25, and that parts of Old Pecos Trail have two lanes instead of one.
Comi is a geographic field specialist for Tele Atlas, a company that gathers information for online-map programs such as MapQuest, Yahoo and Google. “It goes pretty quickly,” he said, “because with the cameras , basically what we do is make a movie.”
Tele Atlas has eight other vans traveling the country and gathering information about all the nation’s highways, said Kamron Barron, systems and training manager at the company’s North American headquarters in Lebanon, N.H.
The company started the highway project in December 2005 and plans to complete it this August, Barron said. The company has another 40 to 50 drivers gathering information about other types of roads, she said, but those vehicles aren’t equipped with cameras.
As for the ones that are, thanks to image-recognition software, no one has to sit and watch hours of video depicting every highway in the United States, Barron said. The software picks up information such as speed limits, exits and height restrictions on overpasses, and employees only watch some of the tapes to make sure the computers are getting it right.
The company temporarily stores the information in hard drives located in the vans, Barron said, and then they’re shipped to New Hampshire every two weeks. From there, they go to Poland for further processing.
And all the processed information goes directly into the company’s database, Barron said. As does the information Comi fixes while he’s in the field.
Comi said he used to make note of inaccuracies and someone would fix them later, but now the company’s system allows him to make changes immediately.
Tele Atlas produced the first in-vehicle navigation system in 1985, according to information from the company, and as most people would imagine, Comi’s van is decked out with a detailed navigation system. It talks to him and tells him how many feet he has to drive to get to an exit, when he has gone off course and when to go right or left.
Comi has a laptop mounted to the right of the steering wheel, and it shows him exactly what all four cameras are recording. “I just make sure I don’t have any big bugs on the cameras, because then I have to get out and clean them,” he said. “Otherwise it’s just driving.”
The travel times stated on online-map programs are usually more accurate for highways than they are for in-town roads, Comi said, because the programs do not take into account factors like stop signs and traffic lights.
Comi said he started working for Tele Atlas five years ago, and in that time he has charted roads in 10 states as diverse as Minnesota, Hawaii and South Carolina. “It’s beautiful,” he said. “You just see beautiful sights.”
And if Comi’s job sounds like fun, the company is hiring nine summer interns in April to help drivers like Comi, Barron said. Applicants should be college students majoring in geography or a similar subject, have a clean driving record and be available to travel extensively. There is more information on the company’s Web site at www. teleatlas.com.
Comi said when he is traveling around the country, some people stare at the van or wave to the cameras, but he doesn’t mind. “People are very nice,” he said. “I’ve never had a problem.”
Contact Wendy Brown
at 986-3072 or
wbrown@sfnewmexican .com.
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