If I search for “Golden Gate Canyon State Park, Gilpin County, Colorado, United States”, the map centers at the (presumably) geographic center of the park. If I then ask for driving directions to the park, it routes via some VERY unimproved roads, coming in from the undeveloped top end of the park, trying to get me as close as possible to that geographic center. Specifically, it routes nowhere near any primary park feature.
Were I a visiting foreigner, this would’ve been an incredibly frustrating experience. But since I’m from the area, I knew enough to improvise.
As a second test, I just tried getting directions to Arches National Park, Grand County, Utah, United States. The problem isn’t as bad in that case because the best way to the geographic center of the park is through the main entrance. However, the directions abruptly end along a road, at the closest point to the geographic center. As with the prior case, I’d expect a traveler searching for Arches would expect directions to the park to be to the visitor center.
One could argue that when someone asks for driving directions to a large geographic area, she usually won’t want the geographic center, but instead some feature: an “entrance”, “visitor center”, “main gate”, etc.
Does OSM offer some kind of a “driving target feature” tag that, in the case for Golden Gate Canyon State Park, could be tied to the park visitor center? If not, I’d expect it to be a significant change; what sorts of problems would be introduced?
I should point out that maps.google.com makes the same navigational choice. However, a search for the park pulls up a list of suggested targets (areas & features), with “visitor center” being near the top. So, an uninformed user gets steered to the correct choice.
