Homeowners on a small dead end road in Oak Bluffs hope a Google Maps mix-up will be fixed after getting approval to change their street name this week.
On Thursday, the Oak Bluffs planning board signed off on a petition to change Beach Road Extension, a small dirt road near the hospital, to Anchor Way. Diane Carr, who lives on the road along with neighbor Joanne Casper, applied for the name swap after years of wayward drivers looking for Beach Road showed up at her doorstep.
People planning to go to the Red House Peer Recovery Support Center, which has the same street number as Ms. Carr on the nearby Beach Road, have come to her house instead, as well as hungry patrons in search of the Golden Bull restaurant that was previously open on Vineyard Haven’s Beach street extension.
“Google Maps will send them to my house,” Ms. Carr told the board. “It’s very confusing.”
Ms. Carr has queried Google about fixing the problem, but has yet to get any relief. She hoped that changing the name to Anchor Way would cut down on the mix ups.
“We thought, it’s only two of us that live on this little dirt driveway, let’s see if we can simply change the name to something that doesn’t seem to exist anywhere else in OB or Vineyard Haven,” she said.
Ms. Casper said large trucks have gotten stuck on the dirt road while trying to deliver stoves and washers to the wrong address. The last straw for her was when paramedics mistakenly arrived at her home one night.
“If they don’t know that this is different from Beach Road, then we need something that’s really clear and obvious,” she said.
Planning board member Sean DeBettencourt said that Google has a process to ask for changes, though it can take months to be addressed.
“We all know that it’s going to take a while for Google Maps to adjust to a new name, but at least it will be better than the confusion we have now,” Ms. Casper said.
