Google has just updated some of their google map images for Auckland with their 45° angle shots. They are higher quality than before and also let you rotate around to see the city from different angles and it is getting a better appreciation of the height of buildings., here is a shot of the CBD.

Google 45° shot CBD

The images radiate out ~10km from the city centre so unfortunately if you want to look out south, west or north of about Wairau you are stuck with the old 2009 images. Some people looking through the images have found one particularly interesting shot at Morningside however. What makes this image interesting is that the train at the station is an ADK which is pretty much the oldest and crappiest type of train we have on our suburban network. They only venture out on the western line extremely rarely as they are pretty gutless which means they don’t handle the hills very well. I imagine the odds of one being out west on the same day that google was taking photos would have been extremely low.

Google 45° shot ADK

Edit: and thanks to Luke for reminding me that the Christchurch maps have also been updated, the interesting thing about them is that the zoomed out maps are still the old photos but the closer in ones are from last year so you can see some of the scale of the damage that occurred.

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16 comments

    1. Yeah, having only been to Christchurch briefly once myself I found it very interesting to see the change. Especially helpful as the zoomed out versions are still the old photos.

  1. On the trainspotter theme, there’s also:

    -A short log train just south of Greenlane
    -An ADL at Onehunga
    -Half of an SA set visible at Newmarket
    -An SA set at Tamaki
    -An ADL at Glen Innes

    The new imagery seems to end around the New Lynn trench westbound, and the Westfield Junction southbound.

    1. The imagery is different for each of the four orientations. Your findings all appear to be in the (default) north orientation. I’m sure you could find many more in the other free orientations – i.e. from the south there is a SA5 between Penrose and Westfeild

      1. It was. When looking south, there’s an SA3 just south of the Strand so the images must have been taken around the RWC.

  2. Shame that the actual top-down aerials (more useful to me both as a traffic consultant and as a cycle advocate both) haven’t been updated 🙁

  3. Unrelated to the 45deg update, which is awesome, but this is the only place on the internet where I figure people would be interested: Has anyone else noticed that the public transport functionality of Google Maps seems to have crapped out or have I just not had to look up a bus route very recently?

    1. Yes. It’s very annoying. I used it every day few times. Helped occasional tourist with it too. The maxx journey planner is next to useless on a smartphone. Call Maxx on 3666400 and ask them to fix it. I did a few weeks ago and nothing happened. Maybe more people calling might make them realise how useful it was.

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