New street missing from a map? Here's how to add it

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- The brand new section of the Grand Parkway is now open, but there's one problem: It doesn't appear on many GPS navigation systems and mapping apps.

Erik Strong lives two miles from the Grand Parkway, also known as Highway 99, but he has a hard time navigating friends to his home.

"It's awesome, we get to The Woodlands in 27 minutes," Strong told us.

In fact, it's completely missing on some of the most popular mobile maps, including the one on your iPhone.

"Our GPS doesn't have it, it's like we are driving in outer space," driver Stephanie Dykalski said.

With Houston's rapid expansion, technology has a hard time keeping up with all of the new roads. But now, several maps apps and navigation systems now allow drivers to edit the maps.

Open Street Map is a free map created by crowd-sourced data, so anyone can edit the map online. Since the Grand Parkway opened, several people in the Houston have provided updates. MapQuest, FourSquare, and Craigslist all use data from Open Street Map.

The Grand Parkway was also missing from Bing maps, but there's a way to make changes to this map, as well. If your road is wrong -- or not there at all -- just click feedback, select problem on map and use the drop list to report the problem.

If you are using Apple Maps on your iPhone, just tap the circled "i" in the lower right corner and follow the onscreen instructions.

By the time we had checked, Google had already updated its map to include the new segment of the Grand Parkway.

Meantime, off of Highway 99, near Fairfield Village, people are just happy to have a road in the first place.

"I took it to an appointment this morning and it shaved 20 minutes off my drive time to go to 249," driver David Wegenke said.