Service Roads

[mapcat]

I've seen service roads used for the "official use only" connections between the sides of the interstate (e.g. those bits of road used by police). I'm pretty sure they should be changed to private or parking lot roads.

Please feel free to delete those. Since it's usually illegal for drivers to use them, and because anyone getting driving instructions that uses them will think Waze is clueless, it's best to eliminate the possibility of a route including any of those segments.

Right now, I'm planning to use "Private Road" for anything that shouldn't be routed and isn't a parking lot.

There's no shame in using parking lot roads for segments that need to be on the map, but shouldn't be used for routing. Current wisdom is that they have the highest driving penalty. Some editors are conducting tests so we'll know for sure.

I would add one more dimension into this discussion. It seems to me that the service road type may have been necessary when waze seemed to be maintaining it own address numbers. Thus, we might need some guidance from waze on what the long term plans are for address numbers. If the only difference between "street" and "service road" was that routing worked better to address on the "service road" if there was an adjacent highway of the same name and waze is going to rely on third party sources for address information going forward, then the "service road" type may well be obsolete now.

Different Waze staff have different answers about this. Consider the address number database to be in flux.

[PhantomBlack]

I've seen service roads used for the "official use only" connections between the sides of the interstate (e.g. those bits of road used by police). I'm pretty sure they should be changed to private or parking lot roads.

Please feel free to delete those. Since it's usually illegal for drivers to use them, and because anyone getting driving instructions that uses them will think Waze is clueless, it's best to eliminate the possibility of a route including any of those segments.

I had been wondering this myself so far I have been setting them as parking lot. I figured they should be deleted but couldn't bring myself to do it. I remember how impressed I was with an early navigation software that actually showed them "wow what detail" Destinator I think it was or maybe and early version of I-Go. Since then I have come to appreciate the ability to see a potential radar trap location just over the next hill.

[bmitch3020]

I've seen service roads used for the "official use only" connections between the sides of the interstate (e.g. those bits of road used by police).

Please feel free to delete those. Since it's usually illegal for drivers to use them, and because anyone getting driving instructions that uses them will think Waze is clueless, it's best to eliminate the possibility of a route including any of those segments.

Will do, thanks mapcat.

There's no shame in using parking lot roads for segments that need to be on the map, but shouldn't be used for routing. Current wisdom is that they have the highest driving penalty. Some editors are conducting tests so we'll know for sure.

I hate the idea of abusing a road type because of how it's used by the app, rather than fixing the app to handle other road types better, but you make a good point.

[mapcat]

I hate the idea of abusing a road type because of how it's used by the app, rather than fixing the app to handle other road types better, but you make a good point.

Same here, but eventually you recognize the typical turnaround for changes on the backend and realize you have to resort to kludges like this if you want it to work correctly before next year.

[sketch]

I agree with all four of your examples. BUT: Even though the urban frontage roads in Texas, Oklahoma, and a few other states are major roads in and of themselves, worthy of being called primary street due to their heavy use, should they be considered as part of the "primary road" type selected for long-distance routing?

Having lived in Houston for some time, I would say yes, for sure. If traffic is bad on the main road, as it often is, it's sometimes faster to drive along the frontage road. At least it certainly felt that way!

[bgodette]

I agree with all four of your examples. BUT: Even though the urban frontage roads in Texas, Oklahoma, and a few other states are major roads in and of themselves, worthy of being called primary street due to their heavy use, should they be considered as part of the "primary road" type selected for long-distance routing?

Having lived in Houston for some time, I would say yes, for sure. If traffic is bad on the main road, as it often is, it's sometimes faster to drive along the frontage road. At least it certainly felt that way!

Same situation here with the I-25 frontage road(s) and certainly for sections of "frontage" roads along I-70.

[txemt]

I agree with all four of your examples. BUT: Even though the urban frontage roads in Texas, Oklahoma, and a few other states are major roads in and of themselves, worthy of being called primary street due to their heavy use, should they be considered as part of the "primary road" type selected for long-distance routing?

Having lived in Houston for some time, I would say yes, for sure. If traffic is bad on the main road, as it often is, it's sometimes faster to drive along the frontage road. At least it certainly felt that way!

I've driven from Austin to Dallas on the service road a few times because traffic wasn't moving on I-35, which brings me to another point about service roads.

I've noticed (I've changed a lot of them) that service roads are simply labeled the highway they run parallel to. For instance, the I-35 Service Rd is simply labeled "I-35" and the app actually puts the Interstate Shield onto the service road instead of the actual Interstate. I have gone through and changed a bunch of them, which is why I don't have a permalink attached. But it leads me to another question about service roads.....what should they be labeled?

I know the Wiki says to label a street by it's local name, but if that's the case, then we go back to some service roads being labeled "I-xx" when in fact they're not. Businesses on the service roads are actually given an address with the interstate in it, such as "ABC Storage, 145 N I-35" which tells you that the storage place is on the interstate somewhere on the north side of town. But as we all know, the storage place would actually be on the service road, not the interstate. But looking at the green city sign, it may say "I-35"

Also, is there a set way to name service roads? I've seen "I-xx service rd," "I-xx frontage rd," "I-xx svc rd" (which Waze actually spells out "s" "v" "c"), and some which are given names which have nothing to do with the interstate, the city just named it something else. For consistency purposes, I've been labeling them as "I-xx Service Rd" and marking them as service road on the editor. For those that have a different street name altogether, I've left those alone.

[jasonh300]

The service road probably came with the "I-35" name from the basemap. That's totally wrong. IME, service roads always have some signed name, even if it's "I-35 Service Rd" (don't abbreviate Svc, as you said). Other times, it will be "Frontage Rd", or it may even be "Juniper St" or some other name unrelated to the freeway it fronts.

Here, we have a lot of "N I-10 Service Rd W" with the different non-sensical directions and cardinals. The signs all say "Svc" but the pronunciation is so bad, I converted them all to "Service" a year ago.

[txemt]

The service road probably came with the "I-35" name from the basemap. That's totally wrong. IME, service roads always have some signed name, even if it's "I-35 Service Rd" (don't abbreviate Svc, as you said). Other times, it will be "Frontage Rd", or it may even be "Juniper St" or some other name unrelated to the freeway it fronts.

Here, we have a lot of "N I-10 Service Rd W" with the different non-sensical directions and cardinals. The signs all say "Svc" but the pronunciation is so bad, I converted them all to "Service" a year ago.

I'll also go with what's already around. If there is "frontage rd" already labeled, I'll stick with the "frontage" instead of changing it to "service".

[andrewfatcat]

In texas I use frontage rd if no other name is given because most of time you see frontage rd is used in some of the highway exits.