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*UPDATED* Ramp naming convention proposal

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UPDATE: After this discussion and significant testing, I have concluded that this proposal should be pushed forward. If anyone has any objections, please speak now. I will put this up to a vote shortly.

Examples are provided for clarity in this post.


Hey everyone,

I've been testing a few ideas I've had for punctuation in ramp naming and how it works with TTS.

All the changes can be simplified to one thing: adding colons between highway shields and road/city names. This will insert a pause in TTS rather than running all the words together: "Exit right, at Eye Ten East New Orleans" becomes "Exit right, at Eye Ten East -- New Orleans".

Most of the time a sign presents you with a shield and some text, it will be showing one of two things: the place that highway will take you or a local name for that highway. A colon is logical either way:

"to US-61: Airline Dr / Tulane Ave" -- Airline and Tulane are local names for 61. Two names for the same thing, similar to a title/subtitle relationship, cf. "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo".

"to I-310 S: Boutte / Houma" -- 310 takes you south to Boutte and, later, to US-90, which takes you to Houma. A way and a destination, cf. "Flight 439: San Francisco (SFO)".

I propose that the colon be used on entrance ramps, exits, and pathfinder signs (where appropriate):


Entrance ramps: "to I-10 W: Baton Rouge" and "to I-10 E: Slidell"


Exit: "Exit 230: I-610 E: Slidell"
Pathfinder: "I-10 E: New Orleans Business District" (new)

I would include the pathfinder for routing here because I-10 splits off to the right, with as many lanes of travel as I-610, which continues straight on the left. Intuition would lead you to believe that I-10 continues to the left, but this is not the case, so there should be an instruction. This is accomplished with one short freeway segment named as such.


Exit: "Exit 220: I-310 S: Boutte / Houma"

In this case, I would not put the pathfinder on the map, because I-10 continues west through the three leftmost lanes of travel.

The only thing that looks a bit kludgy is the double colon in exit names, but I believe this is the best alternative. A comma looks way out of place, a hyphen or dash takes up too much room, a space alone does not provide the logical pause, and a slash is misleading by making it seem like the highway and the city/local name are separate options (besides, slashes don't pause yet).

I know it's always a lot of work to change all the ramps and so forth, but as I said before, I think we should hold ourselves to the best standards we can.

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Last edited by sketch on Sat May 19, 2012 5:14 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Post by AlanOfTheBerg
I'm ok with the double colon idea for exit ramps, but I do think it looks odd like others have noted. Even though it is two more characters, I personally prefer "Exit 220: I-310 S to Boutte / Houma". Due to screen space available, it's not optimal, of course, but it's more accurate. For really long signs with multiple routes and control cities, a colon or "to" isn't going to make a difference on what fits on the screen because most of it doesn't anyway.

On-ramp naming has long been a peeve of mine. I think we can have it such that if there is a control city or destination, we can eliminate the word "to" and use the convention similar to off-ramps. But if there is only a ramp going to a route, then having the word "to" remains important to keep the ramp name different from the route.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
tibble wrote:Exit 298: 1-176 / PA-10: Morgantown / Reading
That's how I do it now, but to make the TTS sound best, I think it would be Exit 298: I-176 to Morgantown / PA-10 to Reading.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
TheBuca wrote:I still maintain adding a pause for a slash will benefit us the most
I can't imagine why it's taking so stinking long to get it implemented. It was supposed to be a fairly easy adjustment on the routing server.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
The only exception I employ for not putting ALL the info on the sign into a single segment is when a ramp exits to two distinct exits and the BGS for the first ramp shows both the exit numbers.

For example, ramp exits with BGS showing "Exit 12A: I-95 N / Cityname1 ; Exit 12B: I-95 S / Cityname2" and then down the ramp is a split in some manner into both ramps. This BGS is too long for a single segment name to be useful and to have TTS fit into an announcement before the next split into the actual ramp happens. TTS would be too late.

The standard agreed to in previous ramp name threads (I think it was agreed to) is to not name the first segment, and let the next ramp segments be named and propagate "backward" so that if the driver is heading to 12A, they will get "Exit 12A: I-95 N / Cityname1" for the first exit and the next, which will match part of the first BGS they see, and will match the second BGS they see.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
FrisbeeDog wrote:...Take the above exit sign example and suppose I-XX and US-YY overlap and US-ZZ leads to both City 2 and City 3. Then you going to have the segment labeled:

"Exit ##: I-XX / US-YY: City 1 / US-ZZ: City 2 / City 3"

To me, that gets really confusing because we are mixing the slashes for the overlap and using a slash to parse the second road out (US-ZZ) and then using another slash for City 2 / City 3. So the slashes lose their meaning rather quickly becuase they are used in multiple scenarios....
I've got some signs that are nearly as messy. The way I'd like to hear this read to me is:

"Exit to the right at exit xx <pause> I-XX <pause> US-YY to City 1 and US-ZZ to City 2 <pause> City 3"

Just like the second colons actually sitting there meaning the word "to", the second slash really is meaning "and." If we just had that TTS field which could read different text than the segment was actually named...
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
sketch wrote:Hang on, Alan, when did we decide to add this to the wiki?

http://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php?titl ... ldid=14856

This is a place where I thought "to I-10 E: New Orleans" was a no-brainer.
It was to match the 2nd item in the list which shows a street name and control city.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:
sketch wrote:Hang on, Alan, when did we decide to add this to the wiki?

http://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php?titl ... ldid=14856

This is a place where I thought "to I-10 E: New Orleans" was a no-brainer.
It was to match the 2nd item in the list which shows a street name and control city.
Well, so that section was ambiguous as the 2nd item in the list had the slash but the first didn't, so I standardized it by adding the slash to the prior sentence and the first example.

The fourth example, added on Dec 5, included the slash between the street name and control city, so it made sense to clarify when the slash is used and not. The 3 examples in the bulleted list had two with a slash and one without, so majority ruled.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
jasonh300 wrote:The problem with having unnamed segments where traffic actually flows is you get really strange automatically generated reports.
True, but also no less "strange" than having multiple morning reports on all 12 on-ramps to the same highway. When Waze changes the alerts to be useful, such as the using the parent street in the information for on-ramps, that will be nice. "Heavy traffic on US-9 on-ramp from 15th St." is sooo much more friendly and helpful than "Heavy traffic reported on to US-9."
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
jondrush wrote:
sketch wrote:The standard has always only included the word "Exit" for exits from a freeway (limited access)—either "Exit xxx: Road" or "Exit to Road". Ramps onto freeways from roads that are not limited-access have always just been "to Road".
Why? Why is a ramp from a non-freeway to a freeway not worthy of an "Exit Right" announcement? I'm not talking about turning lanes here, true ramps.
For unnumbered "Exits" from US or state routes, I also often use "Exit to <city>" or "Exit to <road>" as it is the best way to be clear to the driver in TTS.

I also still disagree with the use of the second colon. I don't like how it looks and I don't like the TTS for it. It is still most clear to use "to" instead of ":" but I do understand the need for some brevity, screen real estate/width available for characters, etc. Conversely, with good TTS, we shouldn't have to look at the screen for the info but just be able to drive and listen to the announcement, which is where having the "to" is better. If we could get Waze to announce every ":" after the first one which is combined with the word "Exit," as a "to" instead of a pause, that would be ideal(er). That all being said, I would fall in the with majority vote as this isn't a HUGE deal.
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Post by banished
Could we wait until Waze implements the slash pronunciation delay before abandoning our ramp syntax agreement made at the Meetup? Slashes ruin TTS, but I got onboard with it (at the Meetup) predicated upon Waze making it sound like a comma. Now because there's impatience waiting for Waze to implement it, there's a move afoot to make another change to try and finesse TTS into doing what we want. At least that's the way I've read this thread. Have I got it mostly right?

I am having to go back and fix ramps were people added the double-colon in my local area to get those segments into conformity with our agreement. Of course, there's no such thing as "my local area" under this editing system, but I'll keep fixing them as I find them. When Waze gets the slash pronunciation change implemented and if it doesn't meet our expectations, then it would be fruitful to reopen this discussion.

The only two solutions I can think of at this point are as follows:

1. AMs to agree on some etiquette that if they want to implement a syntax change, they need to keep in in their home area. That etiquette would have to manifest itself in gentlemen's agreements between neighboring AMs not to fuss in the other AMs home area and agree where the border lies between the two.

2. Less desirable would be to stop the ability of AMs to edit or unlock outside the area where they live regardless of what level they are, including me.

I am as eager as the next AM to reach resolution on syntax and TTS, but I ask we wait for Plan B (slashes creating a TTS comma-like pause) to take effect before considering a Plan C. As I recall, Waze said TTS is a 3rd party product, so they have to submit a ticket to the 3rd party. That's why I am not surprised the change has not occurred, as yet.

Thanks for reading.
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