*UPDATED* Ramp naming convention proposal

[R4CLucky14]

I say we go with the double colon. I'm convinced.

{SIGN}={[EXIT]<SEPERATOR 1>[SHIELDS]<SEPARATOR 1>[CITIES]}

[SHIELDS]=[<SHIELD><SEPARATOR 2><SHIELD>……]

[CITIES]=[<CITY><SEPARATOR 2><CITY>……]

<SEPERATOR 1> = ":"
<SEPARATOR 2> = "/"

Thats how I came to this conclusion.

[R4CLucky14]

In a perfect world, Waze would actually do some work (or allow people like me, who know how to program, albiet not much do it).

If we have [EXIT]:[SHIELDS]:[CITIES], then it's relatively easy for an engine to parse.

The first part can be read verbatim

"Exit xxx:" -> "Exit xxx:"

The second part, the Shields, will have a divider (slash):

: (Shield) / (Shield) :

This would allow the engine to parse it rather easily, and even produce shields. The colons and slashes would be thrown out, displayed shields that sit next to each other.

The last part can be read as follows:

[Cities] -> : (City) / (Street)

The "/" can be read as a new line, thus, we could have an XML layout (Android uses java + xml) in the client that puts the Exit sign ("Exit xxx:") in the top left, where I find it normally is on BGS's. The shields underneath it, and to the right, we can have the cities/streets, thinking about it from a portrait design view.

I believe following a double colon would make this idea easier to become reality.

[sketch]

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.

[sketch]

I always thought the "to" was needed to distinguish from the actual road. Not so important if the sign has the control city, but if it doesn't you need to say "to I-95 N" rather than just "I-95 N" on the ramp.

This is exactly it. It interfered with the Select Entire Street feature when we were creating the standards two and a half years ago.

I have recently been considering the removal of "to". I like the idea of not having it on the display at all. The Select Entire Street feature is a lot less essential now that most extraneous nodes have been removed and those that exist are very easy to remove, so that's a minimal loss. For road reports, well, it's not quite optimal, but the minimap display does help.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this as well.

UPDATE: After updating one interchange as a test subject for the removal of "to", I realize just how much this would affect. It would not only make Select Entire Street problematic for freeways, but for almost any street a freeway intersects. I cannot recommend this in good faith unless the Select Entire Street function is altered to select only segments that have the same Type. Otherwise we would be making editing a lot more troublesome, especially for new editors.

I'm not in favor of having multiple colons. It looks funny to me and is something you would never do grammatically. I know what we are doing is shorthand for directions, but I think we do need to follow some rules of punctuation usage.

What I offer though is that there is no better alternative:
"Exit 220: I-310 S: Boutte / Houma" - proposal
"Exit 220: I-310 S Boutte / Houma" - this is the current method. "I-310 S Boutte" runs together and is unclear.
"Exit 220: I-310 S, Boutte / Houma" - commas will always look completely out of place to me here.
"Exit 220: I-310 S / Boutte / Houma" - this is illogical, as it offers Boutte and Houma as options that "compete" with I-310, rather than two options that "compete" with each other as a result of I-310.
"Exit 220: I-310 S - Boutte / Houma" - this looks okay, but takes up more room than the colon. I would offer this as a secondary proposal. Technically, according to English punctuation rules, we would use an em dash (—), but this is longer and difficult to type.

Someone had said that the request was made to have the slash also execute a pause so I say we keep the current standard with one Colin have the exit number and patiently wait for Waze to update the TTS.

The current standard, like I said above, does not include a slash in any of the places I am proposing colons. I don't think a slash "works" here.

What we also have to keep in mind is that not everyone wants TTS so we want to keep the ramp name clear too and I think the additional colons makes that confusing.

Perhaps then the hyphen is the better solution here. We would have to ensure that Waze gives the hyphen a pause too. I have not tested this.

That said, using the hyphen to eliminate dual colons would be inconsistent with the colon in entrance names and pathfinders. And, really, I don't think "Exit 230: I-610 E: Slidell" is really going to confuse anyone, even if it offends a few English professors.

[sketch]

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.

This makes sense with control cities, but "Exit 232: US-61 to Airline Dr / Tulane Ave" does not, since US-61 and Airline Dr and Tulane Ave are synonymous. I do like it for control cities though.

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.

Yeah, like bgodette, I have a number of onramps which are signed with only the highway name and direction. I'm all for getting rid of that "to", but having it on some signs and not on others, while it makes sense to us, is inconsistent. Removing the "to" entirely isn't workable as-is because of the Select Entire Street function and also because, as bgodette hinted at, pathfinder signs with no control cities would not be announced.

There is one way I can see this working: remove the "to" from any ramp with control cities or other additional information as proposed, and for any ramp which is simply "to I-10 W", change it to "I-10 West".

This isn't completely consistent with itself either, but I think the difference between "I-10 W: Baton Rouge" and "I-10 West" is less glaring than the difference between "I-10 W: Baton Rouge" and "to I-10 W". Also, it's actually more consistent with signage, since signs pretty much always have "West" and "East" spelled out, and the space benefit of abbreviating isn't really necessary with such a short prompt.

[sketch]

Parentheses are nothing but clutter. And the only reason "Exit" is on exit ramps is that exit ramps actually say "Exit" on them, along with a number. The idea is to reproduce signs as accurately, as clearly, and as briefly as possible.

I do actually like the "Exit 220: I-310 S to Boutte / Houma" idea, but I cannot get behind using the same format when it's not a control city, like "Exit 232: US-61 to Airline Dr / Tulane Ave", because that's counterintuitive. Also, we lose the pause, which does a lot for TTS clarity. And do we do this just to avoid double colons, or do we also do "I-10 E to New Orleans" on entrance ramps? I've really been digging how the colon pause has been sounding on this.

I do think each onramp should have a control city, whether it's signed or not. The control city remains the same until you're past that city and then the control city changes. I've always been able to find a sign by an onramp (not EVERY onramp) between major cities to tell me what those control cities should be. There probably are examples where there are no such signs, but common sense should tell you what the major cities are.

There are a number of ramps to the Interstate in New Orleans itself that don't have control cities on their signs. Hell, the ramp from Broad to 610 doesn't even have a sign! Actually, neither do many of the entrances to Business 90.

I assume Slidell, LA is only a control city because three major interstates intersect there.

That and it's the biggest city directly served by 10 until Mobile, which is two states and two hours away.

My only question is what control city to use when you're inside of a city with a lot of exits. If you get on an onramp in the middle of New Orleans, you're going to New Orleans regardless of which way you go, so do you jump to the next control city (Slidell or Baton Rouge)?

This is typically how it works. No entrance from Carrollton to Read uses "New Orleans" as a control city. Bullard uses it for its I-10 W entrance, and the I-10 E entrance at West End Blvd is signed as "New Orleans Business District", since it is technically in New Orleans, but only just. (There are no control cities on the signs at Metairie Rd / City Park Ave; interestingly, the entrance to I-10 E from Airline Dr is simply marked "Westbank".) The control cities between these points are typically Baton Rouge and Slidell.

I'm not sure if I support this fully, though. It almost seems like we might confuse people by asking them to look for signs that aren't there. The idea from the start was to reproduce signs as accurately and as clearly as possible, because we have the power to, and because most nav systems are pretty bad at this.

[sketch]

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.

This is optimal.

Signs may be read left-right then up-down, but we'd be doing people a service by breaking it down logically, I think. Plus, it breaks down better.

[*]"Exit 298: I-176 / PA-10: Morgantown / Reading" is okay but for the double colon.
[*]"Exit 298: I-176 / PA-10 to Morgantown / Reading" is kind of okay right now, but once pauses are returned for flashes, it'll break down wrong, and "PA-10 to Morgantown" will be the only complete logical unit, which is wrong.
[*]"Exit 298: I-176 / PA-10 / Reading / Morgantown" may read okay when the slash pause is added to TTS, but we can't say it'll read "exactly like the sign", because we can't say that people read shields and control cities at the same speed, and so forth. We also have to respect that some people won't be using TTS so we should keep it legible on the client as well.

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.

I agree with this. I do this whenever one ramp has two separate signs which are replicated exactly at the split further down the ramp. This is indeed commonly found in "Exit 12A / Exit 12B" situations.

If you're missing exits because they have two separate signs, I might recommend paying closer attention to the arrows at the bottom of exit signs. That, and Waze tells you to exit when you get there, so there should be no confusion concerning whether this is the right exit. Better to display information relevant to the user's current route, and to get TTS directions out of the way of the next direction. Putting two interstate signs full of information on one segment is poor form when there is inevitably going to be another important instruction pretty soon ahead.

[sketch]

The double colon proposal is not an interim solution. I feel strongly that the double colon is more logical than the slash in some places.

I-110 S takes you to Biloxi. What's the clearest most logical way to signify this while using the fewest characters possible?
"I-110 S: Biloxi"
"I-110 S / Biloxi"

It's the colon. A slash implies an option, a choice. You are not choosing between I-110 S and Biloxi, you are taking I-110 S to get to Biloxi.

And, you know, now that I've been thinking about it, I don't like the "to" either. It can be ambiguous: is it "US-90 to Gulf Shores" or "US-92 / Gulf Shores"?

The only objection to the double colon, as I see it, is that it's not accepted in English sentence constructions. But we aren't constructing sentences here. We're trying to get our points across logically and clearly, both visually and aurally.

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.

In the interest of fairness, just about all the ramps I have edited or am planning to edit were either not named at all or named incorrectly.

[sketch]

If we start linking roads and cities then we start reorganizing the signs. So no longer do the segment names correspond to the way people read (right to left, top to bottom), but start jumping all over the place. I think this becomes confusing to the driver and is distracting. It also introduces further complexity for the editor because they then have to link the roads and city names. This requires even more work and sometimes isn't the easiest thing to do as that information is not always apparent from what is provided on the exit sign.

You're absolutely right. I've been taking time to consider this as I waited for the map update to go through. The point has always been to match the sign, and that's what we will continue to do. Matching the highways to their destinations is a nice idea, but it's not actually a good one, and that's why we have discussions for things like this.

My original proposal is this:
Exit ##: I-xx / US-yy / US-zz: City 1 / City 2 / City 3

We threw around a bunch of other ideas, but it's all coming back to this, to me. The only material difference between this and the existing standard is that this includes a separation between the shields across the top and the cities down the bottom.

[sketch]

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.