*UPDATED* Ramp naming convention proposal

[sketch]

Ah, I see. The logic does seem a little ambiguous without pictures of the signs themselves.

The difference is shields. The original standard, as I wrote it a couple years ago, did not include any punctuation separating a shield plus direction from the words below it, whether street names or control cities. Back then, TTS wasn't even really expected to happen anytime soon, so I figured there wouldn't be any confusion between some letter and number combinations and the text that followed. This logic was kind of faulty in the first place, though, if I'm honest -- there's no accounting for the difference between "US-49 E: Azalea Pkwy" and "US-49: E Azalea Pkwy".

The "to I-10 E New Orleans" sign is a shield and text. For the past couple months, I've been testing "to I-10 E: New Orleans", and I think it sounds and looks great.

The "to Causeway Blvd N / Mandeville" sign is two lines of text. Even though one is a road and one is a control city, they're presented as equals in a list, and to me this should always be accompanied by a slash.

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At the heart of the matter, on the most granular level, the best way to name everything is this:

[Exit numbers]: [Shields]: [Text]

There are three groups, and everything within a group is separated by a slash. "Exit number: Shield / Shield: Text / Text / Text". Not everything has every element. So,

"to I-10 E: New Orleans"
"Exit 228: Causeway Blvd / Mandeville"
later, "to Causeway Blvd N / Mandeville"
"Exit 220: I-310 S: Boutte / Houma"

and so forth.

[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.

I disagree. The parsing engine drops "to" from the TTS (It would say "Turn right at eye 10 (pause) New Orleans"), from my experience, at least.

I believe the "to" is to stop the Select All feature from selecting ramps.

As far as the colon, I don't think it's appropriate. I believe "I-10 E to New Orleans" operates much better for on-ramps with control cities. Without a control city, I would suggest not naming the ramp. It will use the name of the highway to turn onto, exactly as if some wrote "to I-10 E".

That's my personal opinion, at least.

The "select all streets" function is indeed why the leading "to" was put there in the first place.

I'm going to be testing ramps without the leading "to" in my area with the next map update. I'm provisionally for getting rid of it; the only thing I'm not sure about is whether leaving ramps without control cities unnamed is a good idea. This is okay for singular ramps, but with complex urban interchanges, it's often not so simple.

As for the "to" in the middle, well, half the point of the colon is to stop things from running together. "I-10 E to New Orleans" isn't a huge problem, but is it "US-20 to Little Farms" or "US-22 Little Farms" or "US-22 / Little Farms"? Or are you going to some place called "Two Little Farms"? Sure, that last one will give us a pause.... eventually. Maybe in a year or so. But the colon is here now and, I think, makes more sense anyway. And, if we're just going to separate shields from text with "to", then, how do we make sense of "LA 3139 to Earhart Expy" when LA 3139 is Earhart Expressway?

[sketch]

Another problem, though, is that some interchanges undoubtedly exist that are too complex for the first ramp in the series to be left unnamed.

[sketch]

Not always, though. There is an alarming number of entrances with no control cities in the city of New Orleans.

[sketch]

I've done enough testing at this point and I think I've seen enough support to be able to move this forward.

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.

That's it, broken down in its most basic form.

As for the "to", let's just keep it. It's already there, it's logical, and while it does take up some valuable space, keeping it will save us a lot of time and keep the select all street function easy.

I do propose one other thing that isn't included in conventions, but that was mentioned in this thread: control-city pathfinder signs, the big ones that they put on the interstate when a large number of lanes split off onto another freeway or some other big exit. The format for those would be as follows:

I-10 E: New Orleans Business District

In this case, we don't have a standard, so we don't have to worry about changing up existing labels. Further, using "to" wouldn't be very logical -- since you're already on the indicated road, you're not really going "to" it, you're continuing along it. And this is not a superfluous addition -- there are two locations on my drive to work alone where the left three lanes exit straight ahead onto another freeway, and to stay on I-10, you have to keep and then veer right. Hugely confusing to an unfamiliar driver. I think I've shown these examples before.

[sketch]

No, it's still the double colon. Basically what R4C's post is saying is this:

Each sign has elements from any or all of three groups: exit number, shields, and control cities or street names. The groups will be separated with a colon. Some signs will have more than one of each. When multiple elements exist within one group, these elements will be separated with a slash. To wit,

shield : city
to I-10 W: Baton Rouge [ramp]
I-10 E: New Orleans Business District [pathfinder sign on interstate]

exit number : street name / city
Exit 228: Causeway Blvd / Mandeville

exit number : shield : city / city
Exit 220: I-310 S: Boutte / Houma

shield / shield: city / city
to I-310 N / LA-3127 N: Donaldsonville / New Orleans

shield
to I-10 W

street name / city
to Causeway Blvd / Mandeville

...and so forth.

I will add something to the OP. Good idea.

[sketch]

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".

[sketch]

We built the Wiki ourselves, and it is ours to change. I understand the desire for a voting process, but I don't think it's necessary, and to be honest it seems like a bit of a nightmare. We can have a yes or no question asking whether members of the community approve, and if it's "no", we're left with the existing faulty system; or, we can have a few different proposals, none of which will ever get a majority.

Nothing truly great has ever come out of a focus group. Design by committee gave us the Chevy Citation, not the iPod.

As for the split roads thing, strict adherence to the 5m "rule" is an oversimplification. Some roads with much narrower medians cannot be accurately mapped (vis-à-vis U-turns, etc.) as a single, two-way road.

[sketch]

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.

Actually, I did test the "to" in a couple places around town, one of which is an exit I use at least three times a week, usually more. The "to" sort of tends to make everything before and after it run together. I much prefer the pause inflicted by the colon.

There isn't really any need to put "Exit" on the name of any ramp off the side of any highway, because the TTS instruction is "Exit to the right", anyway. It's sort of redundant and wastes time. To be honest, I think it would be better if unnumbered exits from freeways also did not include the word, because "Exit to the right, at exit to Carondelet Street / St Charles Avenue" adds nothing but time to the announcement, where "Exit to the right, at Carondelet Street / St Charles Avenue" conveys the message perfectly (with the segment named "to Carondelet St / St Charles Ave"). However, starting the segment name with "Exit" does provide visual congruence, especially in situations where only three or four exits are not numbered, sandwiched between an interstate and another freeway with 7 or 8 numbered exits.

As for "Exit to: Road" vs. "Exit to Road", now that I'm looking at it this way, I think "Exit: Road" is actually more sensible and more in line with "Exit 228: Street".

[sketch]

In my area, I am currently using "Exit xx: xxx Rd, xxx St", and it works pretty well. This uses less character than "Exit xx: xxx Rd / xxx St". I justify this because it is not necessary to be "or" in this case. It can also be "and". Therefore, using ", " should be literally correct.

Commas will always look out of place in this context. The slash is a better visual seperator, and besides, it's already the standard. You will never see a road sign with a comma on it.

I strongly oppose using double-colon for the highway directions because it really looks bad and not logical. If I am going to put the city after the highway, I will be using "Exit xxx: I-10 East (San Antonio)" or "Exit xxx: I-10 East - San Antonio" because they look much better than the double colon and more logical. And I doubt the need to add city name in some cases because it should be already enough for people to understand the directions if there is only the highway name. Putting too much information does not help much and just making the TTS more verbose.

I disagree. Parentheses are clunky, and the hyphen (which should technically be a dash, anyway) with spaces on either side eats up a LOT of real estate.

I think a lot of people are reacting to the idea of two colons in a phrase too quickly. I think we'd have some converts if you had a couple in your area to test. It works. Quite well.

About the entrance ramps in my area, I am currently using "To I-10 North" instead of "to I-10 North". "To" makes the whole thing looks better than using "to", and it is also more literally correct. If one looks closely to some of the highway signs, sometimes there is a "TO" on the top of the highway badge. Therefore, I think capitalize the "T" should not be a problem. The TTS works the same in both cases.

This is another case where there's no reason to mess with convention. "to" is a small formality designed to keep ramps from being selected by the Select All Streets tool. It is a very small word that still manages to take up more screen real estate than it should. Anything that makes it bigger would be counterproductive. Also, the "TO" on some highway signs means something different than it does on our ramps.

Also strongly opposed to double colon. Would like to eliminate all colons if we could get TTS to behave. Slashes are extra characters, but they present nicely on the phone display.

A certain element of preferring a colon to a slash or a slash to a dash or a dash to a colon is always going to be aesthetic. Some people are going to like it, some people aren't. Here are the facts:

A colon takes up less space, its proposed usage is logical according to its usage in English grammar, and it currently begets a pause in TTS speech.

A slash takes up more space, does not currently provide a pause in speech (even though this was asked for and promised three months ago), and in the place of the proposed colon it does not make grammatical sense.

A hyphen suffers from many of the same problems: it makes more sense than a slash grammatically (although, again, it should technically be a dash), but it doesn't provide a pause, and in fact that pause hasn't even been requested.

I'm okay with a vote for the approval/rejection process. I have taken your survey, banished.