Contribution frustrated in Mountain View, CA

[kentsmith9]

Dave, on the other lot NW of Grant I realized that when we don't completely fill in the parking lots, the cars will snap to the closest lane for the GPS. For that reason it is better to just leave all PLot lanes 2-way to prevent Waze from reporting directionality problems with the lanes. Most people do not try to follow the exact lanes we draw when they get to a parking lot. It is mainly to prevent the false traffic on the main roads and give the driver a basic idea of where to drive.

On the PLot SE of Grant/ECR I locked the driveways to the lot you just added to make it useless for our sniper to remove the inner lanes in that lot. All your additions are mostly fine and I was assuming you were going to add those in after me, so I left them for you.

Good catch on the Oak Ln exit. I did see the straight through direction was not possible, but I guess I only fixed the Oak > PLot direction and not the other.

[DaveHolzmann]

Kent,
I see what you're saying about directionality within PLots. The perfectionist within me screams "NO!! That's not precisely right!!" But the pragmatist recognizes that (hopefully) people are paying more attention to the real traffic right in front of their face and less attention to their Waze when they're driving slowly through a PLot. And, while accuracy is nice, and good, and important in some situations, there are (sometimes, such as this kind of situation) higher priorities which trump technical accuracy... especially when GPS's are typically only accurate to about 25-50 feet.

I don't know if we'll EVER have conclusive evidence of who "our Sniper" is. But I strongly suspect it's the individual who last edited the Oak Ln segment that connects to Grant Rd. (I can't tell what s/he did to that segment that wasn't already there.)

Thanks again!

Oh, and I certainly HOPE that all this brouhaha over PLots is not the "norm". That would make this particularly un-fun and tedious!

[gettingthere]

Why not just use a Parking Lot Landmark if you are concerned about traffic suppression when Wazers are in the lot?

Also, unless things have changes if the last segment that a Wazer was on was a Parking lot road traffic reports should be suppressed as long as the Wazer is not snapped to a non parking lot road segment.

Although my long standing opinion is that the client should be less snappy. If a Wazer is driving anywhere that is not mapped there should be no jams created. Should be no need for any of this mapping/landmarking of Parking Lots to avoid false traffic jams. Waze needs to focus more resources on fixing this mess without the community having to over-map.

[DaveHolzmann]

Why not just use a Parking Lot Landmark if you are concerned about traffic suppression when Wazers are in the lot?

Gonna show my ignorance...

I was not aware that a PLot Landmark would have that effect. I thought it was just a "note" that that's where one would find parking. Not that it would affect traffic patterns/directions/speed. Or put another way, I didn't think Wazers would "snap" to a Landmark.

Is that what you're saying a PLot Landmark would do? Or something similar to that??

Also, unless things have changes if the last segment that a Wazer was on was a Parking lot road traffic reports should be suppressed as long as the Wazer is not snapped to a non parking lot road segment.

Now I'm a bit more confused... are you saying that on PLot roads, directionality of traffic doesn't matter? That Waze doesn't "flag" wrong-way drivers as an automated UR? If so, that seems to fly in the face of what Kent was saying.

Although my long standing opinion is that the client should be less snappy. If a Wazer is driving anywhere that is not mapped there should be no jams created. Should be no need for any of this mapping/landmarking of Parking Lots to avoid false traffic jams. Waze needs to focus more resources on fixing this mess without the community having to over-map.

I think I'm too new to have an educated opinion on this.

The only thing I'd say is, mapping/landmarking PLots is a good place for noobs (like myself) to start because we're not going to negatively impact "real" traffic while we do our hands-on learning. (Some of us learn only so much by reading before we get to MEGO. Getting to work and seeing how things really work (or don't) teaches people like me so much more, and often more quickly. And, if one is destined to make mistakes, it's better to make those mistakes in a PLot than on any "real" street.) If I understand you correctly, if the client was less snappy, PLot work would be even less useful/helpful.

[shawndoc]

Yes, using a Parking Lot landmark will suppress traffic jams in the area.

The benefit of drawing in the parking lot is to give better directions inside a shopping mall/complex to get the driver to the store inside the complex, or to correct problems with Waze routing to an alley/street behind the shopping center.

[gettingthere]

Yes, sometimes there are benefits to roads in parking lots, but there are also downsides:

* The client may instruct you turn to onto or off of a parking lot road(s) using an adjacent street name, so the directions are technically incorrect. This would not be an issue if we named the parking lot roads in some manner but we were unable to come to some agreement as a community on naming.
* When parking lots start to get mapped, Wazers see the parking lots mapped and then start to map more parking lots. Then they tend to get carried away and map every aisle.
* Every segment of parking lot road needs to have turns set correctly. Often these are not done correctly leading to Update requests to 'fix' the problem.
* More road segments = more data that Waze needs to store and serve to the clients. With vector graphics the affect is not so great, but it's something.
* Yes, it can help with learning but so can finding a neighborhood with real roads that are not frequently traveled may be a better option. Even minute that we are spending as editors working on Parking Lots is time that we could be spending on other more valuable mapping activities.

[DaveHolzmann]

Back on Jan 13th

There are rare instances where we set a turn restriction on a legal turn and that is generally around freeway off ramps to on ramps. This stops the routing engine from thinking that is a bypass route when the freeway is jammed.

It looks like things are heating up again with this area.

https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=5&lat ... rks=603861

I had started to unlock some of the PLot segments - to get back to the stated goal of not locking PLots. But, as you can see, those segments have been now deleted (again)... including some that have clearly been used recently (according to GPS tracks), both within the PLot as well as a couple of exits (to the NE). (I also find it ironic that the one complaining about PLot roads "clutter(ing) up the map" does so with a completely useless landmark that clutters up the map with a large landmark! This is the same individual who created a landmark for a panhandler.)

Yesterday there were a couple of UR complaining that Waze was routing them through the PLots. (One heading N on Grant being "routed" through the gas station on the corner. The other heading S on Grant being "routed" into and then immediately out of the PLot in the Grant Plaza.)

I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect it's not that Waze is "routing" them through the lots, but rather, they're snapping to the lots and then being re-routed out when they start moving again.

There are three possible solutions that I can think of:

1) Split Grant Rd.
Arguments in favor:
a) it fits more of the criteria for splitting a road than not: gap at 100m, median requires U-turns
b) it would "spread" Grant Rd so that those on the road would be closer to the Waze "road" than the Waze PLot roads - reducing miss-tracks into the PLots - when they're in the middle or slow lanes.
c) it would improve the usefulness for pretty much ALL users - both those who are seeking to drive past the gas station and shopping center, as well as those who are heading for the gas station or shopping center - and would be better served by door to door directions.

Arguments against:
a) It's a bunch of work - that very well may not be appreciated.
b) It adds some complexity (which while there IRL, is currently not there in Waze' World).
c) It doesn't fit ALL of the criteria for splitting a road: it's not a highway or freeway, while there is the gap in GPS tracks at 100m the median is less than 5m wide, there are some cross-road breaks in the median barrier-wall, Google HAS mapped it as a split road - so we shouldn't .

2) Set real and/or proposed/sensible turn restrictions to stop "the routing engine from thinking that is a bypass route when the (roads are) jammed".
Arguments in favor:
a) would fix the "routing" problem - if that really is the problem
b) would be a relatively simple fix to implement

Arguments against:
a) while possibly fitting the spirit of the "law", it certainly wouldn't fit the letter
b) wouldn't do anything about fixing erroneous snapping to PLot, which could in turn create even MORE problems in that the Wazers who are blindly following Waze and paying no attention to the road in front of them would have no idea how to get themselves out of those PLots.

3) delete all PLot roads, add PLot Landmarks, and say to hell with the whole thing
Arguments in favor:
a) less work than #1
b) may solve the erroneous traffic reports from people in the PLots
c) simplifies the map, reducing drag on Waze server(s)

Arguments against:
a) eliminates door-to-door directions - even as a possibility later, when addresses are working again.
b) more work than #2

According to you who are FAR more experienced than I, which of those (or possibly a 4th, even better) solutions would you recommend?

I think it may be important to keep in mind that at various times of the day almost every day, this intersection gets EXCEEDINGLY congested.

[jasonh300]

Okay...to put a stop to this, I'm going to put a Level 5 lock on all of it. Let me know if any turn restrictions are wrong.

EDIT: As far as the UR goes, they probably either have a faulty GPS unit, or they don't have it mounted under the windshield, so they're not getting a good GPS fix, as you said. I eliminated the two entrances closest to the corner, since they really don't add any benefit to the parking lot. This may decrease the chance that they'll stray into the parking lot.

[kentsmith9]

I agree with Jason's assessment and recommendation.

[gettingthere]

Although with my unscientific study - most time when any Parking lot mapping is done it ends up creating more Update Requests with problems it creates vs. problems it solves. Many times this is due to incorrect mapping and turn restrictions but other times it's just the parking lot mapping in general.

I think some of this is a perception issue. If Wazers don't get direction to the exact location of the POI in the parking lot and they see it's not mapped they understand and find their way. If the lot is mapped they then expect it to work perfectly and when it doesn't they put in an update request.

This also explains why some editors just delete all of the parking lot roads. They often cause more mapping issues in the editor than they solve.

We know that Parking Lot landmarks look ugly in the client and don't suppress traffic jams BUT they do seem to suppress future map problems. A lot of parking lots get mapped since Waze generates a map problem when a Wazer has Waze running when they drive the parking lot from one mapped road to another. This prompts editors to map the lot. When a landmark is placed it stops pointing editors to the lot to map it to supposedly fix a map problem that is auto generated by Waze.

In any case, this whole thing with parking lots, suppressing traffic jams by parking lots, suppressing map problems in parking lots, etc. is a huge waste of editing time by the community. Map it, fix the problems caused by mapping it, delete it, landmark it, lock it, unlock it, delete the landmark, delete the mapped roads just to start all over again. Waze needs to address this and provide a long term fix and better guidance on what level of mapping is necessary for their solution to work properly.