Primary Streets (US)

[sketch]

I've traveled all of US-90 from Lake Charles, LA to the middle of Florida. That's about 1/3 of it. I'd like to do US-11 and US-61. I also followed the saga of the guys driving the Jefferson Hwy from Minnesota to New Orleans a year or two ago. I'm not exactly sure what the exact route of the Old Spanish Trail is.

Hah, 11 and 61 are the other two I want to do! I want to drive 61 mostly because of my embarrassingly late realization that Airline Drive is the same Highway 61 that Bob Dylan talked of revisiting so long ago, even though I'm not that big of a Dylan. I've wanted to drive 11 ever since realizing a year or two ago that my route from here to Blacksburg, Virginia, which comprises no fewer than six interstates, is paralleled pretty much in its entirety by US-11.

[bgodette]

Can you do that without interfering with real roads? I guess you could always do switchbacks to cover the distance.

I level 9'd everything, yeah it crosses over some "roads" but it doesn't matter as it'll only exist for one update cycle. If we want to keep something like this around on a more permanent basis, it'll have to be rebuilt someone more out of the way.

Every time I hear mention that the Waze developers aren't sure of something, I start to wonder if the software has developed a mind of its own and the development team is no longer in any kind of control of it.

Which is why I build these rigs. There's also the problem of it may work one way today, but be different next week.

[jondrush]

Branching off the discussion on Primary Streets which started from the discussion on Service Roads.

Summary of thoughts so far:

my "rule" that any ramp should terminate on at least a Primary Street as well. (Except for say rest areas or ramps to a private/secured campus.

Good rule. Ought to be the standard.

[

Guess you've never driven in the Midwest much. Sometimes a farmer with political influence got a interstate exit to his farm lane. No rule can be hard and fast. I have at least one example of a non-primary road getting an exit in my area too.

As far as roads changing type, I think if we insert the phrase "long stretches" in the rules (guidelines?) We can allow for changing types. I don't like seeing patchworks, but I do like seeing long stretches of road type reflected in the color coding.

[mapcat]

Guess you've never driven in the Midwest much. Sometimes a farmer with political influence got a interstate exit to his farm lane. No rule can be hard and fast. I have at least one example of a non-primary road getting an exit in my area too.

No, I'm familiar with those, and thought that ranches would fall under "private/secure campus".

As far as roads changing type, I think if we insert the phrase "long stretches" in the rules (guidelines?) We can allow for changing types. I don't like seeing patchworks, but I do like seeing long stretches of road type reflected in the color coding.

As long as we don't define "long stretches" with a specific number, since there's bound to be an exception.

[PhantomSoul]

Isn't primary street vs minor highway just a routing distinction, namely for longer trips?

From my understanding, on longer trips, Waze will only consider streets to get to/from a nearby primary street to/from your origin or destination, and also only consider primary streets to get to/from a nearby highway. For passing through on longer trips, any non-highway road types are ignored, or at least carry a high enough penalty that you shouldn't expect to be routed through on them. Is this not the case?

So in determining whether to make a road a primary street or minor highway, I ask, in part, is this a road that I could travel through on for, say more than 5 miles? If yes, then it could be a highway; otherwise, it's probably just a primary street.

I think a bigger gray area exists between major and minor highways, particularly in rural areas, but as part of determining that, I ask myself the same thing, scaled up a little: Is this a road I could travel through on for, say more than 10 or 15 miles? If yes, then it could be a major highway; otherwise, it's probably just a minor highway.

Of course there are other criteria to consider as well, but part of it, I think, should be how much consideration do you want to give a particular road segment as a trip it's considered for gets longer.

[PhantomSoul]

Guess you've never driven in the Midwest much. Sometimes a farmer with political influence got a interstate exit to his farm lane. No rule can be hard and fast. I have at least one example of a non-primary road getting an exit in my area too.

As far as roads changing type, I think if we insert the phrase "long stretches" in the rules (guidelines?) We can allow for changing types. I don't like seeing patchworks, but I do like seeing long stretches of road type reflected in the color coding.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't having full access to a highway (such as a traffic light or grade-separated interchange) make a road a primary street (or as they're often called, collector road) by definition? I would imagine you'd want routing algorithms to/from local origins or destinations to route via that signal or interchange.

In all fairness of the Midwestern example, though, it probably doesn't make much sense to upgrade a street to a primary street if there are no other streets you can turn to/from it.

I don't like seeing patchworks either, but in reality, many roads are often improved in chunks as needed, creating a longer roadway with varying use/capacity, and to accurately reflect that, we're kind of stuck with the patchwork, at least a little. New Jersey is notorious for doing this kind of stuff...

[Spil]

I realize that I'm coming into the discussion a bit late, but here's what I've been doing in recent months (with considerable success) in rural areas of upstate NY with regard to Primary Streets. Most "county routes" came in with the basemap as Minor Highway, the same level as "state routes" -- but for the most part, they're rather unequal in real life . Thus, I've been downgrading such CR's to Primary Street, while leaving SR's at Minor Highway (and US routes mainly as Major Highway, unless they clearly should be only Minor Highway). I've also been upgrading the CR's that came in as "Street" so that they are "Primary Street".

In areas where I've done this extensively thus far (for example, Steuben County), this has been a tremendous aid in improving the routing across rural areas where there are decent CR's but no SR's. (Zoom in a level on that link and scroll around a bit, and you'll be able to see how the Primary Street network of CR's helps clarify the best ways to get around the county.) Of course, I haven't tweaked all of the CR's yet (even in this county), but there's enough there to make a remarkable improvement already. So that's one thing that PS's are definitely good for!

[ncc1701v]

The question is whether numbered routes should ever just be primary streets. (If it doesn't have a number it can't be a highway.) I try to follow a few rules of thumb. First, consistency in the area - the distinctions made in west Texas won't apply in northeast New Jersey. Second, what matters most is routing behavior - it's the /relative/ differences that matter, not the absolute ones. Finally, for my area, all other things aside, I consider roads used to get between multiple neighborhoods as primary streets, while roads used to get across the whole town and out if it may be highways.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[skbun]

I realize that I'm coming into the discussion a bit late, but here's what I've been doing in recent months (with considerable success) in rural areas of upstate NY with regard to Primary Streets. Most "county routes" came in with the basemap as Minor Highway, the same level as "state routes" -- but for the most part, they're rather unequal in real life . Thus, I've been downgrading such CR's to Primary Street, while leaving SR's at Minor Highway (and US routes mainly as Major Highway, unless they clearly should be only Minor Highway). I've also been upgrading the CR's that came in as "Street" so that they are "Primary Street".

I'd like to propose a new, and easy to follow standard that doesn't require as much individual interpretation on the part of editors. I've already implemented it in King County, Washington, and the difference in routing options and the speed Waze seems to find them is literally night and day.

We as Waze editors actually don't have to waste much of our time determining which roads are important where, and what a 'highway' or a 'street' is defined by. Here's why.

FHWA Directive 23 CFR 470 states that the State transportation agency has the primary responsibility for developing and updating a statewide highway functional classification in rural and urban areas to determine functional usage of the existing roads and streets.

Each of the 50 states has published and browseable Functional Classification maps. In Washington, that's located at http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/MapsData/Tools/FunctionalClass/ , but every state has them (I'll be happy to create a forum post with all 50, as far as that goes). The advantage here is that someone whose job it is to DO this all day has already made all these determinations, and done it on freely published maps, so we don't have to waste our time reinventing the wheel.

Here's my simple rule of thumb for Washington, granting I'm not a CM and can't do this for the whole state, but I can do it in areas I drive and manage:

Any road colored ANYTHING is a primary street or above, rural or urban. It is an important road by some definition, and beyond about 10 miles, Waze won't route THROUGH a 'street' no matter how good the speeds on it are.
Any road meeting the standard of a freeway (high speed, no at grade intersections, no traffic lights) is a freeway. It doesn't matter if it's an Interstate or a County Road. (Coincidentally, this also makes the 'Avoid freeways' option in the client do the Right Thing.)
Any 'Other Freeway' or 'Principle Arterial' rural road that is not a freeway is a Major Highway. Rare select roads in high density urban areas will also get this, but most urban streets aren't high speed if they're not already a freeway. In small towns these are more likely.
The rest is open to a bit of interpretation, but intuitively I think I get it. 'Other Principle Arterial' and 'Minor arterial' urban roads I make 'minor highways'. If there is a 'Major collector', I look at it in context. Most of the time they're primary streets. (Oh, and trust me, this last paragraph? There are ongoing discussions in other states, Connecticut comes to mind, about these 'on the fence' cases.)

Here's the result of these efforts, based on the published FC maps, in:
King County: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=0&lat ... FFTFTTTTFT
Eureka, CA: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=1&lat ... FFTFTTTTFT
Susanville, CA: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=1&lat ... FFTFTTTTFT

Before I began changes in early December, Waze would find one, or maybe two routes to downtown Seattle from Kent/Federal Way. Now, it fairly easily finds three, and in what I perceive is less time.

The kiss of death for Waze's routing engine, by comparison, is a city that looks like this:
Laramie, WY: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=0&lat ... FFTFTTTTFT

From experience, I can say that if you're in the northeast corner of that city and try to navigate to the city center, Waze will tend to pick one road, and no alternates. I suspect that if there was a traffic jam in between, Waze would also have a hard time picking an alternate then.

I'm happy to share this with editors that can help - and admittedly this will be most useful to AMs and CMs, because this is a seriously time consuming process and requires a lot of rural road traversal. King County took me about a week of heavy editing. (It needs classifying the road, determing one/two way, and making sure turn restrictions allow travel on said roads).

I hope we can make a project out of this, because I believe if this were done everywhere in the U.S., Waze's 'problems with rural areas' would be gone rather quickly. It also greatly reduces 'Most users didn't take the suggested route' URs, because FC maps show HOW they want drivers to be directed, minor to major roads and back again. Users don't want to be routed onto 'a street', generally; they want to go from a major to major road when going across town, and the FC maps tell us, to completion, where those are.

EDIT: Changed color references to their names in the Washington FC maps.

[bgodette]

... and beyond about 10 miles, Waze won't route THROUGH a 'street' no matter how good the speeds on it are.

Not that there's anything wrong with your suggestion, but this has been demonstrated to be false using both the client and livemap.