Ramp naming proposal

[mithrandi]

I'm working up a separate wiki page to cover this (and I'll probably do the same with other subjects as well). I haven't linked it from the main wiki page yet as I still want to do some editing to reduce the verbosity, and of course solicit commentary from everyone else on the forums, but the idea will be to link all of the subpages from the main page once they're done, rather than trying to cram everything into one page. This allows for more room to go into detailed examples, hopefully eventually with pictures to go along with them (guess I need to dig out my camera and go photograph some highway signs!).

At any rate, feel free to check the page out as a "sneak preview"; I tried to incorporate the suggestions from this thread and to elaborate more on some specific examples to provide guidance, although some things will ultimately just be a judgement call. Incidentally, I'm fairly happy with how the TTS renders the ramp names on the few interchanges I've edited recently (N1/Malibongwe and N1/William Nicol), aside from the "North 1" issue (hopefully Waze will fix that some day, but they still haven't even fixed the recent St=Saint issue...). I think I still need to check the ramp signs on a few of the ramps (not available on Google Street View), but it doesn't seem like the "to ..." ramps are causing a problem with TTS.

[mithrandi]

Incidentally, someone seems to have edited one of these roads I recall previously being Ramps to being a Major Highway, yet in my mind (and being somewhat familiar with the junction), it's a ramp, even if that ramp is on the ground rather than flyover concrete style (the roads are at different levels).

Looks like a mistake to me; I would definitely say all four of those connectors should be ramps. Also, the crossing segment of the R67 is set to Freeway for no apparent reason, it should be Major Highway like the rest of it. Ramps between Major Highways are fine.

[mithrandi]

Just so I'm clear this means I should block the option of going straight across from the offramp back down the onramp?

Yes, block that. In some cases it is actually possible / legal to do this (although often it isn't actually legal), but such a route should never form part of a legitimate Waze route. The only purpose of doing that is to get back onto the highway if you accidentally took the offramp; in the event that you were following a Waze route and took the offramp by mistake, you can just get back onto the highway of your own volition and allow Waze to continue routing you.

On the flip side, if this is allowed, Waze will be able to route you off and back on to the highway to "avoid" traffic along the highway, which is almost always a bad idea. There are some safeguards to prevent this, but it's not clear exactly what the criteria are or if they're working properly, so in my opinion it's best just to block the turn unless there's some legitimate intentional route that requires it to be allowed.

[mithrandi]

I guess this is somewhat subjective; I don't have a problem with how that screenshot looks. The ramp (actually, I guess that's an at-grade connector?) is not the M39 to Tembisa, it is a ramp (connector?) leading to the road that is the M39. I view the "to" part of the name as a transcription of the arrow that would be on the sign board in question. I'm not that attached to it, though; but if you name the segment just "M39 Tembisa" or similar, an incident or traffic report from that segment would be somewhat misleading, especially in the case of long connectors.

Then again, I think the connector in question is an exit, not an entrance, so it should probably be named "Exit: M39 Tembisa" anyway

[mithrandi]

If it's consistency you are after, whether you get a keep left / exit left / turn left icon, the icon does not signify any extra meaning. Why would you need an icon and a 'to N1 North' for some and an icon with just a 'N1 North' for others ?

Hmm, I think you misinterpreted something I said. I don't think a road should be labelled "N1 North" unless it actually is the N1 North. A ramp leading to the N1 would be labelled "Exit: ..." or "to ..." depending on whether it is a labelled exit ramp or not. What I was trying to say about icons is that you can read the arrow on the actual road sign itself as "to", I wasn't talking about the icons in the client; but nevermind, that line of reasoning doesn't actually make as much sense after some sleep

[mithrandi]

Okay, I finally got around to editing the wiki page again. Main highlights: I've added some additional organization to the page, reduced the word count (I think; I deleted a bunch of words but added some new ones), and added some references to the specific ZA road signs I mean instead of vague descriptions.

(Incidentally, I know the link to the road signs page is broken; still need to write that page...)

[mithrandi]

All the other displayed instructions just have the next action (icon) and the next road name, which usually is in a neat, crisp "Uppercased Name" or "[N/M/R]Route Number Name" or whatever supported format.

The mixed "to This Next Road" looks crappy and carries no weight in my books, no matter who else adopted it across the world. It looks more like some spring chicken "wAs bUsy WriTinG GobBlEdYgOOk oN HeR FaCeBooK PaGe" instead of a professional job.

I sort of see where you're coming from here, but there are a few things to consider.

1) "To Road Name" looks even more ridiculous -- or at least I think it does -- than "to Road Name", because the "to" is not really part of the name of the road (even though we are putting it in the "Name" field in Waze...).
2) It is important for the ramp to be named differently to the actual road segment for a number of reasons (navigation instructions, select all segments, traffic reports).

On the other hand...

3) If the ramp segment's name would "clash" with the segment it is named after, is there any situation where the name could not just be left blank?
4) The TTS instruction for turning onto a highway actually sounds a little weird. You get an instruction like "keep left onto M1 Johannesburg". If it said "keep left to M1 Johannesburg", it might be a little better, not sure. Of course, the presence or absence of the "to" here makes no difference as far as TTS goes, but perhaps a different prefix convention might improve how the TTS instruction sounds. By comparison, an exit instruction sounds like "exit left onto Exit 104: M1 Johannesburg" which sounds okay to me. On the other hand, "Entrance: M1 Johannesburg" or similar seems absurd, and I don't have any other ideas in this vein.

I'm currently trying to determine if there are any other technical reasons (as opposed to aesthetic reasons) for the current standard in place in other regions; if there's nothing else, then I think I could be persuaded to go for the "naked" style (ie. like "M1 Johannesburg"). It seems like ever time I change a ramp's name I end up changing it again 2 days later, anyway, so I wouldn't even end up doing extra work

[mithrandi]

Okay, I had a look at that thread, and it seems like a lot of the participants don't like the "to" either; the only major concern raised is the Select Entire Street issue, which I think is simply not an issue in South Africa. An entrance ramp or connector at a major interchange will almost always have a "proper" name that is different to the road it would otherwise match; the cases where we would name a ramp in a way that clashes are unlikely to be important enough for leaving the ramp unnamed to be a problem. I'll be interested to hear what AlanOfTheBerg and WeeeZer14 have to say, but barring some technical issue being raised that isn't already covered by what we've discussed, I'm withdrawing my objections against dropping the "to" prefix, and I've updated my draft wiki page accordingly.

[mithrandi]

What still concerns me, is that despite a lot of the thread participants also being against it, the current method the US adopted still includes the 'to '.

From what I can gather, this was due to a combination of issues: 1) the TTS behaviour / understanding was not quite as clear at the time the discussion was happening; 2) the discussion dragged on for quite some time going back and forth on certain issues, so I think some compromises were made just to get a standard finalized without getting bogged down in the details; 3) the situation wrt US ramp naming is slightly different to what we have here in ZA.

I agree that the Ramps should be uniquely named, but I would really like some more participation from other local editors on this issue.

Yes, I'd really like some more participation full stop. If everyone is just quietly watching and agreeing, that's one thing, but I get the impression that many editors are just not paying attention to this forum and doing their own thing, which doesn't really help reach an actual consensus.

And, just to be clear: like you, I am definitely after a consensus here, not to force a decision down everyone's throats. If there's an issue with any of my proposals, I'll argue my case, but in the end it'll be far better if we can apply a consistent standard across the country (even one that we don't agree on fully), rather than applying random inconsistent standards depending on what editor touched the map last.

Just to be sure, I did also pop off the question to support. Even though the UK uses the 'Entry ' format, I want to be 100% sure that dropping the 'to' would not break any functionality that Waze had intended in the past or may have intended in the future for this.

Well, that could be interesting, if you ever get a response. I contacted them a little while ago regarding the TTS issue with N1 etc. but haven't heard back so far.

[txemt]

Um.....we do that in the US.