Highway status

[HarryFromMarydelDE]

I think it would be beneficial to develop a standard for what constitutes a Major Highway, Minor Highway, etc. I think we could use this thread as a central point to decide what roads (or section of roads) get which designation. As a starting point I've been going with the US = major, State = minor, divided county/local = primary street. I haven't really departed much from this much, but I would like to develop a standard that is more specific to the roads actual design and usage rather than it's designation. You can search the forums and wiki for previous discussions of this on a world and countrywide basis, but I think it is something best decided at a state-by-state basis since in the US road engineering standards can vary so greatly from state to state but I believe are usually pretty consistent within a state. I think we should come up with a broad standard and then discuss how to apply it to individual roads (maybe in separate threads for each area of Florida). I'm just going to throw this out as a starting point for discussion, based on previous non-Florida forum discussions and my own interpretation:

Highways:

• Restrict highways to roads that cross county boundaries.
• Major Highway - 3+ lanes of traffic in each direction
• Minor Highway - Less than three lanes of traffic in each direction

Streets:

• Primary street - A local road that would otherwise be considered a highway (physical median, priority at every intersection, etc)
• Street - Any road that doesn't fit into any other category
• Private road - Any road in a gated development or and road that would have a "No outlet" sign at the beginning. Actual privately owned roads.
• Dirt road - Actual dirt roads.
• Service road - Runs parallel to another road and usually has the same name. An example would be the dirt road version of Main Street in Windermere, if it wasn't a dirt road.
• Parking lot road - A road in a parking lot

I can see several problems with this list but it's a start. What do others think? One issue I see with my list is Highways, and specifically the "Avoid Highways" option in the client. Apparently, waze support has confirmed that highways are not given routing preference over streets if the recorded speeds are the same, but both major and minor highways are avoided if the "Avoid Highways" option is selected. So I think an important consideration in deciding IF something is a highway (as opposed to what kind of highway), is: would a user expect to avoid it if they set there client to avoid highways. For example, Colonial Drive is a state highway and goes through five counties and crosses almost the entire state from east to west, but I think that a lot of people would want drive it if avoid highways was selected. On the other hand, the Kirkwood Highway is a local Orange County road, but it would definitely be something I would expect to avoid if I was avoiding highways.

Another suggestion (just for discussion): promote a local road to Highway if it has 3+ lanes in each direction. Basically a local road would be one level down from what it would be if it wasn't local.

-Harry

[HarryFromMarydelDE]

Forgot ramps:

• Ramps - Ramps connect a freeway to a freeway or a freeway to an non-restricted road. Ramps should not be used for turn lanes or at-grade intersections.

I also didn't define freeway, but I don't think there is any serious question of what roads are freeways: the freeway road type is reserved for limited access roads and limited access roads are freeways regardless of whether they carry a federal, state, or local designation. If I'm wrong about this please discuss.

-Harry

[flmbray]

Wow this is great - you guys are reading my mind as to what I hoped for from this forum. This thread is a great place to discuss how we are going to do it, as well as specific roads. When we get the Wiki page set up, though, that should be the place we keep track of what roads get what designations (it's a bit easier to find / navigate). I haven't had time yet to start on the Florida Wiki page yet, but there is one that I started for the Orlando area that I was going to use as a very rough template.

Regarding the designations, a few quick thoughts on your suggestions:

• As you say, I don't think we should strictly use the US/SR designations to decide major/minor since there are a lot of roads that are what I would consider "major" that are state roads - 436, 50, 414 come to mind.
• I think the type of road is better, and although it is a pretty good starting point, I also don't think we should have a strict definition. There are several roads I would consider "major" that are only two lanes in many areas - many of the SR-x0 roads are like this (SR-50, SR-60, etc).
• I've never thought of a gated neighborhood as "private road". I consider a "private road" to be a road that is limited access, but also is not residential unless it is dedicated to one particular family. I don't think this occurs too often in developed areas - mostly occurs in rural areas. It's interesting (and telling?) that the Map Legend doesn't even talk about them.
• Dirt road, Service Road, Parking Lot road - I all agree with (except Service Road could be used in additional circumstances, I think).

Although having a very strict and clean rule for what constitutes a major/minor highway would be ideal I think that it will lead to too many cases of "why isn't this really X", and the answer "because that's the rule" won't be satisfying. Nevertheless I agree that it makes sense to have a set of rules that can be justified and followed in a process flow, even if there are exceptions.

My personal opinion is that a freeway are those roads you would expect to see at when zoomed out, major highway is one that you would expect to see a bit closer in, and minor highways would appear with even higher zoom (yup, just how the map works!). I don't mean to say what you would "see with a camera" but more to answer the question "what's the main roads I would take to get from this part of the map to that part of the map". Primary Streets vs Streets should handle the routing once you get from "this part" to "that part", and should be based more on function than anything else. I can't think of any 3+ lane roads that I would consider a primary streets offhand but I wouldn't be surprised to come across a few.

Obviously that does leave a lot to judgement, but that's the whole point of leaving this decision to local managers - otherwise we could very easily describe rules for the entire US (and probably world) that would have already been defined by Waze community. I think the list of what is major, minor, primary, can have guidelines such as those you have proposed but there will always be exceptions, as you also seem to imply.

To that point, I had also come up with some guidelines on the Orlando page I reference above. I duplicate most of those below for convenience.. note that this isn't a specific set of rules but concepts that guide an AM in one direction or another (so read the "=" sign as "leads you to..." instead of "is"):

• Only (or "almost" only) uses on-/off-ramps = Freeway
• US Interstate designation (I-4, I-10, etc) = Freeway
• Physically Divided by 5m or more = Major Highway, Minor Highway, or Primary Street
• Inter-city (or could say "inter-county", perhaps) = Major Highway, Minor Highway
• Has an SR designation = Major Highway, Minor Highway
• Has a CR designation = Minor Highway, Primary Street
• Primary purpose is to provide access to business/residential streets AND is thought of as a primary conduit and/or is 2+ lanes in each direction = Primary Street
• Residential (zoned strictly residential, = only has homes) = Street
• Other?? = Street

One concern I had with my own list is that it can lead to roads that would "change type" in the middle... for example, I have coded Orange Blossom Trail (US 441) as a major highway, but made it a minor highway in the area of Apopka where it is "thinner", but I'm really dissatisfied with that decision. I think we should have a guideline governing how and when roads change from one type to another, even if the physical layout of one part of the road is inconsistent with the guidelines. I'm just not sure what that guideline should be... As a first thought, a road shouldn't switch from a higher designation to a lower designation for a span of any less than (??) miles? (Distance seems like a non-satisfactory answer here.)

I hear your argument about the 'Avoid Highways' and I can say out of personal experience - if you turn this option on you are asking for routing trouble, and almost makes the navigation unusable except as a fun experiment in testing "how long can it take me to get home while still following directions". I can't wait for Waze dev to allow you to specify the specific types of roads to avoid, but I don't think we should design our roads to prevent problems with this option.

[flmbray]

So... to bring this back to Florida-specific topic... Let's identify the Freeways... this list should be fairly easy, don't expect much argument on these, and I doubt there are any corrections to be made to the Waze maps here, although I haven't actually looked!

• I-10 (Tallahassee - Jacksonville)
• I-4 (Tampa - Orlando - Daytona)
• I-75 (Gainesville - Tampa - Ft Lauderdale)
• I-95 (Jacksonville - Miami)
• I-295 (Jacksonville Ring)
• I-275 (Tampa - St Pete)
• I-595 (I-75 Extension into Ft Lauderdale)
• Florida Turnpike (Ocala - West Palm Beach)
• SR-528 "Beachline" (Orlando - Cape Canaveral)
• SR-408 (Orlando)
• SR-429 "Western Beltway" (Orlando Ring, West)
• SR-417 "Eastern Beltway" (Orlando Ring, South & East)

Any disagreements?

[jasonm128]

I don't mean to crash your party since I'm not actually a Florida AM but I've been doing a bunch of editing in the Florida Keys after going on vacation there and I wanted to get some local input. The entire Keys was basically untouched basemap import (except that some work had been done in the Key West area) so I started with cleaning up the Overseas Highway (aka US-1). I've already fixed up the physical layout (unsplitting when needed, fixing direction, removing gratuitous junctions, nodes and driveways) from Key Largo out through Marathon to the Seven Mile Bridge but I haven't fixed the naming or road type yet.

Currently, some parts are major highway and some are minor highway. Based on the guidelines above (which I agree with BTW) the entire length should be minor highway. However, since it's the ONLY highway in the area, this somehow didn't feel right and I was tempted to make it all major highway even though a lot of it is only two lanes (one each direction). Do any locals have a feel for which they would expect it to be?

Another minor question: This part of US-1 is apparently also SR-5 (according to wikipedia) but it is unsigned and there are already two other "bigger" names for the road. Would you want me to add State Route 5 when I fix the naming?

[flmbray]

Hi Jason, welcome! There's no requirement to be an 'actual' Florida AM here - it's intended for Florida issues, which clearly this is.

Believe it or not, I've lived here for 21 years and I've never been to the Keys. So I'm not familiar with that portion of the state's roads. As this forum isn't even a week old, we don't have a lot of participation yet (I'm hoping it ramps up) so you may or may not get a response from someone more familiar.

Based on your description, though, as well as my personal gut feeling, I think it would suffice to keep it as a minor highway, and in fact I think the entire length should be classified the same (minor highway). That is (although I hate to use this as a benchmark) consistent with the designation in Google (yellow/minor instead of orange/major).

I understand your desire to classify as a major highway, since it is the "only way" to get from here to there, but in this case, I see no reason to classify it as a major highway simply because there are no other roads around. If that were the guideline, then pretty much every dinky road in Nebraska would be a major highway (although I'm sure many Nebraskans would support that!) My official recommendation in absence of anyone more familiar at this point would be to use your best judgement.

As for the naming - that's another topic I've been wanting to discuss and just haven't gotten to it... Quickly stated, I would like the name that appears on the map (the primary name of the road) to match the local signs. As a local example (which most people reading this probably won't be familiar with) is Orange Blossom Trail... for some reason, this road has North, West, South designations along various parts of it's length. But it is nowhere close to being consistent... There are parts that are labeled "South OBT" that are north of other parts labeled "North OBT" (I think because the N/S designation switches at or near a county border). This isn't just on Waze maps, but on Google maps as well as the "official" County GIS maps! And yet nowhere that I can think of (there probably are some places - I haven't taken time to actually check) do any street signs (directional or plain street labels) actually refer to the N/W/S labels - they all just say "Orange Blossom Trail".

Specifically for your US-1/SR-5 naming issue, I think the "How to label and name roads" page on the Waze wiki seems to lend some guidance that would imply that you should leave it as simply "US-1":

NOTE: All roads in our base maps came with the names as defined in the US TIGER dataset.

However, you might notice a few problems with the original road names: Some of the names are not the 'common' names (usually, waze will display the 'name' of the hwy while most people know this hwy by its number)

On other examples, the same highway will have a different name on each side (for example, US Hwy 101 going North, and Bayshore Fwy going South).

Some roads actually have two 'common' names (for example, the NJ Turnpike is also I- 95 and both are relevant names), but currently we can only display one name per road.

For all these issues, we ask that you currently leave the situation as is. We are working on a few fixes, that will automate the proper naming and also allow multiple names for each segments (with a 'Primary' name as the one being displayed, but other names that bring up the same search results).

I'm not sure how old that advice is. I don't think much could be hurt by adding the SR-5 designation as an alias name (using Cartouche) but I think there are bigger fish to fry.

Anyway, I hope some of this helps and gives a "local's" input, even if I'm not "that" local!

[HarryFromMarydelDE]

Everybody helping edit Florida roads is welcome here, especially if you have more experience with the roads in question than we do. I haven't been to the keys either, so I'm another person somewhat guessing at the answer. I definitely think that the surrounding roads should be taken into account when deciding what to classify a road as, a road that would be a major highway in a rural area might only be a minor highway or less in another area. Some state highways back home in Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland don't even have a line in the middle in some portions, but would probably still count as a minor highway since they are surrounded by roads that can barely fit two cars going opposite directions (some of which could probably count as primary streets in their areas given their importance to local transportation).

Having said that, I think US-1 could probably stay as a minor highway. It is definitely THE highway for the keys, but the keys themselves (unless I'm mistaken) don't have a lot in the way of anything but streets. So if you classified it as a major highway you are in effect leaving a gap in the road classifications. I don't know if that's actually a bad thing, but I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to avoid it except for a good reason. I'd really like to hear the opinion of someone more familiar with the area.

-Harry

[HarryFromMarydelDE]

As for the naming - that's another topic I've been wanting to discuss and just haven't gotten to it... Quickly stated, I would like the name that appears on the map (the primary name of the road) to match the local signs. As a local example (which most people reading this probably won't be familiar with) is Orange Blossom Trail... for some reason, this road has North, West, South designations along various parts of it's length. But it is nowhere close to being consistent... There are parts that are labeled "South OBT" that are north of other parts labeled "North OBT" (I think because the N/S designation switches at or near a county border). This isn't just on Waze maps, but on Google maps as well as the "official" County GIS maps! And yet nowhere that I can think of (there probably are some places - I haven't taken time to actually check) do any street signs (directional or plain street labels) actually refer to the N/W/S labels - they all just say "Orange Blossom Trail".

I agree that when known we should use the name shown on local street signs. (Although I use the county GIS for areas I can't actually get to to check.) The wiki suggests somewhere using the name used by the post office (which will usually be the one from the county GIS) as the primary road, but this was old advice that specifically said it was to aid address searches. It has been established that Waze currently does not use it's own map for US address searches, but instead gets the address GPS coordinates from Bing, so I think that advice can be considered suspect or at least out-of-date. Since the street signs will be what a driver is seeing I think that is what we should use on the map. This is even more true now that Waze uses spoken street names. I also think that naming policy should get it's own thread, but I think that there are other priorities right now. I have been leaving the names as-is unless I know for a fact that they're wrong or I get an update request asking for the name to be changed.

-Harry

[HarryFromMarydelDE]

• I've never thought of a gated neighborhood as "private road". I consider a "private road" to be a road that is limited access, but also is not residential unless it is dedicated to one particular family. I don't think this occurs too often in developed areas - mostly occurs in rural areas. It's interesting (and telling?) that the Map Legend doesn't even talk about them.

The wiki defines a private road as

A road that is not open to the public. You can drive on it, physically, but there may be legal (and physical) restrictions or it is a privately maintained road on private land.

Gated communities have both legal and physical impediments to access, so I think that they qualify. However, my classifying any community with a "No outlet" sign as a private road is probably going overboard, and is more based on controlling map display than anything. For routing purposes especially, I think that it is important that gated communities be marked as private roads. Lots of local gated communities have multiple access points that Waze will consider a short cut unless they are marked as private. Even marked as private, Waze keeps trying to send me through Isleworth instead of down Main Street in Windermere. I'm doing an experiment with this and will report the results back here and on the main forum as well as soon as it posts to the live map.

Although having a very strict and clean rule for what constitutes a major/minor highway would be ideal I think that it will lead to too many cases of "why isn't this really X", and the answer "because that's the rule" won't be satisfying. Nevertheless I agree that it makes sense to have a set of rules that can be justified and followed in a process flow, even if there are exceptions.

I think that we should have a fairly strict rule for the default, but lots of flexibility for exceptions. The exceptions can be discussed here and then posted to the wiki when decided on. That way the wiki won't have to list every single road, just the ones that could trip people up. Listing every road probably wouldn't be a problem with highways, but might become cumbersome with streets/primary streets.

One concern I had with my own list is that it can lead to roads that would "change type" in the middle... for example, I have coded Orange Blossom Trail (US 441) as a major highway, but made it a minor highway in the area of Apopka where it is "thinner", but I'm really dissatisfied with that decision. I think we should have a guideline governing how and when roads change from one type to another, even if the physical layout of one part of the road is inconsistent with the guidelines. I'm just not sure what that guideline should be... As a first thought, a road shouldn't switch from a higher designation to a lower designation for a span of any less than (??) miles? (Distance seems like a non-satisfactory answer here.)

I think distance is a pretty good guideline, at least it's objective. I don't have a problem with the road type changing as long as it's not changing back and forth; having a distance standard will help prevent that. And of course, people can always come here if they aren't sure or think there should be an exception.

I hear your argument about the 'Avoid Highways' and I can say out of personal experience - if you turn this option on you are asking for routing trouble, and almost makes the navigation unusable except as a fun experiment in testing "how long can it take me to get home while still following directions". I can't wait for Waze dev to allow you to specify the specific types of roads to avoid, but I don't think we should design our roads to prevent problems with this option.

Avoid Highways is definitely basically non-functional now. "Avoid freeways" would probably be a better option given both the current state of the map, and the fact that freeway is the road type that is most objective.

-Harry

[jasonm128]

On the classification issue, I agree that it should all be the same type. It varies from one lane (each direction) with a double-yellow line to two lanes with a median big enough that it needs to be split. There are one or two intersections with real ramps but the vast majority are at grade with a stop light or just a stop sign for the side street. So I'll go with minor highway everywhere as that seems to be the most logical choice.

Specifically for your US-1/SR-5 naming issue, I think the "How to label and name roads" page on the Waze wiki seems to lend some guidance that would imply that you should leave it as simply "US-1. [snip] I don't think much could be hurt by adding the SR-5 designation as an alias name (using Cartouche) but I think there are bigger fish to fry.

Regarding naming, I definitely can't leave it completely alone because what's there is a mess. It alternates between "Overseas Hwy", "US Hwy 1" and sometimes even "Overseas Hwy 1" with no alt names. Some of the bridges are even named individually. Since all the local addresses are given as "Overseas Hwy", my plan was to use that for the primary name with "US Hwy 1" as an alt name according to the general national guidelines. For bridges that are already specifically named, I was planning to make the bridge name primary with "Overseas Hwy" and "US Hwy 1" as alt names. Since adding an extra alt name is a bit of extra work and it was wasn't there before, I think I'll leave SR-5 out for now and someone can add it in later when the alt name handling in the editor improves.

Sound good?