Some great news - we have acquired a base map for all of Canada (thank you Canadian government!) and we will start loading them to the cartouche soon.
While this change is great, we realize this brings a few concerns to all the hard work you Canadian mappers have put into creating the waze maps thus far, so we wanted to explain how this process will be carried out which is why we’re sending this email.
Before we start, you should know that you can take a break for the next 2 days (Feb. 9-10th).
Any changes made after we start the process will not make it to the final version of the map, and we don’t want you to waste your time. We will also put a big red pop-up on the cartouche itself letting you know once we started our work.
The technical descriptions are below (and my apologies for sending such a long email… only read if you’re interested).
At the end of the process, Canadian maps will remain on http://www.waze.com/cartouche, and aerial images should be up and running in the background.
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Technicalities:
So how will the maps be combined? I will refer to two maps - the GOVT (new base map from the Canadian Government) and USER (existing cartouche maps)
- Since the GOVT has more segments, this will be the base for the new map.
- Each segment from the USER maps will be checked for a matching segment from the GOVT. If there’s a match, the the GOVT segment will keep its shape, but the driving direction, street name and ownership will be changed to match the USER segment.
- If there’s no match, the USER segment will be added to the new map with all characteristics (including shape).
- We will run a process that automatically recognizes highways. This process connects the highways to ramps and opens the driving directions. In this case, any prior info from the USER maps will be kept (info will be added only on new segments).
- We will run all the drives in Canada up to date; this will open driving directions on all segments that were not created until today and create routing connectivity (allowed turns).
- As for connectivity; the GOVT maps come with physical connectivity (nodes and their connection to the segments) but without routing connectivity (allowed turns). Unfortunately, we cannot move the routing connectivity from the existing cartouche when a new segment is involved. The only case where connectivity is kept is where two segments were not recognized completely and copied as is from the USER maps (3rd bullet above).
What should you expect?
- First of all, great new maps that will make it a lot easier for you to complete the work on your area.
- But… also some problems. Most likely you’ll notice a few places where there are duplicates, in case that the USER and GOVT segments were not matched properly, and so both were created in the final map. This is where we will need your help in editing and deleting the extra roads, so if you are not an area manager yet please let us know and we’ll be happy to see if you can join the area managers community.
- Routing might not be optimal; even if you got the routes around your house on a good level, you will notice a decrease. This is because we cannot copy the existing routing connectivity (see last bullet above).
As mentioned before, we will put the pop-up on the cartouche once the work begins (most likely in the next couple of hours or by tomorrow the latest) which will be your cue to take a break. I will also post this on the forums.
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Impatient to see the new maps and to see aerial working. This will help a lot! Thank’s