We have a Level2 user that is wanting to discuss railroad segments and current guidelines found in the https://www.waze.com/wiki/USA/Road_types#Railroad. Starting this thread for documentation of the suggested changes and responses for or against the suggested changes. More to follow. Hoping this is the right place to start the thread.
[mod=“Moderator”]Moved to US Wiki Discussion
Hello, I am the level 2 editor that Spedracr told you about. The forum says railroad should not have a name, but I think it’s a good idea to display the number of tracks on railroad. Normally more tracks(except train yards) means more frequent trains. This can help wazers to avoid the dangerous railroad crossing and even saving time. Another feature I thought about is the adding more features to railroad crossings like train frequencies level 0-10, 0 means railroad is abandoned and 10 means like passenger trains come every 5 minutes. Could you please accept my opinion?
I support changing the rules to allow adding the name of the railroad as the street name of railroad-type segments, but details like number of tracks and train frequency are not appropriate for the street name.
If anywhere, details like that should live on the railroad crossing alert object. This would be a new feature - you can request it as described in here: https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=78952
But really, the “approaching a railroad crossing” alert is disruptive enough, I don’t personally think adding the number of tracks is helpful. It will become evident when you get to the crossing.
As for frequency, where would we get the data? That is an interesting idea—although I don’t think putting it in an alert makes sense, it might be helpful for routing purposes, though that would also be a new feature.
If it is decided to start naming the railroad segment to the owner of the track(s) what if anything are we doing with the city field? Leaving it set to NONE even if the track segment is inside a city limit? Or using the same standards we use for road segments?
Would this be for in use tracks only or would we also do this for abandon tracks that show no use in years? Possible even paved over at road crossings with no signs or markings on the road.
How would one go about figuring out who owns the tracks if we are going to name based on owner?
Would this be an update as you see them as other things like UR’s PUR’s, Etc would have a higher priority?
I also do not see a need for the number of tracks or train frequency in the segment name. I remember seeing signs at a railroad crossing that would say how many tracks if more than one. Might be a regional thing not 100% sure.
As Sketch said the other ideas would be feature request that need to go to Waze for review.
This is not generally that hard to find in my experience. In Louisiana, LaDOTD’s parish maps show railroad names.
Definitely wouldn’t be a priority item, not even a little bit. Just a “do it if you want to for some reason”, and more importantly, “don’t delete work that others have done on naming just because the wiki says ‘no’.”
I think adding names is fine, but agree with Sketch that it should only be the name of the railroad track and nothing else. The alert is already a pretty significant indicator of it and you already have the visual of the track on the map
Like stop lights, Waze has already calculated the average delay on a particular day/time, so it should already be factored into routing.
Sometimes the wazers get comfused by this: Should I go to railroad crossing? Will the train come and waste my time? The solution might be what I said. Instead of alerting like “approaching railroad crossing”, “Approaching 2 track railroad crossing with frequency rate of 6 in scale of 0-10.” As I said, 0 means abandoned, 1 means trains almost never come, 2 means you can rarely watch train, 3 means sidetrack-no frequent train, 4 means there is a chance of train is in your way, 5 means just like average(frequency of 2 hours/train) 6 means train is likely to get in your way, 7 means like the railroads in downtown of medium city, 8 means it’s very dangerous and high chance of train getting in your way, 9 means just like 4 track railroad crossing in big cities like chicago, 10 means like passanger trains crossing every 5 minutes
For example, scale of 1 could be like https://waze.com/ko/editor?env=usa&lat=33.35411&lon=-84.76076&s=4724317224406&zoomLevel=15&segments=515161349, scale of 8 could be like https://waze.com/ko/editor?env=usa&lat=33.74586&lon=-84.39870&s=4724317224406&zoomLevel=17&segments=82828225
As said before this would be a Waze HQ feature or routing enhancement. Nothing that we as editors have any control over implementing or designing.
As said before this would be a Waze HQ feature or routing enhancement. Nothing that we as editors have any control over implementing or designing.
Hi mins8226 - thanks for sharing your ideas with us.
In Vermont I believe we already have all RR segments in WME with the name of the railroad. I think this is a good idea (naming RR segments) especially for public safety. While every RR crossing is supposed to be identified with a sign with a crossing ID and number to call, in the event a Wazer were to encounter an issue with a grade crossing having the name of the RR on the map may help with conveyance of info, just like having a street / highway name. (It does not show in the Waze livemap, but does show in the version of the Waze app I have.)
When we map the RR crossings that have multiple tracks we place an alert at the first track a Wazer will encounter - I think the guidance suggests something like placing it where the rubber will meet the rails. Of course, that does not show up in the Waze client, but does indicate where a Waze editor has noticed multiple tracks. To be honest, if there were a crossing with say 4 or more tracks, I would probably be inclined to maybe draw in WME multiple RR segments, like the first and last a Wazer would drive over (which would also be where the RRC alert would be placed in WME). Otherwise we typically only draw one RR track segment in WME, even if there are say two parallel tracks.
I’m not a fan of doing something like adding info to the name to indicate something else, like the number of tracks, or frequency of trains - that’s a hack.
Maybe a better version of the RR crossing alert could include metadata that we can add in the alert indicating how many tracks - just like what it says on the signs when you are approaching the crossing. As someone mentioned above, that’s something you’d have to suggest to Waze, as they’d have to do a few things to make that happen: enhance the database to be able to store that info, enhance WME so we could enter that info, and enhance the Waze client to display (and maybe even announce) it.
The frequency issue is in fact being automatically addressed already by Waze. Near where I live there is a fairly major road that crosses a couple of tracks that are on the west end of a large rail yard. Often trains crawl through there at a snail’s pace, or even just sit there blocking the road. Although that can often be a shorter way to get between two points, often Waze doesn’t suggest it because it knows about the extremely long delays there.
Topic moved to the US Wiki Discussion forum since this is a discussion about the US Wiki and not the global one.
I’m not totally against naming railroad segments, but beyond those already allowed to be named in the wiki I don’t see the value in it from a driver’s perspective. I already know there is a track there between the track that is mapped and the RRC alerts. Beyond that, I don’t care who owns or runs them. It doesn’t affect my navigation and isn’t relevant as a “landmark” since the names aren’t at the crossings to reference.
As for the rest of the recommendations, they should go in the Waze Suggestion Box and not the segment names.
I think the idea of this is good but using the name isn’t the best way to solve it. This all boils down to what is the best route to your destination, which is what Waze is known/made for. The route you get from Waze is in theory the best route and takes this into account. Like John said, if its a railroad with a consistent schedule, the cross times are already being used. For inconsistent railroad schedules, it would be awesome to have some sort of partnership or data feed for Waze to collect and use in route calculations. But as others said, this is a Waze HQ feature or routing enhancement
And as a Chicago resident, I wouldn’t label our railroads as dangerous 
Adding names to railroads would do no harm other than possibly create clutter. But railroads are irrelevant to searches, so adding city names would accomplish nothing except create possible smudges.
The number of tracks does not correlate well with the amount of activity, at least in my area. And assigning a value based on the amount of activity would be highly subjective, with the potential to create disagreements among editors. The routing server already knows where and when traffic is slow, so users are already routed away from busy crossings.
Finding a railroad name is usually easy. Most crossings have small signs, usually visible in SV, with the name of the railroad and a phone number than can be used to report emergencies.
One advantage to having the railroad name is knowing who to contact in the case of a vehicle blocking the crossing. Granted, this information should be on one of the crossbucks, but there’s still some rationale towards having the information there.
In terms of # of tracks, i don’t see how that provides value other than knowing how soon i can start hitting the gas again. Another aspect is that while some of this proposal may make sense to us because we are editors, the general population would have no context as to what the numbers represent. Knowing it’s a freight line vs a passenger line may give some clue as to how long the crossing may be blocked, but a single track line could represent a 20 min delay in some cases while a 4 track crossing might be for passengers and only be stopped for a minute or so.
If you have to know when should we avoid the RR, what about reporting train from wazers? Wazers report the train by clicking railroad crossing and click on “train there” ,and waze should avoid that path going to that RR. Then when train is gone, the wazers can click “unreport” and waze will back on routing there. How to attract the wazers: If they were stopped for over 10 seconds at front of RR, message pops up in waze, “stuck by train? Report train to help others” and they should click it.
This is also something the community has no decision power on. You can post it in the Waze Suggestion Box and see if Waze staff picks it up.