bump on this thread. i agree this could use some serious word smithing. i’ve read that footnote a few times every time i visit the page and i still don’t know what it means. i’ve read it a few dozen times over the last year and i’m still lost. i would like to show editors a wiki that supports not junctioning every crossing, i think the wiki is trying to convey not creating short segments before an intersection but it’s not clear.
I agree clarification is needed; further, I believe a change in guidance is warranted.
The current text reads,
I believe this can be simplified a great deal by removing the “room for cars to back up” piece and possibly the “regular, scheduled train traffic” piece to ask, simply, whether there are destinations on at least one side of the crossing.
This should be supplemented with a note/word of caution on the effect that junctioning railroad crossings has on turn times at nearby intersections, and a warning to consider carefully whether to junction near any intersection with more than one outbound segment where turn times onto each of those segments varies significantly. At these intersections, the editor should consider whether the best solution is to add the junction along with a junction box to capture better turn times (in the case where traffic might back up behind the tracks, before the intersection).
This is not a great example, but ignore the AGC and pretend it’s a simple intersection, and this image would show an example where junctioning on the middle segment would only make turn times worse (in reality, I need to add a junction box here anyway to differentiate between straight and left turning traffic): https://www.waze.com/en-US/editor/?env=usa&lon=-89.99593&lat=29.86267&zoom=7
The reason: better ETA is not the only reason to junction railroads with roads. Road closures at railroad crossings, in my experience, are quite common. In such cases, the impact of closing an entire segment can be severe, and the negative effects from junctioning the segment are often minimal in this kind of setting.
If that road is closed at the crossing, it’s super simple to just close the short bit to the northeast and leave the long segment totally alone. The “room to back up” requirement would exclude so many crossings like this (which are really common given the tendency of highways to follow alongside railroads).
In other cases, where there are destinations on both sides of a crossing, outbound one-way closures can be used to the same effect.
Well it’s been a week, and no one has objected to the above suggestions (so far). I like them, and I know I’m not the only one concerned about keeping the ability to add RTCs from crossings either through WME or the app.
Current guidance seems to push towards not junctioning unless exceptions are met, and it might simplify matters a great deal to reverse that approach and instead draw attention to when removing the junctions would benefit the map.
