I just painstakingly renamed a large portion of road last night that had been named “Sr84” to “State Rte 84” (also E and W because it is separated).
I was looking over my work, searching for missed segments. Something just didn’t sit well with me about how the name looked. Then it dawned on me. We call it State ROAD 84, not ROUTE. Another major road here is State ROAD 7. I might be splitting hairs here, but it seems to me we should be using Road instead of Route for these. What are other Florida Area Managers doing about this?
Unfortunately, there is no perfect solution for our problem here in Florida. If you use “road” or “rd” instead of “rte”, then the segments will not get Shields, but TTS will work fine. For now, I’ve been sticking with State Route in favor of Shields, and route seems close enough anyway. I have also tried SR-## format, which works great for TTS and is visually closer, but you don’t get shields, and it does not follow the wiki standard, so I stopped using it. Again, for now, I’m just sticking with the wiki guideline by using route.
I did send a request to Waze asking them to support “Road” in Florida.
Another issue I’ve noticed in Florida, although maybe only Central Florida, is the use of “Co Rd #” for county roads. Unfortunately, TTS will say “company” not “county”, so I’ve been changing them to “CR-#”. TTS will work properly, no shields. I have not found any specific info in the wiki regarding county road naming.
We don’t really have County Roads down here, but I’m very familiar with their use in central Florida. Does Waze even have a county badge? I’ve not seen it before.
Badge support would definitely be nice for our state roads, I hadn’t really considered that part of it. Inconsistencies like this are very frustrating. “State Rte 84” will produce a nifty badge and probably be fine for most tourists since the signs rarely expand beyond “SR 84” or “SR-84”, but it will bother me knowing that it’s really “State Rd 84”.
Perhaps we can petition for the use of “State Rd ###” to produce a badge on the client? I’d really like to be 100% accurate on TTS. Of course, TTS already says “State Route” in place of “SR-”, which also frustrates me. BLARGH!
Regarding TTS for “SR-#” saying “State Road #” instead of “State Route #” in Florida, I received the following reply from Waze on April 9th, 2012:
In reply to your inquiry "State Route versus State Road":
We use an external service for TTS, therefore we depend on them on such issues.
We'll need to contact them in this matter and see if they can change it.
I will add it to the TTS task list.
Best regards,
Shirli
Well, at least that issue has made the task list. Perhaps it will be implemented.
Here’s my understanding of the possible options, correct me if I get something wrong:
“SR-###”, TTS will say “State Route ###”, no badge (this option is only for signage, not the actual road)
“State Rte ###”, TTS will say “State Route ###”, client will show badge
“State Rd ###”, TTS will say “State Road ###” (I think), no badge
Like I mentioned before, most of the actual signage here is either “SR ###” or “SR-###” or merely the symbol that shows a picture of the state with “###” in it.
If they get “SR-###” to have the right pronunciation here in Florida, I think we are halfway to our goal. At least our signage will be read correctly to users.
The other half of the goal needs to be either:
Allow “SR-###” to be used as the actual name and provide badging on the client.
or
Creating badging for “State Rd ###” in Florida.
Given that the wiki accepted format for State Route is “State Rte ###” instead of “SR-###”, I think option 2 will be easier to get accepted by developers. What do you think?
Since Indiana uses State Rd also, I asked them months ago to support the circle badges for State Rd (and State Rte fwiw). Last week krankyd wrote back to me and told me that this is surprisingly difficult, since it involves the developers adding a new script to pull the badges from the database. But he understands it’s wanted, and promises that it will be done eventually.
So, no need to change State Rd to anything else, as long as you’re willing to wait.
As for the pronunciation of SR, making that geographically specific probably introduces a layer of complexity they just can’t handle right now. If the right TTS is necessary, just spell it out.
Eufo, If you have not done so already, please consider sending a request to waze support asking for shields for “State Rd ###”. Maybe they will move the task up in priority if they here from more area managers.
Sticking with “State Rd ###” seems fine (at least TTS is correct), I’ve only recently started to experiment with “State Rte ###” to see how difficult it is to get shields upon request. The last time I tried to get shields for an interstate hwy, another AM came through and updated all of the segments and the shields have been lost ever since. It’s sad that shields don’t appear to be an automatic part of waze processing, and that edits to segments cause them to be dropped.
Good idea! Where did you send your request? I’ll do the same. It can’t hurt anyway.
That’s a little disconcerting that the badging is not automatic. I assumed it was a process that would automatically parse the name and then place the badge. I wonder if it’s a manual process, yuck!
The shielding process is still as Waze describes it ‘semi-automatic’. Technically Waze Support can manually shield any segment(s), if you can convince them to do it. The three shield types are Interstate, US Hwy, and ‘other’ (round, white, with black number).
Can’t you bypass the asking Waze by editing the geography of every road segment? I know it’s tedious to even do that but it’s something for people who are impatient.
This explains why no shields displayed when I edited a road to State Road 82. Today I learned that the term “state route” is used in other states. I still need to contact Waze about the I-75 shields in my area.
I’ve been trying to figure out the deal with 82 for a while now. I did quite a bit of fixing on I-75 and the shields are there in a few places now, but it’s still anything but flawless.
Yeah, I don’t know the problem with SR82. I remember changing the name of the road from Immokalee Road to SR82 (at the appropriate places) almost a year ago and I swear the shield for state roads popped up for it when the next map update rolled around. Then, I noticed the shields disappeared.
Also, I have been noticing I-75 shields have been returning in some areas. You can email Waze support about the problem but they usually want a link of the entire road in question. Last time I tried to get the direct link of ~30 miles of road, the map editor didn’t like it.
