Level 3 - California - Sherman Oaks

Map Editors Community United States US Unlock And Update Requests
1

The issue is incorrect road types for several segments.

The following small residential road segments are improperly typed as “Minor Highway.” They should be “Street”. They’re simply not wide enough to be typed higher.

Link: https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lon=-118.46142&lat=34.13973&s=70753559&zoom=4&segments=4624043,4810012,4810013,4810011,4810010,4597237,4812599,4664510,4761546,4646299,4623292,4758343,66182828,77244020

Looking north of the map area, you’ll notice that actual boulevards—with traffic lights, multiple lanes in either direction, 35-mph speed limit, etc.—are typed as “Minor Highway.” The segments in the relevant area (many which don’t have so much as a center yellow line!) should not be considered on par with these true “minor highway” streets, and should be re-typed to their proper classifications. A photo has been attached illustrating one such traffic-light/multiple lanes of traffic “Minor Highway” intersection. The other attachment includes segments in the relevant area.

Editing the segments requires a Level 3 editor; could someone please help?

I also outlined the area to make it easier to find and attached an annotated diagram to illustrate the aforementioned. Thank you so much.

2

I’ve passed this to senior editors. The main issue is we follow CalTrans CRS maps for functional classification. Your area is here.

The city of LA has apparently done some reclassification of roads that hasn’t made it to the CRS maps.

Do you have anything besides the size of the street as a source for downgrading the level? Also, if downgraded, it would think it’s to Primary Street rather than Street.

3

Thanks for the link to the CRS. Very helpful to see where the “minor highway” type may have come from, really unfortunate the state hasn’t updated it since LA’s reclassification.

Here’s a December 2016 report by the LA Department of Transportation (more recent than the CRS linked above which is 2011), conducted very likely in response to these segments being used as “minor highway”-type roads. On pages 11-12, there’s a “roadway classification” column for each of the relevant roads, where on 9-10 LADOT also has found that several segments in the area are over max threshold for their classification (up to 461% of max threshold in one case!). The attached image includes the relevant tables.

Link: http://sp1.actemarketing.com/CampResource/5L0VGO5BIRCU1ARK/1/text.pdf

Specifically, Saugus Ave from Valley Vista to Rayneta (Waze segment IDs 4624043, 4810011, 4810013) is classified as “local,” Rayneta Dr from Saugus to Woodcliff (ID 4597237) is classified as “local,” Woodcliff Rd from Rayneta to Mulholland (IDs 4646299, 4761546, 4664510, 4812599, 4623292, 4758343, 66182828, 77244020) is classified as “local,” and Woodcliff from Valley Vista to Deerhorn (IDs 4810012, 4810010) is classified as “collector.”

Judging by the (outdated) CRS compared to the 2016 DOT report, it looks like DOT downgraded a lot of the classifications in the area since 2011, seeing as most classes showed as “local” in the December 2016 report (save for segments 4810012, 4810010, which are collectors).

Could you pass the DOT document on as well? Thank you so much for your help.

4

I did a little more digging, and it looks like LA City Council put out a few maps in September 2016: https://planning.lacity.org/documents/policy/mobilityplnmemo.pdf

I hope this is helpful.

Looks like they downgraded nearly everything south of Valley Vista in the relevant area to “local” designation (except for the collector on a few segments of Woodcliff Rd). The map I’m referencing is on page 22 of the planning doc.

The gray-colored roads are “Local/Other Streets” (thick grey is I-405) green is “Collector Streets,” and blue are the Avenue/Highways.

You can also go to http://navigatela.lacity.org/navigatela/ (Bureau of Engineering/Public Works Dept) if you’d like to verify this information. They even break it down segment-by-segment (I attached a sample).

5

Thanks for that table information, UEFL, we’ll take a closer look at it, and the streets involved. We’re well aware of NavigateLA and are evaluating it for application these classifications.

In the Santa Monica Mountains, we currently have the problem that there are just too many people trying to get back and forth between the Valley and the City each day, with nowhere near enough major road surface to handle the load. Traffic spills over, GPS apps or no. We’ll look at reclassifying the area, but you should be aware that the road classification in Waze will have very little effect on the majority of routing through that area. Locally, Waze routes by the travel speed of the road, ignoring all normal road typing. To put that another way, in an area like yours, it looks for the roads which are least-backed-up, Street, Primary, or Minor Highway. Road types only come in to play in routing for longer routes.

Please be aware that, under federal guidelines, classification of roadways involves more than their physical size or traffic-volume capability; it also has to do with their connectivity between various areas, among other, lesser, requirements.

The state receives the suggested classifications from localities and works with them to satisfy a federal standard involving many different aspects of their usage, which then has to be approved by the federal agency involved. This is why getting the state maps updated is a molasses-slow process. In addition, states are only technically required to reevaluate their maps on a 10 year cycle, but most, including ours, do it continually these days.

LADOT embarked on a reclassification project several years ago, which re-imagined the whole process, and doesn’t precisely align with the federal standards, which is a part of why you see the comments you do in that table, and differences on the map. They’re trying to back-impose classifications on to streets which have long served a particular purpose, but more recently have become even more congested, as the city acquires about 100,000 new drivers annually. The only real solutions are to get people out of cars, get people carpooling, or build more roadway. In LA, any of those options is a dim prospect, unfortunately.