I’ve noticed lots of the Melbourne CBD Laneways are “private road” or “parking lot road” types (presumably to applied a suitable routing penalty and before “narrow road” type was created).
I also see on the Wazeopedia that the usage of “narrow road” type is still under consideration.
Would it be acceptable to change all the laneways to “narrow road” type or are the current types still suitable?
It depends. Narrow Street has a few rules around the use of it, the road needs to be narrow enough so that two cars in opposite directions cannot pass each other without slowing down or stopping, or in the case of one-way roads, it needs to be narrow enough that a car would need to slow down significantly (think walking speed) to traverse the road safely.
If it doesn’t meet this criteria, it should be represented as a Street as per the Wazeo. Private roads should only be used for private property.
As far as the road type itself goes, it still technically is under revision, and we’ll update the Wazeo description once we’re comfortable with the wording.
This is pretty much all of Melbourne CBD laneways. Should they be changed to “narrow road” type then? As they are currently either “private road” or “parking lot road” types.
It should be done on a case-by- case basis. I would not suggest any mass changes, but each individual one can be assessed by how it looks in WME Street View.
Mass changes were made in Sydney to every one that just said “Lane”, and there was a big problem. I only recently fixed them.
I think the difference between Private Roads and Parking Lot Roads is that private roads are under the control of a private entity, not a council or government. Parking lot roads can be ambiguous in that respect; that some are controlled by the local council. However, any speed limit posted for a private road is unlikely to be enforced (it is more an advisory even if it looks like a regular speed limit sign), whereas SLs in parking lot roads could be enforced (although I think rarely are).
Either way, both are clearly not intended for use by through traffic, as you say above.
MaccaBecca - That isn’t how Waze uses the Private Road type.
Ie. under control of private entity.
There are subtle differences between Parking Lot Road and Private Road that we should identify clearly to help other editors understand why we use them in different situations.
The problem with that statement, is the fact the distinguishing feature of PLR/PR roads is that one is designed to work with publicly usable roads and parking areas, and the Private road is designed to be for Private Property, or used in order to avoid the characteristics of a PLR interfering in normal routing (such as asking for fuel prices when stopped, etc.). The fact that these road types have been poorly defined in our Wazeopedia (i.e. having similar descriptions) means we should be looking at defining them more clearly, not taking them for law. In the case of Private Roads, the description should actually be closer to the road name itself, being Private.
Yes, assuming that a road type is obvious is a problem sometimes, however in this scenario, it is obvious and it should be defined properly. Otherwise we end up in situations like this thread asking for clarification because a road type is badly defined.