If you’ve ever driven in Cork city, you may know there are many streets that require pulling in for oncoming traffic, and mounting the kerb to get around is the norm.
But there are some streets that are even narrower, and usually require slowing to a crawl (in an average sized car) just to pass parked cars or other obstacles. Some are not much more than an alleyway, and I’m surprised they’re considered roads at all.
I’ve tried setting some of these to “Narrow Street” type - I know the UK guidelines say not to use this, but looking at the thread there seems to be no consensus. I think it would be good if we actually try it out to see if it is a useful classification or not.
These are the type of roads I wouldn’t recommend to my worst enemy for driving through, but Waze often suggests them for routing. I suspect some of that might be down to insufficient speed data for these roads, probably because no one uses them besides for local access.
And I’m the type who has no qualms about driving down narrow country roads with grass down the middle - I wouldn’t consider them the same kind of nuisance.
I’m not a fan of the “narrow street” at all, but for some roads that are so extremely tight that it might not even be possible to drive down them, I set them to “private road”. That stops anybody being routed through the road, but still allows users to be routed onto them if their destination is on them.
Do use the private road type with caution for roads that are not technically private though.
We do map any road that’s a legal road that can be driven along. One rule of thumb I use is to see if there are street view images of the road. If the street view camera car couldn’t get down the road or thought it didn’t really count as a road, then it might not be worth mapping.
Narrow streets have caused problems in the UK, its a regular occurrence finding normal roads that have been changed to narrow street and then cause really bad routing issues…e.g. 5 mile detours between places that are a mile apart. When I say “normal” road, this might mean a single track road where only one car can pass, or as you say a road where you might have to mount a kerb to pass a car, or where a Range Rover might struggle but a Fiesta would be ok.
My understanding is that narrow street should only be used for alleyways where a car cannot drive, but a motorcycle legally can. Any road where a car can legally and physically drive shouldn’t be classified as narrow street.
I think USA Waze editors had a big issue with it, I think on the US server, they changed the name “narrow street” to “alley” on WME.
I agree with both of those: if “I could walk down this or maybe ride a bicycle but I’d only drive down it if my life depended on it and there was a house on fire”, then either don’t map it at all, or “narrow street” or maybe “private road”. If “I could drive down this, but it’s a bit narrow and I wouldn’t drive an articulated lorry down here”, then “street”.
If they’re narrow enough to squeeze down, that’s mappable. Users who have a large vehicle might change their minds at the entrance and will then get a different route from Waze.
But the definition of a narrow street from the original thread says they are “drive-able, but hard to access by car” - not impossible to drive by car.
The one time I attempted going up 98 Street it was mostly at around 10-20 km/h as it was so ridiculously tight trying to pass parked cars (my car’s about 1,745 mm wide). I think it’s a valid situation where it should be penalised for routing purposes, since as I said before I don’t think it will get enough traffic data to determine an accurate driving speed.
Personally, I’d think naming something like Cat Lane (the other example) as a “private road” would be misleading, as it connects two streets and certainly isn’t private.
I’d be against using it for single track country roads, as they are usually a lot more forgiving in various ways.
I see Narrow Street being extremely useful for countries that have swarms of motorbikes on the roads (see Southeast Asia) but a pain for countries like Ireland.