OK… I’d like that. Let’s work on the basics and get the skeleton going for the NJ Wiki. As we hear from Jon we’ll update different parts accordingly. Can you get in touch with me using chat? This way we can work on things a lot quicker.
Please clarify: Road speed won’t matter to routing? All that will matter is road types?
OK, I fumbled that a bit. Posted speed limits won’t matter as a classification device.
Hi Jon,
Did you get a chance to look at http://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php/To_Do_-_New_Jersey?
What do you think?
No, had a real busy weekend and I’m gonna be stuffed this week. Maybe next weekend.
OK… No big deal. 
Thanks
It seems to me that the name of the road type “minor highway” is misleading, at least here in New Jersey - but I would imagine throughout much of the United States as well. As such, I’ve observed quite a bit of disagreement in NJ as to how this type of road should be used.
On one side, the word “highway” implies that it should be a road that consistently maintains higher speed limits than those of ordinary streets, especially in more urban areas, but perhaps not quite as fast as their major highway counterparts. By that school of thought, we should avoid assigning to any kind of road that would have a 25 or 30 mph speed limit or roads that have periodic speed restrictions, like 25 mph school zones, regardless of the size of the road or the type of marker it may have (county, state, US, etc).
However, according to US wikis posted here, it seems to me that the minor highway designation on Waze has less to do with speed limits and other fast-travel improvements as it has to do with being part of a longer-distance intercity/inter-county network, such as the state route system. One could even argue the 500-series county roads make up a statewide network since they always maintain continuity over county lines, though few are improved little more than just 2-lane roads with modest speed limits, especially in urban areas.
My personal dilemma here is that many of these little-widened state and 500-series routes, even though not as fast as their major highway and freeway counterparts, are vital thoroughfares in many parts of the state, even though they are not as fast as we would imagine when we think of the word “highway.” As a result, many editors will simply downgrade them to primary streets, citing reasoning that a city street should never be any type that implies “highway” regardless of what kind of marker it may have. The problem with this however, is that it completely messes up routing in the area, as to my understanding, primary streets are not used by the routing engine except for navigating between your origin/destination and the nearest “highway” segment.
I understand that in many of the state’s urban areas, such roads are totally undesirable for through navigation, and that a lot of people might see it as no loss for such roads to be ignored for through-navigation, but in the vast majority of the state’s less urban areas, these 2-lane state and inter-county 500-series roads are vital thoroughfares, that actually are faster despite their sections of reduced speeds, than having to detour way out of your way to find the nearest non-2-lane-road major highway.
I agree as well. We now have NJ wiki page where we explain these and put links to the NJDOT site.
There you will find detail road web. Please take a look at it.
Also, we need to find a way to let other NJ users know about this page.
This was discussed at great length at the US Meetup over two presentations from different Champs where we identified two key issues - 1) The impact that the Waze Road Type has on the Routing Engine (including how the point to point straight line distance vs the driving distance can eliminate road types from the calculation and cause routing to fail) and 2) the need for consistent Road Typing across the country (including where the line for the “Avoid Highway” option needs to be set).
Ehud, the founder of Waze, asked us to hold off on making any major changes at this point because they want to work on the Routing Engine first. Once they get back to us, there will be a national standard for Waze Road Types created by the Waze Champs.
The only thing that we figured out for certain is that just because a road is designated a “US Route/Highway” or a “State Route/Highway” it does not automatically get a specific road type (or a minimum road type).
Agreed,
Most of those CR roads are already been set as minor. Also, we did get multiple view points as well.
In some cases, if you choose avoid highway, Waze shouldn’t route you on highways, but what happens if the best option (perhaps only option) is the minor highway?
Do you have any time frame on when will they get back to you? In addition, what are your thoughts on those roads currently set as minor?
A while ago, the “Avoid Highways” Option avoided Minor, Major & Freeway - now it only avoids Freeway.
We haven’t heard anything back - But since it’s been almost 2 months since the meetup, and a month since we had the recap post, there are many things we need to follow up on (I’m writing a post about that next).
For the future, it all depends on what happens with the routing engine. Currently, based on the the way Waze routes, I’ve found that the best solution is to use US DOT (Federal) Functional Classification information - the definitions are controlled by the US DOT but each state has to make their own maps/reference guides/etc putting all the roads in that state into those definitions. The important thing is to look at the translation in the macro sense - entire states, several states or even the entire country as a whole. I’ve done mock-ups for a few states using different translation matrices to see what works and what doesn’t. However, this is all on hold until we get guidance from Waze.
Thank you for your insight.
On our NJ wiki page we have links to NJDOT site. Is that what you are referring?
We follow this as the standards for NJ. Please take a look at it let me what you think.
Thank you.
No, those are not Functional Classification Maps.
These are: http://www.state.nj.us/transportation/refdata/roadway/fcmaps.shtm
There was a change in 2009 that removed the distinction between Rural & Urban (http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/tsip/hseb/func_clas.html), so the NJ DOT maps haven’t been updated yet (10 year cycle), but will be soon.
Do you have a direct link for the ones you mention?
I would be greatly relieved if we were dealing with one standard instead of 50. When we start out as AMs, it’s natural to be focused on making “our own” state be the best we can. The moment we gain AM privileges in other states – with different rules – we start to recognize the problem. That’s why I’ve never been enamored with the 2-letter state abbreviations instead of using SR-xx nationwide.
See my post - I edited with links before you posted this.
We do need to get the entire country on one standard for each “task” in Waze (Road Typing, Landmarking, Road Naming, etc, etc). I disagree with you about the “SR-##” instead of state abbreviations for a few reasons. * A user with TTS off will see “SR-##” and may not understand what it means, NJ-##, FL-##, CT-##, etc are a bit easier to understand* It will let us deal with the different ways states refer to their roads (i.e. CT-## = “Route ##”, FL=## = “Highway ##” (?), LA-## - “Ell Ay-##”* Exit ramps at/near state borders will clearly define which roads are serviced by that exit* The possibility of state specific shielding But all that is a discussion for a different topic.
I doubt that will end this perennial discussion topic. Where Waze has collected info on segment speeds, and where routes aren’t too long, it would be nice if that info took precedence over road classification.
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Ok, there’s a lot of theoretical conversation here, and I, for one, appreciate it. I would like to see as much consistency over as wide of an area as possible.
However, that being said, we have immediate issues along many roads here in New Jersey that are severely affecting routing, here and now. The TIGER base map import didn’t recognize the non-500-series county roads at all anywhere. As a result, they are currently streets, unless someone fixed them. Unless we make them at least primary streets, they are completely dysfunctional in terms of routing.
I remember having a conversation with WeeeZer14 when I first started working on Waze maps last fall about anything less than the minor highway type being excluded for through routing for any trips more than a couple miles long. The reasoning for this was to limit the number of routes the routing algorithm would have to explore to find a route, the idea being that having to explore every single possible street for speed information would take un-useably forever. I think what most people don’t understand is that the difference between minor highway and primary street is more about how long of a route that road follows than it is about its speed capacities. Has this changed?
This is the main reason I keep saying that any road part of a statewide network, regardless of its speed capacity, needs to be at least a minor highway, at least until we can come up with better rules. Like the other county roads, the TIGER base map import also completely missed the 500-series inter-county roads, marking them as streets. Unless they were changed by someone to minor highway, they are severely messing up routing in their areas. The wikis that define what makes a minor highway clearly say that they’re not anywhere near as much about speed capacity as they are about being part of a wider network of routes. If that isn’t reason to make state routes and the 500-series inter-county routes at least minor highways, I don’t know what is. I mean, if we want to change this, we should have a separate conversation about it, and also see how it fits in nationwide, but in the meantime, they need to be minor highways for routing to work.
My main problem is that I keep coming across editors that keep changing many of these roads to primary street because they don’t feel the road meets their criteria for what they would imagine as a highway. This, in turn messes up the routing in the area; I’ve actually seen directions to places change to longer both distance and time-wise when these roads are demoted to primary streets, since they are no longer considered for through routing, regardless of their speed metrics. These improper changes also create a patchwork effect that both looks bad on the map and has been known to mess up routing. And the worst part is, if I try to fix it, some of these editors just change it back, telling me that a 2-lane urban road that goes through school zones, for example, should never be called any kind of type with “highway” in its name, regardless of how long a route it is part of. As a level 3 editor, I can’t level 5 lock disputed areas, and it makes it very difficult to manage my own areas if I have to get every disputed road like this level 5 locked.
So while I acknowledge that there may be a wider change to road types and their uses on the horizon and that the map may have to be changed again once a more permanent standard is developed, we also have a road network to keep functional here and now, and I think that’s what our goals here are right now.
(1) Don’t invest a lot of time right now, things are going to change.
(2) Some people follow the DoT. I think the wiki is not bad on this. I distill it down to: a major highway is a primary route for getting between towns, while a minor highway is a primary route for getting across a town. Primary streets are to get across a neighborhood or a city. Up where I live I would call a small county road between towns a primary street (it’s important but not a highway). On the other hand there is also the question of having a good local hierarchy. If, in a particular area, highway types are so rare that Waze is doing silly things in routing, some primary primary street should become a minor highway. So my personal opinion is sure, make some roads minor highways … as necessary.
The root problem is that the US Tiger import uses different classifications of road types - and they only use 3 types - 1) “S1100 - Primary Road” 2) “S1200 - Secondary Road” & 3) “S1400 - Local Neighborhood Road, Rural Road, City Street”. That explains why the basemap is WRONG. There were no Primary Streets created when the US Basemap was imported. This also explains why anything named “<Something> Hwy” was automatically upgraded to a Minor Highway even if it was a dead end street serving four houses.
Primary Streets need to be added to the map - and ALL translations we have been using for testing set both Minor & Major Collectors to Primary Streets.
The current CT Road Network routes nearly identically to Google, Garmin, and TomTom (when all things are equal - i.e. No Traffic), however we since we were testing various translations, we found a few flaws in the current translation and have a plan for the next tweak (a handful of upgrades from Primary to Minor), but that’s on hold till Waze figures out the routing engine.