500-series county roads (an extension of the state route system) need to be identified as minor highways to make immediate routing work right. The TIGER base map import missed these completely, as I am finding them as streets in many parts of the state.
The remainder of county roads, or any other local roads that span multiple neighborhoods/subdivisions need to be identified as primary streets to make them stand out from subdivision/neighborhood streets. These were also missed by the TIGER base map import, as they are just streets in any unedited part of the state.
I agree that all other road types should be left as they are pending a new unification standard.
If you have examples of road type severely affecting routing, please provide them to me. Waze has asked the routing experts to provide any examples to them. Any changes to the routing engine is likely to consider any examples that we provide.
I had done a significant amount of editing in southern New Jersey in 2011 & 2012 before taking an extended break. I manually upgraded the CR Routes through almost all the counties from Burlington on south. I made the CR-5xx series “Minor Highway” & the CR6xx & CR-7xx series “Primary Street”. I’m back to working the state, mostly Burlington, Camden & Gloucester Counties. As I move around, I will continue to follow that pattern. Does anyone disagree with that method until standards are met?
I’ve been doing the same thing in Mercer, Monmouth, Middlesex, Union, Somerset Counties and am now pending Hunterdon County.
There’s been a little disagreement over the 500-series county roads, as many of them are largely unwidened 2-lane roads, and the base map didn’t pick them up as minor highways. But I have found some pretty deficient routing last fall in central NJ without them being minor highways, since primary streets are often ignored in the middle of long trips - or at least they used to be.
Also, the wiki’s description of a minor highway emphasizes more that the road is part of a statewide, or at least an inter-county route rather than its capacity. The 500 CRs often maintain continuity across county lines and even have control cities in other counties.
Major highways, on the other hand, appear to emphasize capacity more than route type, according to the wiki. SR-70 and SR-72 could be excellent candidates for major highways, even though rural parts of them are only 2 lanes. However, some US routes, like 206 through Trenton, are not so much. With major highways, we should probably also pay attention to what they connect to; they should end at a freeway or other major highway or at least branch out to multiple minor highways to avoid the dreaded patchwork effect.
So in summary, to me, minor highways are more about the presence of some kind of shield marker regardless of road capacity, while major highways are more about road capacity and improvements made for fast travel, regardless of shield type.