As I understand the argument, the PLR type is only intended to support locations where multiple vehicles are expected to stop whose drivers may leave their cars (my attempt at summarizing what is being said). It is said that any use besides this should be considered a hack and should be discouraged.
Recently, as we all know, Waze raised community sensitivity to PLR applications via the swarm of Map Problems they flagged on PLRs throughout the country. Given this, and given the argument raised in the quoted thread –
Remove discussion of applications (i.e. apartment complexes, trailer parks, etc.)
Refocus the article on a stricter interpretation of “parking lot”
The current article’s support of PLRs for use in trailer parks, in particular, seems directly opposed to the arguments in the above-linked thread that campsite access roads – very similar to trailer-park roads – should not be of PLR type.
Perspectives welcome both here and in the Private Installations thread linked above (that is focused on campgrounds).
I believe this thread from 2015 was started shortly after someone made changes to the Wiki that we are discussing now. I did not read the whole thing, but it might be helpful to review it to be sure we are covering all the aspects we already discussed on this topic. They may even be contrary to what I am saying now. I would also not be surprised if back then I might have had a different opinion.
For full transparency, in the other thread DL mentioned above on campgrounds, I proposed that a campground is not simply a large parking lot and should be mapped as streets. The only segments that should be marked as PLRs are areas that are strictly rows of parking. Segments inside of a trailer park are like streets in front of houses. Both have driveways for cars which are not mapped. Both have cars driving through the area on their way to their final destination which has designated parking for their car. Most traffic in mobile home parks are limited to something often less than 25 MPH, but that does not define if it should be a street vs PLR. Cars generally don’t stop along the route until they reach their home (like traditional home neighborhoods). Therefore, I would not expect the traffic jam indications to be any different in mobile home parks as in traditional neighborhoods.
For these reasons, I believe segments in mobile home parks should be streets, except if there are branches of the roadway that leads to specific group/open parking. If there are security gates at the entrance(s), those should be set up like private installations where the interior segments are often just street road types.
IMO, apartment complexes could be considered big parking lots with groups of buildings. Cars are often grouped together in one or more rows, but from what I have seen, there are usually just a single roadway serving the through traffic and parking stalls. Some complexes have designated parking spots, but that are not necessarily adjacent to the address for which they belong (unlike trailer parks). I could argue that apartment complexes could be either streets or PLRs. However, if we set them up as PLRs, Waze routing will expect this is where people can park. Technically, people can also park on streets, but we aren’t suddenly resetting all streets to PLRs.
As for Alleys, I originally agreed with the concept of using PLRs for them, but now that Waze is trying to be more specific about PLRs being a place to park, we may need to rethink this.
The original debate was PLR vs PR. The PLR won in many states due to suppressing traffic jam data, but maybe we can find out from the states using PRs in alleys if they have any traffic jam issues. Maybe we can all move to PRs for alleys and be done with it.
Years ago we used to get a lot of URs for two different problems relating to alley ways - either Waze would send them down the alley instead of a street as a thoroughfare or it would send them to the front of their destination when parking was in the rear. The PLR was a good option at the time because most people used alleys for parking in our area (a lot of the older craftsman style houses have parking in the rear alley or garage additions in the rear). I would hope that if we eliminated PLRs as alleys we would still map them as another type like private roads, but I’m not sure what impact that would have in routing since a lot has changed since we converted them to PLRs in 2014.
Aside from traffic jam flagging, are there any other functional differences between a PLR and a PR currently? If not, then using PRs for alleys might be better, to avoid throwing yet more PLA URs.
Sounds good to me…my concern would be resistance from the perspective that the “private” in Private Road should literally mean “private”. We have snuck in rare exceptions to that perspective here and there (for such things like respecting “no through traffic” signs). But official use of PR for public alleys would collide head-on with it, unless it’s moderated in the last couple of years.
[EDIT: I found a recent post by the editor who at one time spoke forcefully for the perspective that “Private Road means Private Road”. It appears he has moderated his views on this, and would probably not object to the widespread use of PR for public alleys. Of course there could be others who would still need to be persuaded.]
Regarding alleys, as far as I know, in reality, they are handled differently in different regions, some of which I think use alternating PLR and PR to prevent multi-block alley routing for a destination on an alley… Other regions just don’t map alleys at all. I would want to hear from all the regions on what has and hasn’t worked before making an all-out pronouncement on alleys.
The resolution revolved around three key concepts:
The Waze app’s visible differences in line thicknesses between the Street type and the PLR/PR types should correspond with perceived relative significance.
Campsite access roads are really a kind of multi-destination driveway; they are not as significant as normal public residential streets, even within the context of a Private Installation.
Traffic-jam highlighting is unlikely to activate on a road where traffic is always slow; so, the PLR’s immunity to highlighting is not that useful for campsite access roads.
Currently, the Parking Lot Road entry in Road Types / USA explicitly supports use of PLR for trailer parks. In light of our resolution, this is not good. Trailer parks are similar to campgrounds – the trailer access roads, like campsite access roads, are effectively private driveways.
Therefore, I propose b to remove the “Trailer Parks” suggestion from the PLR wiki entry in the USA Road Types article; and (2) to add trailer parks, campsite access roads, and significant driveways to the bulleted list of useful situations in the subsequent Private Road entry.[/b] The “significant driveways” item would link to the driveways article.
Would this be for trailer parks without named streets? Depending on the definition of “Trailer Park”, some are residential areas with named roads and should be treated like any residential area. Other “Trailer Parks” are KOA type facilities and I agree with PR in that situation.
DL, not to be argumentative, but I think the key concepts you noted were only part of the issue. However, I agree that we have identified a consensus from that thread that Private Road type is the best choice for mapping campsite access roads.
I support changing the Parking Lot Road entry in Road Types as you listed.
I also agree many people don’t know the difference between a Mobile Home Park and a Trailer Park, and they also don’t understand that in some cases the facility will serve both. Maybe it would be enough for us to clarify with the comment on short term guests in my proposal below.
I have seen neighborhoods with Mobile Homes that are not private, but because the lots only have mobile homes people assume they are a Mobile Home park. The difference is if the home owner also owns their own land or not. The private Mobile Home parks typically own the land and the home owner leases that land from the park.
Should we just state if the Mobile Home Park has private property or unnamed streets, you can presume it is private and should be mapped with PR? Otherwise we have areas with Mobile Homes that are on public streets and people may be confused.
Can you give an example of a mobile-home community where the streets are open to the public for through traffic (and presumably publicly maintained)? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one.
By the way, apologies if I did not capture the essence of the discussion from the Private Installations / Campgrounds thread. If you’d like to send me additional bullet points I’d be glad to add them in an edit to that post.
There are dozens of neighborhoods in Arizona with Manufactured Homes / Mobile Homes that are located on properties that are connected to public roads. While it doesn’t have a front entrance that says XXX Mobile Home Park, if you wandered the streets you likely would think you are in a Mobile Home park.
Disagree vehemently with the notion of removing mention of Alleys from PLR, or otherwise deprecating them to Parking Lot use only.
Patently untrue. Waze has never, to my knowledge, indicated that PLR are not to be used for anything but BigAssphalt parking lots, and they play no special part in the machine-learning process for Parking. I’ve seen suggested parking lot MPs in places where there wasn’t a PLR in sight.
To be fair, Waze has done very little in the way of telling us which road types are for what, even when we needed them to do so. Staff’s response to my 2014 presentation on Functional Classification was basically “Do whatever you want.”
The reasons folks seemed to think PLRs were inappropriate there seemed to be because (a) Waze was making a big deal of parking management, (b) PLRs are the only road type we have that have an association with parking, and (c) campsite access roads have nothing to do with parking.
If I understood those reasons correctly, wouldn’t they apply just as well to alleys?
Personally I have no problem using PLR for campsite access roads (or alleys for that matter). Based on my understanding of PLRs they are entirely appropriate. But over in the other thread I was a minority of 1 on that, so I agreed to PRs because it seemed like an acceptable compromise to everybody.
Clearly I am not getting something. It seems inconsistent to me that PLRs would be wrong for campsite access roads because those roads have nothing to do with parking, but absolutely appropriate for alleys that also have nothing to do with parking.
Anyway I’ve raised the question and people are engaged so I will just lurk from here on.
I like this proposal. It seems much cleaner. The only question, if approved, would we be changing what was already done or just when creating new and modifying existing when other changes are necessary?
If approved I would think it would be handled on a State by State decision. Most likely as you come across you can fix but no need to go out hunting them down.
