Proposal to fix exit 5 of I-95 from I-495

Map Editors Community United States Delaware
1

I-95’s Exit 5 coming from I-495 has a special off ramp from 495 SB here.

Waze however will not route over it. It will route down the left and expect one to quickly cross over 4 lanes of traffic to get to exit 5, which except for the middle of the night is just not possible and very dangerous. This is especially true since the recent re-striping of lanes so only one lane (the left-most lane) now comes off of 495 onto 95 there.

I’d like to propose the following two steps to fix this issue, remembering that in Waze it’s more important for the map to reflect accurate navigation than to reflect reality.

  1. The special flyover slip ramp is disconnected from I-95 and connected to the exit 5 ramp so it parallels that short section of 95. This will prevent people going down that ramp from being routed back onto 95.

  2. Take this ramp from 495 onto 95 and stretch it so it connects to 95 further south a few meters into this segment. That means it has to parallel 95 (and not quite reflect reality) just so it’s impossible to route someone from it to exit 5.

Here’s what it looks like for illustrative purposes in practice mode with the ramps separated out for clarity.

2

I put some thought into this, but there’s some issues at hand.

In using your first option (extending the Exit 5 ramp to connect all the way to the actual exit ramp on I-95 S) would work in the sense that it would ‘correctly’ route people that need to get to SR-141 from I-495. However, it would not prompt them again to actually exit I-95 (which they would physically be on), since to Waze, the user would appear to already be on the specified exit ramp, and there would be no prompt to take the exit. This would almost certainly cause more complaints/problems.

Now, your second option may also work on it’s own, but there’s a potential that Wazers that need to continue on I-95 S from I-495 S would be routed to Exit 5 off I-495 because of traffic. I think a way to minimize the penalty on that would be to set that ramp you lighted to ‘freeway’ (and just create a wayfinder short segment of ramp type at the beginning) and have that parallel I-95 all the way past the SR-141 exit.

I am by no means a routing expert here…need to get some more experienced folks to voice their opinion. I’ll PM a few and bug them :slight_smile:

3

I agree that step 2 is sufficient to cause the initial flyover exit from 495 to be used for exit 5. But as you note step 1 would prevent off/on routing over the exit 5 ramp from 495 S to 95 S.

I’m not sure that the lack of an second exit right instruction when travelling from 495 to 141 would be too much of an issue. I think the biggest issue would be that if taking exit 5A from 495, one would get an “Exit right at Exit 5: SR-141 / Newport / New Castle” instruction followed by a “Stay to the left at Exit 5A: US-202 S / SR-141 S / New Castle” instruction. I think the question is: would that “keep left” instruction be confusing. You would be getting that instruction in conjunction with the BGSs that point directly to which lane you need to be in to take Exit 5A.

4

Thanks for the input. How about dropping option 1 then since it’s not really needed for the main purpose and just stretch the ramp as proposed in option 2?

Also, I spoke to no1uknow in NYC about it and he thought just setting this segment to ramp might be enough to encourage exit 5 traffic down the flyover:

https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lon=-75.58500&lat=39.71667&layers=4069&zoom=5&segments=73225400

However, I was showing it to him on a small laptop at the time and I don’t think he saw that it wasn’t a continual series of ramps going through to exit 5 on the other end and it actually connected back to 95 so I’m not sure he saw the entire picture at the time. ie, not sure that would really work. Still making that a ramp would be more consistent with what it is actually in practice.

5

Making that a ramp might help. I’m not sure why waze won’t currently route over the other ramp at all.

6

It actually did route me over the ramp yesterday. I was driving back home from north Jersey, and was on I-495 S. Waze was telling me to take Exit 5, which I found odd–turns out, it was only doing that because of the reported traffic on the ‘ramp’ segment for I-95 and part of the segment on I-95 thereafter.

But that is an edge case for certain.

Also, setting the I-495 segment you mentioned to ramp type may alleviate the problem–but I am concerned it would potentially start routing legitimate I-95 S traffic to that exit ramp.

7

As someone who loves to sneak around traffic I’m not so sure that’s a problem :mrgreen: , but yeah… detour prevention is not going to stop that from happening since it’s on different Interstates.