I am looking to validate the correct setting of major collector state highways (e.g., State Hwy 330) as either a Primary Street (PS) or Minor Highway (mH) in Waze. I could not find anything in the MT wiki (https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/USA/Montana) to resolve this question.
A cursory look at the Functional Classification chart (https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/USA/Road_types#Quick_reference_chart) shows that a state highway is always a mH regardless of whether it is a major or minor collector. HOWEVER, studying the MT functional classification maps, these are more like county (e.g., Primary) roads. A lot of them are unpaved.
A state numbered highway = mH in Waze unless MT DOT has it set higher.
A state secondary major or minor collector = PS in Waze unless MT DOT has it set higher.
If there was an undocumented decision made on how to properly functionally classify major collectors (PS or mH) in Montana, please let me know. The reason I ask this is because I have come across several major collectors that have been FC’d in Waze as mH. I’m thinking this is too high; they should be PSs else we’ll end up with too high a ratio of mHs to PSs. However, after changing a couple from mH to PS decided it best to stop and ask for clarification. I’m here to assist, not break stuff.
(To avoid confusion, I’d like to clarify that I’m going to use PS for Primary Street rather than PR for Primary Road, since in my experience, PR is more often used for Private Road than Primary Road).
I am not aware of any undocumented procedures for setting functional classification in Montana. It has always been my understanding that state highways are to be marked at a minimum of mH per the aforementioned FC Quick Reference and Montana wikis.
The quick reference does not make any exceptions for primary versus secondary state highways and the Montana wiki states that we are to cross reference the ArcGIS FC with the FC Quick Reference table, so I’ve never made exceptions when I’ve been setting FC. If the roads are not paved, we should be using the unpaved checkbox with the appropriate functional classification. If the wiki doesn’t go into unpaved, I can add it tomorrow.
That said, based on the PDF you referenced, which states in part that the secondary highways “were to be made up of principal farm to market and feeder roads”, I agree with your proposal to make those routes PS unless classified as minor arterial or higher in FC as those do not sound like routes that should be prioritized in most cases.
Regarding the ratios of PS vs mH, I do not know anything about that. I’ve not seen any wikis referencing a ratio, nor anything implying that one should be maintained. If there is documentation about that, please let me know. I would like to be sure I’m following best practices everywhere I edit.
I did a pan around in ArcGIS, and downgrading them to PS initially gives me a few potential concerns:
Pruning. Montana is big. At least twice mH have needed to be upgraded to MH to correct longer-distance routing (MT-59 near the Wyoming border is one example). I don’t know the internal details on when PS is used for route consideration, but I see some Secondary highways FC’d as major collectors that are the best route. Example, Secondary highway 271 is a useful link between Primary highway 200 and I-90. Lincoln to Drummond is a 52 minute drive, but if you get pruned to sticking on mH, using Primary highway 141 is an 80 minute drive.
Lack of local differentiation vs. county-maintained collectors, where both would be PS in Waze (under the proposal), but the state highway is a superior route. Secondary highways 379 and 365 are good roads to head east on when on I-15 north of Black Eagle, but if downgraded to PS would be equivalent to 24th Rd NE (the PS sandwiched between those 2 highways). It’s possible that speed data would handle this situation. 24th Rd is unpaved, but rural Montana commuters aren’t likely to enable avoidance of Unpaved.
The principal of “if it ain’t broke…” may apply here. If mH secondary highways aren’t causing issues, but downgrading to PS may create issues that then require exceptions to correct, that’s not a great tradeoff. As far as road type ratios go, Montana is pretty sparse; I don’t think we have to worry about the Manhattan problem?
The State of Montana choosing to retain responsibility for maintenance of the roadways in question (vs. relinquishing them to counties) should be an indication of some level of increased importance to travel, relative to other county major collectors?
Following the guidance from the FC quick reference, I’ve been setting any numbered highway as mH unless the GIS FC is primary artery. The quick reference makes no distinction between primary and secondary state highways.
All collectors (major or minor, on- or off- system) as PS.
“County routes” in Montana are rare, but the one I’ve seen (can’t remember where) seemed to fit the surrounding FC as a PS.
Generally, paved vs unpaved is difficult to determine since the street view is nonexistent or c. 2009 and gravel are indistinguishable from fresh chip seal. The satellite can be useful depending on the season.
Having followed this in many remote/rural areas, my intuition from the overall result is that it should work very well. The minor highway segments provide a rough net between major highways, and the primary streets make a finer net between minor highways.
Secondary 271 should be mH. I set the first segment from Drummond, but that was the only one I could reach after driving by a while back.
The secondary highways you mention (379 and 365) should both be mH.
With regard to unpaved roads, I’ll just add that most of the areas this applies to are miles away from a GPS point. Personally, I figure the Waze SOP of waiting for a vict… I mean user to roll through and drop a report should take care of this. If no users are driving the road, it doesn’t really matter; if users care, they’ll let us know.
For reasons in my first post in this thread, I think they should be all PS, and then selectively tweaked using the routing “favored” option, not by setting to mH. However, it appears a decision was made a couple years ago about secondaries being mH, but that was before the “favored” and “unfavored” routing tweaking options were available. The Lequs discussion was in early 2015; the routing tweaking options came out in late 2015…I’m reasonably sure.
It was because I discovered inconsistencies with how FC was being applied to State Hwys that I opened this thread, wondering if there was an undocumented decision already made. FC is meant to eliminate inconsistency, and with the routing tweaks, it works uniformly. The state wiki lacks clarity on this. But POMT found an old discussion where apparently a decision was made. With the introduction of the routing tweaking in late 2015, I am dubious it’s still the best decision, but it’s a decision, none-the-less. That’s what I was looking for.
So numbered state highways will be mH by default, which I believe means any other collector would be PS. I’ll continue on that basis. If enough MT editors (all 4 or 5? ) think changing that decision is worth another look, then that is a separate issue.
State Hwys as minor arterials (mH) will result in some weird WME visuals like here http://arcg.is/0KqiHi in Sanders County where there will be two mHs nearly parallel (MT-200 and State Hwy 472) where the geometry of MT-200 is clearly the more expeditious route, but hopefully that’s an aberration, not the norm. From a routing perspective it will be OK because of speed data, but setting State Hwy 472 to “Unfavored” should be considered.
SkyviewGuru, here’s the FHA information. The total Collector mileage is typically one-third of the Local roadway network. Typically, there will be fewer mH miles than Collector miles, fewer MH miles than mH, and fewer Freeway miles than MH. Tables 3-5 and 3-6 discuss percentages. This is a good study for every editor.
@banished, I appreciate you bringing up the new routing priorities as a means to enhance the effect of the road types. You raise some good points. I personally lean this direction, but I also understand the potential repercussions that @herrchin and @PhoenixOfMT raise.
Regarding unpaved, I do not think there is harm in marking it as you find it even though a lot of it probably is in GPS-lacking areas. Sometimes you’ll find unpaved roads by means of a complaint in a UR, but you may just run across it as you’re checking for elevation fixes, speed limit, etc. I’m not suggesting a campaign to set unpaved, either; just saying that I would rather we not change road types simply due to the road being unpaved since that is what the new attribute is all about.
@herrchin’s #2 bullet is interesting as well. As far as Wazers are concerned, I think the routing priorities would settle any concerns they’d have but I could see how the differentiation in WME may be nice. As a side note, both PS and mH have a locking standard of R2 so they’d be at the same level of protection regardless.
Those are some of the thoughts I have at the moment; I will do some more thinking about this. I appreciate any further input that you have. Thanks for going with “business as usual” until a decision is made, @banished. I hope we can collectively make a decision soon. I hope that @AlanOfTheBerg will chime in with his thoughts, also.
Doesn’t this functionally lock the segment to L5 editors? (last I knew it did) For “finished” areas, that wouldn’t be a huge concern, but in areas with few editors, things tend to be completed in multiple passes over long periods of time. FC, then Speed Limits, paved/unpaved, turn confirmations and basemap cleanup, etc.
To clarify my position, I’m in no way opposed to testing PS even without setting Favored. All our tests would probably need to be synthetic though; I don’t think we can count on Wazer URs to confirm any results
I think some of the inconsistency stems from incomplete editor coverage, and the rest is from editor brain farts. I know that for a while after the linked discussion I relied too heavily on the map highlights and would knee-jerk-classify a yellow or purple highlighted highway as PS. When I came back later and noticed the highway number, I’d think “What doofus messed up the FC? Oooohh…”
I don’t see this un/favored option. I remember seeing it sometimes for new segments, but not in a while. Maybe in another 25k edits. If this is an upper-class editor feature, there will be a LOT of work to sort it all out and only a couple of hands to do it.
Weird visuals… um, this is probably at the bottom of my priorities. As long as the FC is correct and the roads are aligned properly, I don’t care if it looks like a demented spirograph. I don’t think it’s news to anybody that there are a lot of highway junctions in a transportation system. A person Heading south into Thompson Falls probably isn’t going to be distracted by a highway that serves the other side of the river. If they get routed that way, well, like I said, the Waze SOP is to get suc… I mean users to explore the map and fill in the time slots. Maybe that secondary highway gets you to Thompson Falls faster in the afternoon. Maybe it’s a slow-moving nightmare. Every indication I’ve seen in the wiki and forums is that trailblazers get to suffer so that the followers don’t have to. Editors aren’t supposed to try and bend the traffic to their will. Otherwise, I wouldn’t keep deleting the stop light cameras that pop up around Bozeman.
The routing tweaks are available at R4, I’m told, but point taken: There’s not yet sufficient R4 editors.
So, how about this as a way to uniformly translate collectors (minor and major) to PS or mH? Truth be told, it’s really no different than the national FC matrix, but does add clarity to correctly selecting the Waze road type for a major collector or minor arterial in Montana and I think it is pretty solid without any routing tweaks which should be trusted to local editors.
Using MT DOT’s FC as reference (rural FC, not urban FC):
An unnumbered road DOT FC’d as a minor collector = Waze Road Type: Primary Street
– Example 1: Pleasant Valley Rd west of Kalispell – http://arcg.is/8Kuyf
– Example 2: Chevallier Dr between I-15 (Exit 216) and Lincoln Rd – http://arcg.is/19frii
An unumbered road DOT FC’d as a major collector = Waze Road Type: Primary Street
– Example 1: Ashley Lake Rd west of Kalispell – http://arcg.is/0nvCH4
– Example 2: Recreation Road paralleling I-15 either side of Wolf Creek – http://arcg.is/10uy5q
A numbered road DOT FC’d as a minor collector = Waze Road Type: Primary Street
– Example 1: None found, but included here for completeness
A numbered road DOT FC’d as a major collector = Waze Road Type: Minor Highway
– Example 1: Hwy 279 between MT-200 and Helena – http://arcg.is/10KX4e
– Example 2: Hwy 472 (Blue Slide Rd) between Trout Creek and Thompson Falls – http://arcg.is/0KqiHi
I reviewed the 2013 MDT Roadlog, and there were zero noted miles of state numbered minor collectors, and only 0.743 miles of state-maintained urban system minor collector (Casino Creek Dr, here).
In the following sheet, it shows that MDT Primary Highways are almost 100% Minor Arterial, and MDT Secondary Highways are 96% Major Collector (4% Minor Arterial). Given that the county/local has its own substantial percentages of Major and Minor Collectors as PS, I think the classification of MDT Secondary highways as mH is the best choice.
MT FC and Waze Road types sheet. In this sheet, per latest clarification, the dark green cells in question would be mH, and the orange PS. And this is how the national FC already is; this is just another clarification.
mH would be 9.87% of MDT roadway miles, and PS 15.57%.
I don’t agree with numbered highways being PS, but it looks like a moot point anyway. Apparently, MDOT doesn’t classify a highway below major collector. (Makes sense.)
I’m glad you clarified “numbered highways.” I managed to find another County Road. It’s marked like a highway on the GIS map. Our highways don’t go above about 506 so 856 didn’t look right. After digging into the county .pdf map from MDOT (generally of limited use) I found that it’s County Route 858. After driving it last week, I can confirm that, at least this time of year, it’s definitely unpaved and barely worthy of the Waze minimum PS classification, much less mH just for being numbered.
I’d like to re-open this for discussion as it has been brought up a few times in Discord.
It would appear we are finding a lot of secondary highways unpaved which would be undesirable as mH and fall more in line with PS. I guess we need to really ask ourselves what the purpose of a Secondary Highway is.
Reading the other comments here don’t really give me a definitive answer one way or the other in regards to re-classing Secondary Hwys to PS but I am open to the possibility and further discussion.
As herrchin mentioned, pruning is a major consideration due to the state’s size especially relative to its population. I’ve dealt with a number of issues in rural central and eastern Oregon where Waze would avoid a direct route because the road type wasn’t high enough. Of course, this can be overcome with routing preference settings so you could, for example, have secondaries set as mH but drop to PS routing when they’re unpaved.
Having lived in eastern Montana a long time ago, I will offer my opinion FWIW.
First of all, avoiding unpaved is like avoiding the state altogether.
Second, unpaved state highways seem to be better maintained than the typical county roads; they tend to be wider and they see the road grader more often.
Third, if one opts for all paved roads, it could easily extend your route 30 - 60 miles in some cases, for something that starts out in the 60 - 150 mile trip as the shortest route.
Fourth, if most or all the county roads become PS, then the state roads (for the most part) should probably be mH.
Now having edited from Idaho to the Dakotas, and the Canadian border to Wyoming, over the past several months, I am convinced the correct course of action was as previously discussed: Numbered secondary highways should be at least Minor Hwy (mH). If local BOTG editors believe routing needs to be tailored as PS on some, then the unfavored routing option could be used. I initially thought secondary highways should be PS, but over the course of the discussion and extensive editing, reached the conclusion that mH as the minimum standard is the best choice.
Paved or unpaved makes no difference when setting FC. There’s a separate checkbox for that which will impact routing based on the user’s dirt road setting. (Setting the Dirt road option to Don’t Allow or Avoid Long Ones in Montana seems problematic in a state where dirt roads are so prevalent.)
Lastly, I would not encourage a decision to change secondary highways from mH to PS be based on the mH L3 lock-level being too high. If raising mH to L3 was the right the decision in the first place, then don’t second guess without significant evidence it was the wrong technical decision, even if administratively it makes it tougher for L1 and L2 editors.
Thank you all for your responses. After going over discussions both here and in Discord we will leave things as is and only make changes as needed for improved routing.
Primary and Secondary Highways shall remain at least mH.
The genesis for this thread was to seek PS vs. mH clarity on secondary highways as I started a project to apply Waze’s hybrid functional classification standards to Montana. That project is complete, although I am still looking for anything I may have missed.
) think changing that decision is worth another look, then that is a separate issue.
