Okay, I wasn’t actually going to write this up now, but I decided to go ahead while I was on a roll. This is just prose, but I’ll try to dig up pictures to illustrate different types of signage etc. if this makes it onto the wiki.
Commentary on this would be much appreciated, even if it’s just to say that you’re happy with the proposal.
Um…we do that in the US.
Yes, I mostly based this on the US guidelines.
I agree with the general exit naming conventions as far as ramps are concerned. They should convey the same information as the signage in TTS. Most people will tend to look out for exit numbers, route numbers and specific street names as mentioned by voice guidance, so if it does not conform, drivers may overshoot an exit or entrance, and then end up doing something stupid to compensate for that.
Our ‘job’ is just to make it as safe and easy as possible to get from point A to point B.
I do not like the “to aaa” naming for onramps, as TTS tends to pronounce it “onto to aaa”. Leaving it blank is a better option, or naming it specifically eg. “N1 : Bloemfontein” when turning onto the “N1 South” or on the “N1 North” depending on where you are.
We are also not planning on reinventing the wheel - current references in the Wiki does reflect the same standards, based on area-specific signage. If it works elsewhere, there is no reason why we could or should not adopt the same convention.
To make things 100% clear, the idea behind tabling specific items and putting it up for voting is not to be hard-assed about it. It’s simply to ensure that we all agree on a standard, and to peg it down.
Once this is put up, we can safely say that with all things considered, it was the accepted method by the majority, i.e. it would/should/could or does currently work and it does not need to change what was tabled.
Just some food for thought and things to consider with naming:
In general, an exit sign contains a minimum of 3 pieces of information, but can be any of :
What is deemed as important in this case, and to whom ? Someone exiting the N1 to Kroonstad is not interested in the route numbers, but someone passing through might be.
Person 1 likely wants the street name, where person 2 would not give a hoot.
Is it acceptable to split the ramps in this case for wayfinders just to split the info, especially on short ramps like the N1 ? Or do you want to ‘blast them’ with all the info.
Just use Exit No & general area, and use unnamed for rest of the destinations?
Use Exit & area and split further for simple route number ?
We also need to consider TTS.
I have been listening to some of the cached TTS files on my device, and noticed that the conventions for “name1/name2” have no pauses in between, so ends up sounding like gobbledygook. Also, in the convention of “name (Rnnn)” vs “name Rnnn”, the “name (Rnnn)” has a slighly longer pause. It’s also clear on directions with “route name direction” vs "route name (direction).
Below is some of the tts samples I’ve uploaded to Dropbox. We are still getting the ‘North x’ for ‘Nx’ routes. Hopefully we can get this sorted for ZA.
Serena - onto Marlboro M1 South On Ramp - compressed at the end
Serena - onto N1 South/N3 South - the / does not force any pausing
Serena - onto N3 (S) - slight pause for south
Serena - onto N3 South - no pause, still discernable
The TTS files can be played using the free opensource VLC media player from http://www.videolan.org/.
If you do not trust my links, you can still use the player & listen to files on your own device.
Using ‘Airdroid’, you can access files off your Android via a browser interface.
Carel
I’m not sure about the “to” prefix, I mostly copied that from the other countries. I guess I’ll take another look at this. If the ramp leads to a road labelled “N1 (N)” then there is absolutely no point in labelling it something like “to N1 (N)”; it should definitely be left blank in this case. However, in most cases, the ramp signage will say something like “N1 Pretoria” for north, and “N1 Bloemfontein” for south, rather than giving the direction explicitly. I think this should be included in the ramp name, regardless of whether we just have “N1 Pretoria” or “to N1 Pretoria” or something else.
Ultimately, the purpose of naming the ramp is so that the user will be able to visually identify (by signs etc.) the road that Waze has told them to turn onto. For a ramp that leads up to a straightforward intersection, maybe with a small split or slip lane at the very end, I don’t think there’s any need to get fancy with wayfinders / splitting the ramp.
For example, if you take the N1 northbound offramp to William Nicol Dr, the signage all along the highway, including the final exit signboard, just says “R511 William Nicol Dr”. Once you’ve taken the offramp, the ramp splits at the end to go left to “R511 Fourways” or something like that, and right to “R511 Randburg”. However, in this case, I don’t think there’s any need to identify the short splits by name; the direction to turn/keep left or turn/keep right should be perfectly clear to the driver.
For longer / more complex ramps, especially with multiple splits, it probably does make sense to introduce wayfinder names further along; ultimately, this is going to come down to individual judgement calls. The idea should be to include as much information as necessary, no more; the longer the ramp name is, the more unwieldy any TTS direction including it will be, and it’s not going to help if the driver falls asleep halfway through listening to the ramp name 
I don’t really have any justification for this other than personal preference, but I prefer the pause-less version when the route designation comes first (ie. “R511 William Nicol Dr”), and the pausing version when it comes last (ie. “William Nicol Dr (R511)”).
Yep, that’s a pain. Apparently setting the road name to "N"1 would solve this, but hopefully nobody actually thinks that is a good idea.
Yeah, that sounds completely ridiculous. I just stole the “/” convention from elsewhere, again, so I guess this bears further consideration. Do you know if it makes a difference if there are spaces around the slash?
As far as this goes, if we want to remove the use of () we could still name it like “N3 S” instead of having to spell out “N3 South”. I prefer the version with the pause slightly, but I’d be happy with either; what I’d like to avoid is spelling out words like “North” and “South” in full without abbreviating, since this is incredibly unwieldy when shown on the map / in the client.
Oh, something I wanted to clarify. My original post seems to imply that we should include indirect route names in ramp, but this goes against the standards of other countries and doesn’t seem to be a good idea at all, so I want to clarify that I think they should be excluded.
That is, if the signboard reads “N1 (M1) Johannesburg”, the (M1) portion should not be mentioned in ramp names. “N1 Johannesburg” should still be perfectly sufficient to identify the sign, and less confusing when fed through TTS (especially in cases like this where the route names are so similar!).
So, here’s an example of where we might need to include “multiple destinations” in a ramp name. This is the offramp from the N14 to the R512.
Following the UK guidelines, this ramp would be named: “N14 (S) 295 Exit to R512”. That seems simultaneously too verbose, and too different to the actual signage. In particular, mentioning the name of the highway you are already on is either redundant (if you already know what highway you’re on, you don’t need Waze to tell you!) or confusing (if you don’t know what highway you’re on, the exit ramp sign is unlikely to tell you).
Following the US guidelines, this ramp would be named: “Exit 295: R512 Randburg / Lanseria / Brits”.
If we split the ramp near the end, the terminal segments could be named like “Exit 295: R512 Randburg” and “Exit 295: R512 Lanseria / Brits”. This would unfortunately make the road geometry more complicated, but might be worth it to shorten the naming. Judging from the information I’ve seen elsewhere on the wiki, it looks like the TTS should insert a pause for a slash with spaces around it (like “Lanseria / Brits”) although it does not insert a pause if there are no spaces around it (like “Lanseria/Brits”). I still need to verify this locally.
The Wiki page on the Ramps does indicate that it’s supposed to drop the ‘to’ and I have no evidence that it’s not being dropped. I just prefer I have TTS on, but mostly have the radio blaring when commuting, so hardly listen to it locally. When I want to explicitly hear police warnings or TTS, I’ll plug in an earphone on one side as that does not drown out the radio 
I would agree on adding the direction of the Freeway / Highway you are joining as part of the ramp name. So it would be either ‘N1 North Pretoria’ or even ‘N1 North to Pretoria’ which would likely sound better in TTS. If left blank TTS will pronounce the following named segment which would be ‘N1 (N)’. This SHOULD be pronounced ‘en one north’ but currently is ‘north one north’.
I found a ramps close by that’s labeled (link further down below) with “NAME / NAME” and navigated across there last night to hear how it’s pronounced. It’s not doing the expected pause vs. “NAME/NAME” without any spacing.
It sound like TTS ignores spacing of any form indiscriminately at this point. Serena is definitely seriously getting confused with Streets and Saints at the moment, so I’m not sure if this is also just a temporary glitch.
We really need a testbed where you can just plug in this stuff and listen to what sounds best, instead of having to semi-breaking something in an update just to listen to it.
Above also relates to :
.
I’m at work at the moment where external mails sites & cloud storage is blocked, but will try and get the TTS file onto dropbox & link it in later.
I did not add it here, but adding too much will mean that current TTS annunciation will be either cut off for the next instruction, or Serena will yak on like the wife on a long distance call and cause the next TTS instruction to be skipped altogether. We need to keep it as short as possible.
I think we can skip the Streets it leads to in the immediate ramp, and just have the “Exit nnn : Area (Route no.)”, “Exit nnn : Route No.” or even “Exit nnn : Route No. Area”. Streets names in major metros like Jhb or Pretoria would be announced as the next segment for the turn. Not sure what other preferences are here, but I think most people would actually prefer to hear that the are turning of onto ‘Grayston Dr’ or ‘Rivonia Rd’ instead of ‘Sandton’ being the general area.
On Freeway / Highway sections that split into other Freeways / Highways I don’t think it’s of any real benefit to add ultimate destinations, but it might be useful for users not familiar with the area, just to confirm that they are still on right track, e.g. the exit I traveled named Exit 124A : N1 Midrand / Johannesburg.
Agreed. No need to get too fancy in most cases. We still need to keep it simple and predictable.
99% of all ramps / exits can be named without fuss.
Judgement would usually include an indication on an explicit ‘Exit Left’ and/or ‘Exit Right’ and the destinations for the the wayfinders as per the US Wiki samples.
Same preferences here, “Rivonia Rd (M9)” or “M9 Rivonia Road”. I’ll hunt for confirmation if a decision was ever made on “Route# Streetname” vs. “Streetname (Route#)”. I know there were some discussions around this.
It would actually have to be lowercase, like "n"1, but that would look horrible in the client and not match any signage. I’ll look for the mail from support, but it might be possible to have country-specific tweaks for TTS.
I prefer the “N# (direction_abbreviation)” with the slight pause. It would also assist if entry ramps are not named to have consistent pronunciation and takes up very little space on the screen.
It would also work for all cardinal directions and the combos (NE), (NW) etc. if that’s ever used, and still take up very little space. Most direction indicators would however be just N,S,E or W.
I’m working up a separate wiki page to cover this (and I’ll probably do the same with other subjects as well). I haven’t linked it from the main wiki page yet as I still want to do some editing to reduce the verbosity, and of course solicit commentary from everyone else on the forums, but the idea will be to link all of the subpages from the main page once they’re done, rather than trying to cram everything into one page. This allows for more room to go into detailed examples, hopefully eventually with pictures to go along with them (guess I need to dig out my camera and go photograph some highway signs!).
At any rate, feel free to check the page out as a “sneak preview”; I tried to incorporate the suggestions from this thread and to elaborate more on some specific examples to provide guidance, although some things will ultimately just be a judgement call. Incidentally, I’m fairly happy with how the TTS renders the ramp names on the few interchanges I’ve edited recently (N1/Malibongwe and N1/William Nicol), aside from the “North 1” issue (hopefully Waze will fix that some day, but they still haven’t even fixed the recent St=Saint issue…). I think I still need to check the ramp signs on a few of the ramps (not available on Google Street View), but it doesn’t seem like the “to …” ramps are causing a problem with TTS.
Nice!
To ease reading, I’d edit the section after There are basically three types of ramp segment: to have either
1.
2.
3.
or bullet points rather than as a paragraph.
I’d proof more of it, but apparently the substation outside our house has just blown up, so I best go and rescue things.
Incidentally, someone seems to have edited one of these roads I recall previously being Ramps to being a Major Highway, yet in my mind (and being somewhat familiar with the junction), it’s a ramp, even if that ramp is on the ground rather than flyover concrete style (the roads are at different levels).
Looks like a mistake to me; I would definitely say all four of those connectors should be ramps. Also, the crossing segment of the R67 is set to Freeway for no apparent reason, it should be Major Highway like the rest of it. Ramps between Major Highways are fine.
Thanks, I’ll fix it up 
This section should likely be set to ramp as well.
I’d also set the restrictions for off-ramp to onramp transition, not to allow through-routing. This is usually illegal and Waze should never be allowed to use this as a ‘legal’ routing option if there is traffic built up on the Highway / Freeway itself.
Even if there are no explicit turns, coming from an onramp the visual cues for the island markings indicates that a turn is expected, extending halfway across the on-ramp entrance on the other side of the R67.
I’d also suggest that you use Timbones’ Highlight Script and get rid of the soft turns allowed here - Q / W all the junctions and then explicitly restrict what should not be allowed.
Preferably lock Major Highway & ramps after you adjust them & are sure that it’s looking right. Allowed turns and restrictions have a magical way of ‘changing themselves’ when people fiddle around.
Remember to check it again a day or so after editing. I’ve noticed some weird instances where restrictions I fixed the day before are suddenly screwed again the next day, even when locked.
Just so I’m clear this means I should block the option of going straight across from the offramp back down the onramp?
I have myself done this many times when navigating unfamiliar cities and taking the wrong turn (signage is sometimes misleading) - if you’re doing it like a Taxi to cheat traffic, it’s one thing, but if you’re doing it because you honestly meant not to get off the highway just yet and need to get back on again pronto, it’s another - indeed, here there are no islands or similar to preclude such behaviour. (And in this particular instance, there’s never enough traffic there to justify getting off and on again there).
Yes, block that. In some cases it is actually possible / legal to do this (although often it isn’t actually legal), but such a route should never form part of a legitimate Waze route. The only purpose of doing that is to get back onto the highway if you accidentally took the offramp; in the event that you were following a Waze route and took the offramp by mistake, you can just get back onto the highway of your own volition and allow Waze to continue routing you.
On the flip side, if this is allowed, Waze will be able to route you off and back on to the highway to “avoid” traffic along the highway, which is almost always a bad idea. There are some safeguards to prevent this, but it’s not clear exactly what the criteria are or if they’re working properly, so in my opinion it’s best just to block the turn unless there’s some legitimate intentional route that requires it to be allowed.
I’ve seen some class acts that would make our mini-bus drivers look like amateurs
As Tristan said, in some cases it’s allowed, but Waze should never route you that way.
There was a particular thread somewhere where this occurred frequently in the US, but it seems sorted now. On this one the ramp to ramp transition was actually legal.
One of the main reasons was that the Freeway itself curved. The ramps on the inner or shorter side of the curve, actually worked out marginally shorter than the Freeway itself, similar to this one at Harrismith, so Waze wanted to route across the ramps due to the shorter wait times and shorter distance.
They should typically be set to not allow it like on this side.
If a System generated Problem Report pops up for these when a driver does cut across, you can usually mark them as ‘fixed’. It should hopefully not appear too often.
Cheers
Carel
I wanted to PM you, but could not send the pic that way as we cannot upload seperate images like other boards allow.
This is why I am not a fan of the ‘to Nnnn’ ramp or AT-Grade naming convention. Even if TTS might drop it, the client still shows it. It looks amateurish this way :
If it was named ‘M39 to Tembisa’ or nothing in this case, it would have looked better in my opinion, and it would have sounded exactly the same.
I guess this is somewhat subjective; I don’t have a problem with how that screenshot looks. The ramp (actually, I guess that’s an at-grade connector?) is not the M39 to Tembisa, it is a ramp (connector?) leading to the road that is the M39. I view the “to” part of the name as a transcription of the arrow that would be on the sign board in question. I’m not that attached to it, though; but if you name the segment just “M39 Tembisa” or similar, an incident or traffic report from that segment would be somewhat misleading, especially in the case of long connectors.
Then again, I think the connector in question is an exit, not an entrance, so it should probably be named “Exit: M39 Tembisa” anyway
Noted, and done - thanks!
Which is correct. It might be subjective, but incidentally, the ramp here looks exactly the same in the client.
If it’s consistency you are after, whether you get a keep left / exit left / turn left icon, the icon does not signify any extra meaning. Why would you need an icon and a ‘to N1 North’ for some and an icon with just a ‘N1 North’ for others ?