I am a rank 2 editor.
Changing classification to Primary Street to match the GIS functional specification maps.
http://dbw.scdot.org/GISMapping/pdfs/FunctionalClass/Greenville_Large_Urban_FC.pdf (Page 7)
I’m rank 3 now.
Changing to Minor Highway.
http://dbw.scdot.org/GISMapping/pdfs/FunctionalClass/Greenville_Large_Urban_FC.pdf (Page 1)
You may want to have a look at this before you go changing everything around. You may also want to get in touch with Spankdog and Havanaday before you do any more changing of the roads through there.
I asked months ago how to classify roads in my state. In this thread on the South Carolina forum:
https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=256&t=66536
I was given the link to the functional specification map (which I’ve also linked here) and a standard to follow. I’ve been following that standard ever since. My editing area recently expanded and now I’m updating the classification of roads that are now in my editable area.
If there’s a different standard to follow, I’m more than happy to do so, but this was the standard I was given to follow.
I’m with TxEmt on this. Also, before changing major roads (like these types), it’s always best to check with the previous (rank 5) who edited and/or the AM (rank 5).
We have a documentation that we need to go by that TxEmt had put the link for it on the previous post.
You said this and this is what’s going to scare me. You’re about to change a road that by Waze standards, has every right to be a minor highway, but you’re about to just go and change it to a primary highway because the state DOT says to. Same with the major/minor highway change you’re proposing. In the second link, there’s a US highway that kinda disappears from the alternate name and it affects the road that you want to change. So, I’m a little concerned, which is why I haven’t unlocked the roads, yet.
I don’t see anything about these roads that goes against the ‘documentation’ in the wiki (which is quite non-specific, which is why I asked in my state forum for more specific guidelines. The functional classification map is perfectly easy to follow.)
The one that should be a primary street falls within the “In dense urban areas primary streets may need to be a divided road with multiple lanes of traffic in each direction having traffic controls at every intersection.” That describes that section perfectly. Minor highway is so vague that it doesn’t seem to describe anything specific at all. Take for instance “A Minor Highway thru the main street of a small town often retains focus on local access with pedestrian traffic and on street parking.” That’s not an accurate description of this section at all.
As for the major to minor highway one, “Turning traffic is typically limited to specified turn lanes or freeway style ramps to minimize obstructions to thru traffic” doesn’t apply. “Partially limited access with few minor streets intersecting with this road. Intersections are most often with primary roads or other highways” doesn’t apply either. It clearly isn’t a Major Highway. Could be classified as primary I guess since nobody really knows what Minor is. Minor’s basically described as “could be anything.”
This is why I use the GIS functional specification, as was specifically recommended by another waze champ in the SC forum. There’s no quibbling. It is what it is. I have yet to see any roads where I would disagree with the GIS specification, I’ve seen it strongly improve routing in my local area (which before I started updating things, had major highways and streets, and no minors or primaries…even in an urban area.) It looks better in WME and on the client. And it doesn’t go against the specifications in the wiki either…since the specifications in the wiki are decidedly vague. Besides which, the standard I was following is on the wiki too: https://www.waze.com/wiki/File:ConnDOT_FunctionalClassification-to-RoadType.jpg
The only bad thing about this is that you have to use primary street for minor arterials and collectors. This minor highway I want to change to a primary is I think a minor arterial (green), I’d have to double check. Which means it sees more traffic than the collectors, which often are simply ways into and out of neighborhoods. But still nowhere near as much as the ‘major arterials’ see. Still, the system works fairly well in every other way, from personal experience, and the person who recommended it to me said it had been heavily tested in his area as well.
As for the missing highway name, I didn’t notice that. I’m focusing on functional specification first without editing any names at all, leaving them how I found them. Then I plan on combing the map and correcting names and fixing roads with no name or city, etc. There’s a lot to do. The map in this area is very dirty and I currently have about 1700 sqkm to work with. But functional classification is the easiest and most visible change to do first and improves routing right away.
I’m more than happy to go to the specific user that locked it, but if I get no response, what then? How long am I supposed to wait for a response, while the map sits there with those specific segments different from all the others and looking ugly? Not to mention the routing penalty for going onto and off of the wrong classification.
That’s what I was assuming this forum was for in the first place. As far as ‘discussing’ the topic to get a consensus, isn’t that what the state forum is for? And nobody else has spoken up. The SC forum is decidedly inactive and there are no state-specific standards that I can find on the Wiki.
I’ll message the users that locked these segments and see what happens. I do doubt that they locked them due to not wanting to change the classification, though. In fact, I can’t really see a reason that they were locked in the first place, when every other segment of the road isn’t locked at all.
Spankdog has been fairly active in the editor, so you may get a response fairly quickly. I haven’t seen much from Havanaday in awhile, so it make take awhile to get a response.
As far as going through an area, why not take care of everything all at once, instead of one thing at a time?
I think SC looks “dirty” is because there aren’t any editors in the state. I’ve done some editing in the Savannah, GA area of SC and Ft Jackson, but that’s all I’ve done. I haven’t seen any active users in either part of the state. I took a look and saw 27 editors with control over South Carolina, but only 25 of them are within the state. The other 2 had overlapping from N Carolina and Georgia. I am also seeing multiple areas for the same person, so you can probably take that number down to 15 editors in S Carolina. Of the names I’m seeing, I haven’t seen any of them active in the forums, or in the editor. The latter being that I may not have gone into their areas (like the north and west part of the state).
Because I’m using one map for functional classification, one for city boundaries. I’m doing all the functional classification first, and then I’ll update names and stuff to match within the city boundaries. Plus I don’t have a standard to follow for that yet.
I plan on going through it all, deleting roads that don’t exist, naming roads that don’t have a name, adding roads that are on satellite and street view, deleting unnecessary junctions, checking turn restrictions of every junction, making sure roads marked as 1way are really 1way, etc. It’s gonna take some time lol. The functional classification is quick and easy and if I do it first I don’t have to constantly be checking two maps as I comb.
Found another one over near spartanburg, needs to be minor highway.
I did indeed get a response from spankdog and he unlocked them for me, but after doing the edit I’ve gone back and looked and they’re locked at rank 5 and minor highway instead of primary street again. The other segment I asked him to unlock is fine though. =/
That’s what I thought would happen, which is why I wan’t going to unlock it. I’ll let them handle that.
What did you think would happen? That he would say “okay, sure, go ahead and change it to primary street if you want” and then a little while later change it back and relock it…without bothering to adjust the classification of any other segments on the street at all?
I’m not sure what happened, maybe we were both looking at the segments at the same time and his unlock got reverted which means my changing them to primary street got reverted. His last message was ‘let me know if you need anything else’ and I haven’t heard from him since.
As for the other two editors that have locked segments I wish to change, I haven’t heard back yet and who knows when I will.
Using this unlock forum where ANYone can unlock sure is a lot easier than contacting the one random person that last edited the segment months ago… Just sayin’…
The person who last locked no longer edits, but he’s got level 5 locks throughout the country. I have’t touched anything in your area, but I am scouring the area looking for lots of things, which should be evident by the PM I sent you.
Please do NOT DOWNGRADE segments!!! There is a lot of forum discussion regarding classification of roads. And for the most part if you think a segment needs to be downgrade, it should be because of new construction in the area and the classification is going to be “transferred” to another route.
To help us know the correlation you are using for the classification vs Waze type.
Also note, that the routes that you have downgraded, the segments you have now changed will have an adverse affect on the routing in the region (especially longer routes)
I use Waze every time I drive and I’ve seen an improvement in routing, not an adverse affect at all.
In fact, the ‘traffic avoidance’ feature has actually started to work. Before, it would keep me on the same road no matter what since it was a major highway with nothing but streets surrounding it, not even primary streets. After changing it to minor highway with a few primary streets nearby, traffic avoidance works flawlessly.
Listen, it’s not my intention to be destructive to the map. But I live here. These roads ARE classified too high. The road I live on was classified as a major highway, before I started editing. It’s a minor one. It’s not a major one. By no stretch of the imagination is it a major one. It’s disconcerting seeing a road as wide as an interstate displayed on the client when it doesn’t get nearly that much traffic, nor take up that much space.
Also keep in mind I’m not picking just one road and lowering it, I’m adjusting the entire area with balance in mind. The ‘relative’ classification stays mostly the same. And I’m not just picking stuff willy-nilly either, I’m following the GIS map. In every case where the GIS says something is a certain classification, I compare it to waze’s guidelines and I agree that it fits the guidelines for that road, either from having driven it myself or looking at it in street view. The GIS knows its stuff. (When it’s not out of date at least.)
If you go behind me and see the classifications I’ve set, some of them have sat for a couple months now and not been changed back higher by any other editor, nor have there been any MP or UR’s about it. These classifications don’t just function, they function well. If it was a case of myself and another editor arguing over which classification to use, that’d be one thing. But it’s not. Most of these classifications are from the base import and haven’t been changed since.
The only difficulty is that I need a classification for between ‘primary street’ and ‘street.’ Some primary streets are more primary than others (but not so primary that they should be minor highway). This doesn’t seem to have an adverse effect on routing, it’s still improved over leaving the streets not primary at all, but it would be even more improved with that additional classification.
If you have clear evidence and/or a discussion where people bear witness to lowered classifications causing problems, please link me to it and I’ll probably change my mind (I try to be open minded and like I said, I want to make the map better, not worse.) I’m not ignoring you, I’m just not convinced yet, because my personal experience strongly says that this is improving the map to do this.
So, based on not just the GIS how does that compare to the National Functional Classification (NFC) for SC? So we need to make sure the classification that you are using is the NFC. And if it is based on the NFC, what is the correlation to Waze types are you using?
All I was told about was the GIS map. If there’s another map for me to refer to, by all means I’m more than happy to take a look. Where might I find the NFC map?
So based on the other forum tread that you started and Andy responded with the link. The “Functional Class Map” and "Notice - Due to recent federal highway requirements, please first refer to the
SC NHS map. All roads shown in red on this map are Principal Arterial. New County and City maps showing these changes should be available by July "
Based on the links (maps) do you have a correlation between the maps legend and Waze segment types?
I’m confused. What happened to the NFC map?
As for the NHS map, I wasn’t using that one because it didn’t have a translator like this.
It also shows only as low as ‘principal arterial’ and not anything lower than that which is where the primary streets come from. (A couple very tiny collectors are mentioned but not in any detail.)
I’m using the ones you get when you click on a county.
However, since all ‘principal arterials’ have a minimum of ‘minor highway’ by that classification, then I will map them using this map (which is newer) as minor highway unless previously specified as major in the other maps. I’ll also map the green collector roads as primary streets.
But this map doesn’t show every road, it only shows state/county/US highways. That’s why I did the other more detailed maps first.
I’ll go over it in more detail tomorrow, but just glancing at the map and comparing it to the minor highways that used to be on the map, I don’t see any minor highways I’ve changed to primary streets that show up as red ‘primary arterial’ on this map.
Edit: That actually didn’t take long at all. Pretty much all the yellow/red lines in WME match up with the red lines on that NHS map already because of the work from the older maps. All of the changes that I need unlocks for also match up with that NHS map.
I have a tendency to agree with txemt. I PM’ed you more details but as a general rule what I think we got most people to agree on was the following:
Freeways - No at grade connectors
Major - US Highways (Not US Bus Hwy) and roads typed to the functional class of major arterial.
Minor - State Highways (Not State Bus Hwy) and roads typed to the functional class of minor arterial.
Primary - Major and Minor Collectors on the functional class map that don’t fall into one of the above categories.
What you aren’t doing isn’t technically wrong. It is just more consistent from state to state that way.