I’m looking for help on restricting closures of major highways in Alaska by Waze users.
Legally, only the Department of Transportation or Department of Public Safety (Alaska State Troopers) can close state highways. This summer, multiple wildfires have impacted a major highway. While there have been some full closures, most events have only involved delays; such as pilot cars or reduced speeds.
However, we’ve seen map edits (including from the wazeclosures account and private users) that incorrectly mark critical highways as fully closed. These edits have led to confusion, particularly for third-party navigation apps that rely on Waze data. The problem is that our main highway detours can result in 8+ hour detours due to limited alternate routes over long distances.
We want to ensure highway closure data remains accurate and reflects official sources only. Is there a way to restrict closure permissions for key routes to verified or government accounts? Any guidance or tools available for this would be appreciated!
Hi, there is no way to restrict road closures to just “approved” editors or partners for a given state. Waze is a crowd-sourced app and Wazers can submit closures through the app, as well as map editors with the proper editing levels and/or privileges, can add closures.
If you’re not a Waze for Cities partner, I encourage your agency to look into joining. You can also connect with the map editing community who can assist anytime there may be an errant closure on the map that needs removal.
Thanks, Karl. I appreciate the clarification.
We are a Waze for Cities partner and do have access to the Partner Hub. Your comment led me to submit a support request there. In our case, a single incorrect closure submission triggered a full 17-mile closure on a major highway, resulting in a suggested detour of more than 360 miles. While I was able to remove the closure manually, that approach isn’t feasible as a 24/7/365 solution. I’ve asked whether there’s a way to adjust the threshold for user-submitted closures, especially for highways.
Is there a way to increase the number of user reports required before a closure is displayed, or to add some validation step—particularly for high-impact routes like state or federal highways? Many of our highways are in rural areas with spotty cell coverage.
Thanks again for your help and for engaging on this.
Hi, glad to hear you submitted a ticket there. That’s the best way to engage with staff and ask since they would be the ones to make that decision. That’s a great example to provide so they can discuss any threshold changes.