As seen, the base map appears to have most roads categorized only as ‘Street’ or ‘Freeway’ except for a very few shown as ‘Primary Street’ which may be a result of editing. Where several levels of definition are available, this limits the information available to a Wazer new to that part of India.
I propose the following policy, knowing full well that it will take several months to make significant changes and may never be 100% complete.
Freeways: Expressways such as Mumbai-Pune and Vadodara-Ahmedabad (please post here regarding other expressways in your part of India) and also GQ (Golden Quadrilateral) and NSEW (North-South East-West) trunk routes. Possibly include Mumbai’s Western and Eastern express highways, Kolkata’s Eastern Metropolitan Bypass and some of the Ring Roads in different cities.
Major Highways: All other National Highways, arterial roads within cities and the best of the State Highways.
Minor Highway: Remaining State Highways, other well maintained and well traveled inter-city routes and city bypasses.
Primary Street: Major through routes from one part of a city to another, also well maintained and traveled rural roads.
Street: All other roads except private and service roads.
Line Road vs two one-way roads
Waze has provided a guideline that only roads separated by a generous median should be shown as two one-way roads. In the base map for India, however, city streets and highways with a minuscule divider are shown as two one-way roads instead of as a single road with a line. This has resulted in one side or the other reverting to a two way road wherever not locked, due to GPS being insufficiently accurate to determine on which side of the road a Wazer happened to drive.
I propose that all city roads less and highways than 3+3 lanes be identified as ‘line road’ instead of two separate one-way roads. Where a 2+2 lane road has a flyover with parallel roads, it can be split in three parts showing a two-way flyover with line and two one-way roads alongside. This will actually improve the navigational capabilities and help those Wazing the road for the first time.
Road geometry at junctions
In the base map, a large number of road junctions show short curved roads at the four corners. A few of these are actually free left turns, but the majority are just a widening at the crossing. The indirect result of such mapping is that sometimes Waze instructs to ‘Bear Left’ instead of ‘Turn Left’ which can be confusing. I propose that, with due reference to satellite imagery and/or ground reality, these curved roads can be removed to clean up the map and the navigation.
Thank you for reading these suggestions, and do please post your opinions along with other possible map improvements that may come to mind.
