King String Bishop’s Stortford should be updated from private to narrow. There is no restriction on who can actually use this road (except HGVs which i believe are access only) as it is not a private access road, it is however quite narrow (and very steep) in places
If there is no restriction on the road then we should not be adding false restrictions to the Waze map.
When the UK admins decide a use for the Narrow road type we will apply it appropriately, until then feel free to review the opinions on this thread.
There is a width restriction on that road. No vehicles wider than 2M/6ft6in expect for access.
There is no restriction in terms of the privicy of the road - it is a public road.
Therefore the road should at the very least not be listed as a private road (as it isn’t one) and ideally should be listed as a narrow road (because it is one)
Unfortunately, whilst this is a narrow road, it’s not a narrow road… As we currently understand it, the narrow road setting in Waze is intended to mark roads which are so narrow that only things like motorbikes and mopeds can negotiate them.
So for now, if a road isn’t private and can be negotiated by at least an average sized car (as is the case for a 6’6" restriction) then it should be marked as a normal street.
I’m a little confused why the UK has a different definition of narrow to the rest of the world then.
According to the original post here a narrow street is “drive-able, but hard to access by car” - difficult, but not impossible as you are suggestion the street type is for.
King Street is a prime example of what this road type was created for according to the original definition. A road that you can drive a car down, but wouldn’t really want to unless you had to.
If the road type of King Street is not going to be changed to King Street then I don’t know what you suggest because it sure shouldn’t be listed as a private road because it isnt one…
…but listing as a standard “street” type may run the risk of navigating users through the road as it provides a shorter journey but doesn’t take in to account that it would be wildly inconvenient.
Having now looked in more detail at this road in Streetview, the reason it’s currently defined as a private road in Waze is because, up until some point last year, it was to all intents and purposes a private road, with “no motor vehicles except for access” signage at both ends, without any reference to it also being narrow in places. The most recent SV imagery captured last year now shows this signage has been replaced by the width restriction signs at both ends, but still with the “except for access” exemption plates, and so based on this signage change I’d agree that it’s no longer correct to map it as a private road.
As for whether or not it ought to be mapped as a narrow road? No. Leaving aside the overriding factor that, as a UK editing community, the guidance passed down from our country admin team is that we DO NOT use this option, this really doesn’t look like a narrow street in the way Waze intend it to be. Yes, there are a handful of narrowed sections where only a single vehicle could get past at a time, and where drivers of wider vehicles might need to creep along paying close attention to their wing mirrors on both sides, but the same could be said for many side roads in the UK.
In my mind, if we did ever start using the narrow street option in the UK, it’d be to mark roads which contain substantial narrowed lengths, causing drivers to have to concentrate on vehicle placement for more than a few seconds at a time, and where (if the road was also a two-way) meeting something coming the other way would cause serious difficulties unless it occurred close to a passing place. Some country lanes, with lengthy gaps between passing places and zero forward visibility around corners, spring to mind as potential candidates, and from a historical perspective also the smaller car-only access tunnels at Heathrow Airport back when they were still open - I drove through one of those once when I owned a Vauxhall Omega (not the widest car in the world, but not exactly a slimline city car either), and having spent the entire time on a state of high alert constantly scanning left and right to try and maintain an even gap between the tunnel walls and the tips of my wing mirrors as the car rode over every last bump and undulation in the road surface, I vowed never ever to use those tunnels again…