Road types in Thailand (English)

Map Editors Community Thailand Community
1

Hello fellow Wazers out there.

According to a discussion with Wazer “schanon” Area Manager from Prachin Buri i present the translation of his suggestions of road types in Thailand. Cause some of us Map Editors can not write or read Thai. If you want to support the maps here you are welcome to the discussion.

Freeway:
(Principal/National Highways with 1 and 2 digits)

Hwy 1 (Phahonyothin Road), Northern Thailand
Hwy 2 (Mittraphap Road), Northeastern Thailand
Hwy 3 (Sukhumvit Road), Eastern Thailand
Hwy 4 (Phetkasem Road), Southern Thailand

Motorways (with 1 digit)

Chonburi Motorway Hwy 7
Motorway Hwy 9 (Outer Ring Road, Kanchanaphisek)
also 5,6,8

Hwy 11,
Hwy 36,
Hwy 22

Major Highways:
(Secondary Highways in Regions with 3 digits)
Hwy 202, Hwy 305, Hwy 403…

Minor Highways:
(Provincial and Rural Highways with 4 digits)
Hwy 1001 , Hwy 2096 , Hwy 13312 , Hwy 4054 …

Ramps:
Entrance or Exit to or from Freeway
Name a destination “to …”

Primary Street;
Main Streets like Charoen Nakhon Road, Chan Road, Rama 3

Street:
Any Soi and Trok, small and provoncial roads which are not main streets.

Parking Lot:
Parking Lot Roads and big Parkings like one of a “Big C” Mall
It’s not necessary to draw any Parking Lane of a big Parking.

Service Roads:
Frontage Roads to Gasstations and Foodshops along Freeways for instance.

U-Turns
Name them “U-Turn” and add a proper street type.

Sources:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_highway_network
http://www.doh.go.th/

Regards
Argus

2

:smiley:

3

ขอบคุณมากคร้าบผมหวังว่าคุณตกลงกับนี่

4

Thanks for posting this guideline even though I do have my reservations. I recognize Highway 4 as being the longest one but as I have driven it myself from Phuket onwards to Khao Lak, this isn’t a Freeway at all. It’s not not even a highway to European standards. There aren’t any exit/entry ramps, it goes through village after village and you find all sort of things happening on the road, kids, animals and lot’s of motorbikes, tuk-tuk’s etc.

I guess the criteria of setting it as a Freeway is the official highway numbering system in Thailand but even then it would make sense to me to exclude at least those stretches I meant from being a Freeway. There are elevated highways like the one from Bangkok Airport going into the city that deserve a Freeway status way more than this country road, it doesn’t even have any border between the lanes, just a white line which gets ignored anyway!

Looking forward to hear your view, argus-cronos and schanon

Secondly, I’m having a bit of difficulties in naming cities correctly (as always on Waze, as it doesn’t provide us with any structure higher than cities (or even lower). So I understand that in Thailand there are:

Provinces (changwat): like Phang-nga
Districts (amphoe): like Thai Mueang
Communes/subdistricts (tambon): like Lam Kaen
Villages (muban): like Khao Lak

Is that correct? Via Google Maps (in lack of any other reliable map source) I can right-click on any point and get a reference which is showing me TAMBON, AMPHOE, CHANGWAT (with a postcode added to it).

In absence of knowing all the village names, I’ve used the lowest category displayed in GMaps which is the Tambon (commune/subdistrict). What do you think of it?

I still have a couple more days of editing rights from my last visit in October in that area and would like to improve the map there. I also cut the highway into smaller proportions down to minimum 1km so that jams are better detected (though the population still hardly uses Waze but that can pick up very quickly like in Malaysia once Smartphones become popular and affordable).

Andreas (a4xrbj1)
Country Manager Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore - Working for free to improve Waze
Rank No 1 in Malaysia

5

Hello Andreas

Thanks for keeping the forum here alive :wink:

I don’t know how many times i’ve driven on Phet Kasem (Hwy4). I know any stretch also in direction to Malaysia, at least to Hat Yai. It may looks strange compared to the road situation in the towns along the west coast, although i’ve driven around a max. 170 km/h on the route you’ve mentioned. But the point ist more to think in long range and short range routing. In case of Phet Kasem in the south, these are the two most common Routes between BKK and Phuket or even Krabi, as you can see in the screensot.
screenshot1.png
Same situations (in many parts of thailand) we have for instance between Laos and Malaysia, in some places on this route it looks similar, but the routing works, for over 1640 kilometers.
screenshot3.png

Naming of the towns is in deed tricky, and we have:
Changwat, Thesaban Nakhon, Thesaban Mueang, Amphoe, Thesaban Tambon or Tambon, Muban or Baan and the Khet (50 districts in BKK) which are divided to Kwaeng (similar to tambon). Amphoe are only outside of BKK, some people don’t know that. Map sources are a big problem in deed, not everything is documented. The lowest category is the right choice, it doesn’t make sense to spread province names over the country.

Oh before i forget it, Andreas, can you check the border region Thailand/Malaysia, dont know if the borders were set correctly, cause i don’t have permissions on this point, for editing everything correctly. Thanks

Regards
Argus

6

I’m not sure how I can identify the border myself as the map is pretty useless to say the least. Haven’t been driving myself further north than Penang and therefore not crossed like you did. Guess you like Thailand even more than I do :wink:

Thanks for the explanation on city names and giving ok to what I entered so far. I’ve edited some of yours in Khao Lak, which wasn’t showing as a town name but we know it’s there as we stayed both there. Once in Mukdara Hotel many years ago and in the “Casa de la Flora” just in Oct last year.

Andreas

7

Yeah, that’s true maybe we should beg for newer Aerials over there. I’ve thought maybe you have more permissions from the other side.

regards
Argus

8

Permission I do have but the line that Waze gave me isn’t always precise. In some parts it goes into Thailand, in others there are parts of Malaysia missing. If you give me a Permalink and instructions what to do, can work on it.

Andreas

9

Hi Andreas

Sorry i’m a bit late here: https://world.waze.com/editor/?zoom=3&lat=6.53562&lon=100.42004&layers=BFTFFTTTFTTFTTTTFTTTTFT
and here
https://world.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat=6.51346&lon=100.4233&layers=BFTFFTTTFTTFTTTTFTTTTFT

I know Aerials are really bad there, but i want to make sure it’s correct more or less.

Terima kasih banyak

Regards
Argus

10

Sama sama. Worked a bit on it to follow GPS track but as there is no aerial I’m completely in the dark as to how the road goes. Hope it’s ok now

Andreas

11

Cool thanks

sampai jumpa lagi

Regards
Argus

12

I would like to propose a change in this rules.
Often Hwy 3xxx and 4xxx and 5xxx, are not so high-way. I propose to downgrade these four-digits hyws to PRIMARY in place of MINOR.

Retired!

Paolo

13

Now that we have a dedicated Wiki page that addresses this issue, maybe we should un-stickie this post, or move it into the Guidelines section for any future discussion?