Toolmanzwief suggested we start a thread to hold work on URs and other activities around Rochester, so here it is.
I just recently became AM for the Rochester area, including the area to the north up to Zumbrota and south down to Stewartville. I live in Pine Island and I work in Rochester at Mayo Clinic, and I have family in neighboring towns, so I travel the area quite a bit.
Personally I think Rochester is in a unique position to be a medical destination to many out-of-towners, many of whom may be using Waze, so I personally feel that getting it to function well is a priority. I know we have a lot of great editors in the area, doing a lot of work so I hope they feel free to post any questions or problems they may have. Waze is a very friendly community with lots of helpful people.
Do you have any suggestions for the UR about 2358 Coral Ct NE? I checked the house addresses for that area, and they all check out. I used Waze to navigate to the address in question, and it took me right to the driveway. If you look at the Navigation and GPS tracks from the two UR’s, they both show the navigation ending near the NE Mayo Clinic, and a tiny GPS track in the guys garage. I’m thinking that when he entered the address, it used a misplaced Google pin rather than the Waze address. That’s why I explained to him how to remove and re-enter the address, hoping that it will grab the Waze address.
My wife also works at the Mayo Clinic, in the Hilton building. We also did a lot of geocaching a few years ago.
I added a point place for The Home Depot to fix a UR. I wasn’t sure if it should be an area or point place, so I looked at some examples in the area that you’ve done. WalMart, Sam’s Club, Texas Roadhouse are all areas, but Target and Menards are points? If you think it should be an area, please let me know and I’ll gladly change it.
My rules for points and areas are this … feel free to disagree
Areas should be used for big areas such as parks, college campuses, religious centers, cemeteries, parking ramps, labeled parking lots, all schools, large shopping centers (mostly named buildings though like malls with multiple stores inside), larger medical buildings, and larger government buildings
Points are for basically everything else. All gas stations, small stores, stores inside a shopping mall (even the department stores in a mall), buildings on a college campus, all restaurants, gyms, etc.
Please keep in mind that you will want to make sure when adding a point or an area to add the street address or it will not look right in the search results.
I think gas stations are areas for the added benefit of suppressing “Are you in traffic” messages when you are parked under the Area. Less corrupting of road traffic data. I read it somewhere. Or I made this up. Your choice.
Hi, I just made a few update suggestions on a few businesses, but after coming here, most are probably invalid (place vs. point). Please discard these.
One edit I did make that I probably should have asked here first was, why is Elton Hills drive marked a minor highway and not a primary street? When I drive on this (near my house, so I’ve seen it daily since started using), Waze flags it in yellow for going “slow” at 31-33 mph, which is “above” the posted speed limit. I’ve read through all the road definitions and as far as I can tell, minor highway is too high a classification for this road. There are a few others in NW Rochester marked similarly. Is there some rule of thumb for this? I don’t see much use of primary street, it seems most roads are either street or minor highway.
It seems like in the case of Elton Hills Dr, for turn by turn directions, it should not be considered a peer to 37th street or Civic Center Dr.
Welcome! I just sent you a PM, not realizing that you had posted here. Yes, I rejected most of the places because they were duplicates of “points” already on the map.
As far as determining whether to use a primary street / minor highway / etc, we use the MNDOT functional class designations to determine which street type to use. I’ll double check Elton Hills just to be sure (and I also live not far from Elton Hills). And I agree that “primary street” does not get used much, unless you’re in the country.
MNDOT designates Elton Hills as a “Minor Arterial” which corresponds to a Minor Highway in Waze, just like West River Parkway, 7th St NW, and 3rd & 4th Ave around the Mayo Clinic. However, I see that you just changed the entire length of Elton Hills to a Primary Street. Can you please change that back? If you are looking for some guidance on road types, please check out the Minnesota Wiki. It has a nice section explaining exactly how we designate road types. https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Minnesota#Functional_Class
Also, 37th St and Civic Center Dr are Major Highways in Waze, so Elton Hills is still a step lower. It can be a little hard to see the difference since the pale green of the minor highways is very close in color to the pale blue of the major highways.
Yeah, you can’t really undo a place edit. They either have to be accepted or rejected. And the map is wide open for editing; there isn’t any review process. You’ll notice that some roads are locked to different levels, and that is how we prevent younger editors from potentially making mistakes on a major road.
… I’m surprised that a gas station would be an area as opposed to a point though