From Black Rd to Bayview Dr, (except for about a mile where it runs contiguous with Bear Creek Rd) this highway is very narrow and winding - in many places the roadway is 14 ft or less in width, and sometimes, as it squeezes between two large trees, it is 11 ft or less. Sight distance is very poor - sometimes 50 ft or less. When two vehicles meet, both usually have to drive two wheels off the roadway in order to pass. Anything over 25 mph is reckless, and in places 10 mph is more prudent. The road is suitable for local travel by local people, but Waze should not route strangers over this road as a way to get from here to there (anywhere). See these photos: , , .
I propose that this highway (from Black Rd to Bayview Dr except for the Bear Creek Rd portion)) be lowered from Minor Highway to a maximum of Primary Street (lower would be better - say “Street”). The guidance allows this - the Note in the section on Minor Highway has words that imply a very substandard State Highway can be lowered with the concurrence of the RC (although it implies that mH is as low as can be considered).
FWIW: I spent a lot of time in that area with my former employment. I can attest that it is very narrow. I would not object to lowering its type, but I’m not sure it would make a difference.
My understanding is that the difference is in routing of longer trips. Because Waze needs to limit the number of segments it considers when routing over a long distance, it drops out lower road types as part of reducing the time for computation of a viable route. For shorter trips it considers more road types. I’m not sure when this kicks in, or if there is some preference given to higher road types when alternative routes are essentially equal timewise (e.g. Summit vs. Bear creek) - but it seems reasonable to give accurate real-world information. If it doesn’t matter now, maybe it will in the future.
You may want to read up on US-129 aka “The Tail of the Dragon”, that runs between Maryville, TN and Robbinsville, NC. It is a similar road, though is stays two lane for the duration, which runs through the Smoky Mountains in Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina. It’s big issue is there are 300+ switchbacks, within a 13 mile stretch. People come from all over the world to ride it, but MANY routine travelers and tractor trailers get routed through there by nav apps or dispatchers. It’s a bad situation when you don’t want / need to be there.
This is very much my understanding, and direct experience, as well.
Knowing this bit of road first-hand, I agree completely with this proposal. These two sections of 35 carry two-way traffic on a single lane around sharp, blind turns for over 5 miles. This route should not be equivalent in local function to Highway 9 (as it is now). And there’s no way Waze should consider it more significant to local traffic than Bear Creek Rd (as it currently does).
Lowering the proposed segments all the way to “Street” type seems best to me.
If there is concern about lowering a State Highway – as challenging a back road as it is – to Street, we could lower it to Primary Street. In that case I would recommend promoting Bear Creek Rd to Minor Highway. Bear Creek Rd carries significant commuter traffic from the upper San Lorenzo Valley (Boulder Creek and environs) to Silicon Valley. It’s a heavily traveled road and it would be best if the Waze map showed it as more significant to local traffic than the one-lane sections of 35, since it is.
If I’m understanding this correctly, we could go as low as Primary Street because this route is classified as a Major Collector on the Caltrans maps, but not lower,
It’s an issue with the “zoom” parameter in the URL. When the zoom is less than 2 Waze turns off display of the selected segments. If you hand-edit the first URL in your post for a zoom of 2 instead of 1 it should work OK.
Yes indeed, I forgot to mention that. It’s best practice to remove layer information from your permalinks before posting/sharing them. Otherwise, clicking on the permalink clears all of one’s personal/preferred WME layer settings and replaces them with those in the link.
The WME Toolbox extension offers a means of doing this by hovering over the permalink icon and pressing the Shift key to toggle layers off before clicking on the permalink icon. But you can also simply hand-edit before posting/sharing.
So, the first proposal is to demote the identified segments of SR-35 from mH to PS, given the uncommonly difficult nature of that stretch of road. It sounds like there is no objection to this…?
Then, there is the added proposal of promoting Bear Creek Rd from PS to mH so that Waze understands it is more drivable and heavily traveled than SR-35, which it intersects, and of similar significance to SR-9, which it parallels (somewhat).
To clarify regarding SR-9 – SR-9’s CalTrans FC suggests it should be PS, but it was raised to mH as per State Route policy. That accidentally threw Bear Creek Rd, which is roughly equivalent to SR-9 (if not more significant to commuters), into a lesser status in Waze. My guess is that we’d have more optimal routing if Bear Creek Rd and SR-9 were of similar status in Waze.
Any concerns or objections to either of these two related proposals?
My experience when talking with mountain neighbors who commute to Silicon Valley : those who live south of Ben Lomond take Mt Hermon Rd, from Ben Lomond to Boulder Creek take Bear Creek Rd, and N of Boulder Creek take SR-9. Bear Creek carries a lot of traffic - at least as much as SR-9. When there are disruptions on SR-17, traffic shifts from Mt Hermon Rd to Bear Creek and SR-9.
Cell coverage can limit the quality of travel time data (i.e. lots of dropouts and missing Reports) so Waze may not see as much activity on these routes as it should.
Bottom line for me is that upgrading Bear Creek may help Waze make appropriate choices between these routes.
Thanks @bwawsc, that summary of commute behavior agrees with my perception as well.
It looks like both proposals have a green light from the RC! Still I would recommend we postpone action for at least a week so other interested parties can contribute if they wish.
Thanks, DL. Would you like to do the honors, since you have access and I don’t? The alternative is for me to request unlock in the unlock forum and wait for a response (lots of segments). I provided the PLs earlier in the thread.
Given potential gaps in your editable area due to the spotty cell-phone coverage up there perhaps I should do the honors…probably tonight or tomorrow…last call for any objections…!
The discussion here concerned only the 1-lane section of SR-35, but once I converted that from mH to PS, it seemed senseless to leave the tiny remainder connecting to Highway 17 at mH (an “mH to nowhere” so to speak). So I extended the PS section of SR-35 all the way to 17.
@bwawsc, thanks for the idea and for the great permalinks with all the necessary segments. Sometimes when changes like this get done a tiny overlooked segment can remain at the previous road type until someone comes along one day who happens to be zoomed in. If you would like to review the changes in detail that would be a helpful thing
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