Hello everyone in MN. I want to propose this as this is the direction I see Waze going to support states that use this particular naming method for their states. Not all states adhere to this, such as Kansas where it is simply “K-XX” but MN and MO in particular to what I know firsthand knowledge of refer to their state highways as “Minnesota 100” or “Missouri 7” and so forth. I propose, that we come to agreement to utilize this feature of TTS in Waze to output MN-100 as ‘Minnesota 100’ and other state highway names instead of SH-100 or SR-100 or State Hwy 100 as examples. This is the direction I personally would like to see MN go in for not only state recognition for travelers but it will slim down the text in the navigation bar and be uniform for the whole state instead of some pockets being State Hwy 100. SR-100 works fine too, but from Wiki of MN State Highways, the signage does say Minnesota on them, we can match that with Waze TTS as well now.
This is my take on it. Sometimes not all information is correct on Wiki however I read through this and agree with it all.MN Trunk highway is a blue sign with the state outline reading- MN XX these would be like MN 149, MN 77 (Cedar Ave). US Highway is a black and white shield with US XX
The reason at the time was to have a numbered route that if you were to start in Chicago and wanted to go to Los Angeles all you did was follow the US Route which was a bunch of state highways that were connected throughout each state by roads that were already there. These were the precursor to our current Federal Interstate system. I was a owner operator for 15 years,I have traveled in 48 states and finished my driving career with 1.4 accident free miles!!
Sounds like a good plan to me. I know that if you do put in MN-100, the navigation will actually say, “Minnesota 100”
The only thing I could see as a deterrent is most street signs in areas outside of the metro area will say State Highway XX, but even so I am sure it is not a big reason to go against the option.
Hey, quick question here … I know one reasoning we use “State Highway” over “SR” is because with State Highway it places the icon on the highway as it does with the interstates and US Highways … Does anyone know if it would cause an issue with MN-22 for example to no longer show the icon on the map giving the number?
Dallas, That sounds right and good point, we would want to keep the shields in place zso maybe should read “MN State Highway XXXX” then we have the differentiation from one to the other while keeping the shield and that is most important everything staying the same visually and what it will sound like in the app! Jr
I actually do want to bring up another point … I have been doing editing in Blue Earth County and have been doing house number extensively. In all of the areas that I have done house numbering, I have only seen an address as such “52434 State Hwy 30” for example.
What I would propose is to use something like “MN-30” for ramps and roundabout exits and leave it as “State Hwy 30” for everywhere else.
I’d agree with the “MN State Hwy 30” aside from one thing … it’s too long of a statement … I know I am sounding like an anal person there, but in areas where instead of the shield the map for some reason wants us only to recognize the street name “State Hwy 30” it already looks ugly on the map because it will be the longest street name on the map. Even worse on a split highway such as imagining “MN State Hwy 60 W” … Just a thought
Dallas,I dont think its anal makes sense it would also likely load up the screen Is there a tool that you are using to hear what TTS will sound like ? I still get the KO road on my county road I live off of on certain segments, it used to drive me nuts, I think you got in there and fixed it though.
If you are hearing Ko road, then the road you live off of is using Co Rd instead of CR-X … if it instead is changed to something like CR-19 it will be read as County Road 19.
It is all shown here: https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Abbreviations_and_acronyms
If the road is labeled properly, then go to your Waze app, go to Settings / Advanced / Data Transfer and “Refresh map of my area”
Now on the flip side, there are some locations where CR is not the proper label. As a naive Wazer, I used to name all country roads by the number and in my testing, I really realized it is a poor decision on my part because I found it only ever really gets the signs saying the county road if I am traveling on either a major or minor road most of the time. Also, now that I’m really getting big on numbering for addresses, I find I cannot call it a CR if it has a street name at all.
But it’s really hard to say … for example, https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lon=-94.20862&lat=44.10147&layers=165&zoom=4 this is Lake Crystal MN and if you see Edgewater Rd on one side and CR-9 on the other … it is CR-9 in Lake Crystal and is known by no other name. Once in Garden City Twp, it becomes Edgewater Rd. Now it only stays Edgewater Rd for a short time as seen here https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lon=-94.17815&lat=44.09050&layers=165&zoom=4
Now, if the road in your area is only known as CR-XYZ and if you were to do house numbering in the area and the address point is something like 12345 Co Hwy 14 then I would label the road as CR-14, but if addressing shows the street is 145th St, then it needs to be labeled as such.
This never was an issue before Google bought Waze because we actually obtained our addressing from Bing and you could call a street Yucky Ln and still be routed properly, but now we can’t use their information and from what I have heard we aren’t even going to pull from Google automatically either (which is good because it can often be wrong).
https://www.waze.com/livemap?zoom=12&lat=44.3037&lon=-92.78675
here is an example of what happens in areas where MN instead of State Highway is used.
Here, west of Wanamingo, it is still listed as State Highway 60 and you will see the 60 shield in place. east of Wanamingo you do not see the badge at all until the State Highway 60 past Zumbrota. You also see the same experience with MN-57 although this is not as easy to see since you have to pan a distance south to see this.
Seeing that makes me want to maintain the State Highway badging. Does anybody know if Jringo91’s idea of “MN State Highway XXXX” actually works?
On a side note, why does Hwy 52 between Zumbota and Pine Island not have the US Highway badge?
I’ve wondered that myself. The only thing I can possibly attribute it to is the fact that that stretch of 52 is classified as “Major Highway” instead of “Freeway”. The Wiki indicates that US Hwys are to be considered “Major Highways” at a minimum, and in some cases could qualify as a Freeway. I don’t think it’s misclassified.
Maybe one of the veteran editors can offer insight.
“MN State Highway XXX” would come up with saying “Minnesota State Highway XX” it should show the badge because State Hwy XX W does; however, it would look way too long to show that.
I say to enter in whatever seems fit for the road basing mostly on House Number Naming because we should focus on the destination more so that the shield.
For the US-52 area … I have noticed that myself … I have the same issue on State Hwy 22 Between Mankato and Saint Peter which is why I agree the shields look good, but I would not base your total experience of this.
I have incorporated the MN-XX in some areas such as this https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lon=-93.94942&lat=44.16849&layers=677&zoom=5 where the name just works best and no house numbering exists to cause problems. The shield isn’t a big deal for me because, in a congested area like this, we would never see it anyway. My biggest concern is: will the MN-XX cause an issue with house addressing. I firmly believe people should be able to do a search for an address and use Waze to point them to the right address without the need to search other engines such as google to find the correct address.
I’d like to chime in on the County Road naming. I see lots of roads in the Twin Cities metro area that are labeled as CR-xx, but the signage on the streets themselves mostly refers to other street names. Also, many of these roads cross county lines and so their CR-xx designation changes, but the common name remains the same. I live near the border of Ramsey and Anoka counties and I see many examples. Lexington Ave. is called CR-51 in Ramsey Co. and is CR-17 in Anoka Co. but the signs everywhere refer to it as just Lexington Ave.
I also see many examples of roads named with both the CR-xx and the common name, as in CR-44, Silver Lake Rd. and this just adds confusion to the directions.
I think that we need to be consistent, and I think that when the signage on the roads uses the common street name we should go with that. When the roads get out of town and the common names are not used then we ought to use the CR-xx name.
I totally agree with this and want to rid this of all streets in MN. it not only is confusing, it looks dumb
For street naming, I agree to a point. I prefer all street names to be named the same as the house numbering. This means if the house numbering is Silver Lake Rd, this would be the name. I believe this true in both areas urban and rural.
Here is an example of what I may do in areas where people will see the CR sign, but everywhere else is shown as more the street sign https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lon=-94.13434&lat=44.14514&layers=933&zoom=6&segments=74957931 … I know many editors will say they hate this, and I agree not to put this at every intersection, but I have never seen any indication this would make it a non-valuable route.
Here’s a really good example of where roads get criminally insane: https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lon=-93.94854&lat=44.23945&layers=933&zoom=4&segments=74957931
This is at a county line and one side of the street it is 243rd St and the other is 490th St. Also, one side is CR-2 and the other is CR-16 … but not everywhere, there is a curve in the road that causes CR-16 and 490th st to be non-existent for about a mile or so. If you follow this road, you will see that the road changes name multiple times and at many major intersections I also give clear indications of the CR approaching from the signs you would see. I based the intersections on what would be more noticeable at the sign. … now this looks crazy, but it works beautifully for if you have to enter the road. I have not noticed that it totally avoids the road either and I honestly cannot think of ways to better this aside from limiting the CR information on roads where it may not be as needed.
Number one rule though: make the roads reference the house number name! This is so important as if we can be used as the number one map app for food delivery companies and taxi services, think about how much better our traffic data would be. Sorry, I push house numbering so much because it is a hell of a lot of work with very small amounts of edit credits, but if you focus strong on this as well as the geometry, correct elevation, correct functional class, you will make a lot of edits count and will lower the amount of user reports posted. I can be one with direct proof to this because my work in Mankato has really affected my UR reports … I maybe only see one there a month and I feel once I finally am done with the whole city, I may see an even bigger drop. I’m halfway done with the city looking perfect.
I understand the love/hate relationship with this method, and I’ve run into a number of instances where you’ve used this. They work great for tts navigation instructions. They also are handy when the road is labeled xx-st or xx-ave for house numbering, but the intersection has a huge CR sign. But the OCD in me hates the extra segments it adds to the map. 
That is insane.
On the topic of alternate street names, could someone provide some clarification on how the alternate street names are used in Waze? I searched the Wiki, and found very little information other than “A future version of the Waze Map Editor is being considered to include road shields as part of the alternate street name field.” Are alternate street names used in the house numbering system? When should “no city” be used?
If there is some consensus about getting rid of the CR-xx on the roads in the metro area I’ll get started on the ones I can work on. We’ll need other metro area editors to help out, as there are lots of these and some are in areas where I don’t have editing permission.
I agree that getting the street names to match up with the house addresses is important, and I also want to make the tts turn instructions more understandable. Including the CR-xx when the signage only indicates a street name really makes those turn instructions long and rather unclear.
Here in the metro I’m not sure we’d want to do the short little segments as shown in those ‘insane’ examples. Here the CR-xx signs are not very prominent and those short segments can cause problems for traffic data. Outside of urban areas the traffic on those county roads is probably not much of an issue, and the roads are probably better known by their CR-xx names than by the street names. There the CR-xx names are needed for good turn directions and the street names just for addressing, here the CR-xx names are really pretty much useless.
As for matching the house addresses, what is the authoritative source for that info? I’ve often used the county GIS systems to get correct house numbers, but if there is a better source that is quicker to access I’d love to hear about it.
I would say that when possible we should add the CR-XX name to alternate street names unless its the preferred name for address or routing.
On a side note the number of roads with redundant names is out of control and I find myself spending way too much time cleaning them up. But thats just random bouts of OCD.
Oops … meant to post this msg in THIS thread …
So after reading through this thread, I’m not sure I’m clear there is a full consensus. Regardless, I think the end decision should be posted on the MN Wiki instead of needing editors to search through the threads and try to decipher between all the different messages.
I’m a semi-regular editor on the normal Wikipedia and I’d be happy to help out with this effort, assuming its very similar in nature.
Usually, alt names currently is only used for navigational methods … for example, you have a road going through town named the street name, but the alt name is a state highway … it is used for the navigational system to stay on route instead of veering people off the main course (particularly if the state highway goes on another street).
It, however, is not used at all for map identifiers in the app such as house numbering or such as when given directions.