Recently, some states have been naming their state routes in various ways. For example, I believe Pennsylvania is “PA-XX”, etc.
This idea should probably be built upon. For example, from what I read, I believe Maryland editors want their State Routes to be called “Route XX”. However, Tennesseans normally refer to roads as “Highway XX”.
Instead of the map editors inventing hacks and disagreements to get standards like these to work, I’m thinking we should ask Waze formally to set something up. Basically, I’m asking what you guys think of introducing (over the long-term), a standard of naming state routes “[State Abbreviation] - [Route Number]”.
Then, each State could come to an agreement on how for Waze to display and pronounce these roads. Waze, if all works well, would parse similar to this:
This system would also allow the State’s to eventually receive State-specific shielding with little headache.
If you guys think this is a decent enough of an idea, maybe we should acquire a list of the State’s and how they would want it to be displayed on the client and sent to the TTS engine. Then we could see if Waze would comply with that list.
My preference for Maryland is:
(WME Name) “MD-2” -> (Display) “MD-2” / (TTS) “Maryland Two” (well actually my preference for the display is a state shield, but that is likely another issue especially for turn instructions).
The difference between Maryland and states like Pennsylvania and Louisianna is that my understanding is that they are fine with (TTS) “Pee Aih” and “Ell Aih” thus they can go forward without any adjustment from waze. I don’t think there is consensus that (TTS) of “Em Dee” is acceptable for Maryland. If we can’t get “Maryland Two,” then I would rather have “Route 2” than “Highway 2.”
Exactly, up here in PA we more often then not refer to our state as pee aye. I’ve never heard anyone say they want to go to enn jay, or see aye. For us i think we prefer pee aye instead of route ###.
The reason for this is everything here is route. US-422 is route 422. PA-30 is route 30. Since we have a very distinct state shield it makes more sense to say and show PA-30 since it describes [shield type] [number].
In New York (or at least in Upstate New York – I can’t speak for the metropolitan chunk on our southeast corner ;)), “Route ##” is the most frequently used appellation for federal and state routes. We would really have no trouble with TTS just saying “Route ##” for all of these.
“But,” you might ask, “What if there’s a NY route and a US route with the same number at the same place? Won’t that be confusing?” No … for the simple reason that NY routes are numbered in such a way that they do not coincide with the numbers of US routes in proximity to them. (There was one exception to this, where US-15 once became NY-15 at Exit 43 of I-86, just east of Corning … but a few years ago, the southern end of NY-15 got truncated up to Exit 3 of I-390, so those two aren’t close to each other now … even though most of the signs in that area have not been updated to have NY-15 removed from them yet ;)).
Of course, to make it simpler, “US-15” should probably stay with the standard “you ess fifteen”, while “NY-15” should be pronounced “Route Fifteen”.
In North Carolina, we generally refer to everything as highways instead of routes. So it is US Highway 1 or US-1, for short, for federal highways.
State highways are NC Highway 55 or NC-55. We don’t say North Carolina but pronounce the letters “N” “C”. No one ever says “State Highway ##”, but we continue to use the “State Hwy ##” convention for shielding purposes.
So I totally support the move to road names such as US-## and NC-##.
As an aside, the only time we say “state” in the roads are for secondary roads that don’t have a formal name and are numbered above 1000. Then we would say “State Road ####” and would shorten to “State Rd ####” for the client maps.
Regretfully, if Waze parses “US-##” in a certain way, it would parse that way for all NA clients.
“TN-xx” would parse the same for all NA clients, as would “MD-xx” and “PA-xx”, etc.
The only way to change how “US-xx” is stated is for Waze to use the state field, and then approach a similar method. If Waze wishes to go this method, then all state routes could be “SR-xx” for all states, be sure the State field is correct, and ask Waze to parse it accordingly. However, I’m unsure if Waze would be able to incorporate that.
Isn’t Waze already parsing the state field for several other things already?
Maybe a better solution would be to use US-##, UH-## and UR-## (You-Ess ##, You-Ess Highway ##, and You-Ess Route ##) so we can handle the local variants… but this is counter to the national standardization you are looking for with State Routes
I think we’re wasting a lot of time and effort trying to organize all these local variations. You won’t find anything like that in any atlas or map. We should agree to one standard and use it. My vote is XX-## with XX being the USPS state abbreviation. Then just pronounce the name of the state and be done with it. People visiting from other places will be able to understand it, and locals will be able to understand it. If they can’t understand it, they shouldn’t be behind the wheel.
All this “display this and pronounce that” is going to make Waze overly complicated, make more work for the map editors, make things difficult for foreign visitors, and waste the developers time while there are much more important features they could be working on.
On the other hand, US Highways are federal highways, just like Interstates. There has to be a national standard for each. It doesn’t really matter what locals call them because they’re used for interstate travel. You have to have one standard so people traveling from state to state can follow.
I’ve heard people from rural Mississippi call I-55 “Highway 55”. Doesn’t mean any map maker is ever going to print it like that on a map just through a small town in Mississippi to accommodate the locals.
Once again, we discussed “US-##” at the Wazemeet. Waze currently displays that as “US-##” and pronounces it “US-##”. What could be simpler than that?
I’m with you guys on US routes. My problem is Wisconsin, they have state highways and county routes with letters like County NN, County A, etc. my dilemma is do I space out 2 letter routes so it pronounces it right, but waze will take that second N as North.
As long as all the decided abbreviations are put in the Wiki list. I always have that up so I can quick reference something with out digging through the forum.
Make sure and check out GizmoGuy’s thread about his abbreviation test rig. He’s been testing ways of making those lettered highways work. I don’t know if they came through in this round of updates or not though.
And I’m not proposing this to be an immediate suggestion, but more of a long-term outlook. That, when Waze finishes the more important aspects, we can put this in place.
But you’re disagreeing with using local naming for state routes (Hwy, Route, XX-, etc)? I don’t see any difference between the two. If Waze is for communters - as in, locals, then Waze should use naming that commuters - and locals - use, no matter the road. EDIT: Like I said, I don’t know anyone that would call a Tennessee Route “State Route XX” or even “Tennessee-xx”. Yet, you wish for this to be used? It’s confusing me.