As discussed in the Discord server (USA; wazeopedia_usa) we now have the functionality to display toll prices, which includes the actual entry fee when driving into/through a National Park Service location.
My proposal ( https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/USA/User:NJMedic2535/NPS_Toll_HOV )involves mapping thru-routes as toll so that users will a) get notification they may need to pay on their route through a park and b) see detailed price information consistent with the rest of the Toll Price system.
The concern was raised that we could be starting a slippery slope to mapping small single-entry locations and even parking lots, however the proposed guidance covers only those roads in/through NPS locations with emphasis on parks where a user can be routed through on the way to some other destination. I’ve added a phrase suggesting that local leadership should be consulted when mapping a single-entry/exit location.
Of note is the current issue whereby if Waze cannot route you to your destination the routing server will pick a point close enough and end your route there. Unfortunately this can leave users miles away across a mountain ridge or other wilderness. This has been brought up in the Discord routing channel for consideration to bring to staff’s attention as it seems to be a symptom of a larger problem and is beyond the scope of properly mapping tolled segments.
To clarify, Waze has in testing routed to a “close enough” segment if Avoid tolls is on and the destination’s actual-closest segment is only accessible by passing through a toll. Some tests on tolled parks have also generated routing failures if there isn’t a “close enough” segment.
It bears repeating, “this can leave users miles away across a mountain ridge or other wilderness”. I think it’s premature to enact this guidance before that serious bug is squashed. The risk this poses drivers in its current state is something we need to avoid and it’s certainly not worth it for the implementation of a non-essential feature.
Can someone confirm for me: the failure mode of concern is when…
An expansive location, typically a park, charges an entrance fee;
There are likely destinations within that location;
The location also happens to support a through road (in California, a major example is Yosemite National Park through which SR-120, the Tioga Pass Road, provides one of the few regional crossings of the Sierra Nevada in exchange for $35 per vehicle);
A given Wazer is unaware of or has forgotten having “Avoid tolls” set in his/her app; and
That Wazer routes to a location within the park.
Is this the concern? I can see how Waze could take that poor driver down some dreadful roads, including long-abandoned logging roads that have never even been edited.
That seems about right. There can be some seriously bad routing, for example, trying to route to Skyland Resort in Shenandoah National Park with avoid tolls on.
That said, it’s not a universal problem with destinations on toll roads. I can’t reproduce it on normal toll roads or even in other national parks. Does anyone else have examples of areas that get really bad routing with avoid tolls on?
Would it work to set the toll on a one-way exit segment instead of at the entrance? Counterintuitive, but would mirror how PR and PLR incur penalties on exit instead of entrance. Drivers beginning at the park and leaving would be told there is a toll, but since the only ways out would be tolled/penalized the same, they should still get a valid route. I’m probably missing something…
That is an interesting idea. I am not familiar with whether tolls get used “as a last resort” like parking lots do. If they do not, the driver would hopefully at least get a “continue to the route,” or whatever the wording is rather than a routing server timeout.
I don’t think this is a good idea at all. If your destination is within a national park you won’t get notified of the toll on the way in, but will on the way out.
Unlike the PR setup for gated areas, this hack would be visible to users in the route display (the toll and toll amount) and would lead to confusion.
If I understand the proposal, parks without a through road will not get a toll at all, right? If so, then there will already be many situations where drivers routed into a park will not be informed of a toll.
The hack would only be visible to through drivers and to drivers starting from the park and leaving it. The former will be told their route involves a toll and how much (which is what we want). So it is just the latter who would be confused, and that’s a valid concern.
It certainly isn’t a perfect solution but perhaps it would work as a temporary patch…?
For parks without a through road I propose leaving it up to the local leadership. I’d rather not say “don’t do it at all” because there could be some locations where it’s not clear your destination involves a large entry fee.
The hack would be visible to those entering the park and stopping at a destination there (or, not visible as the toll would not be displayed nor indicated) and then leaving for somewhere from within the park.
I think the real question is: Has this issue been brought to Staff, and is there a way (and a plan) to fix it, or is Waze routing going to continue to be broken this way for the foreseeable future? I feel very strongly we shouldn’t be hacking around something that should be fixed on the back end. Especially for something that has widespread implications all across the USA.
I’d like to bring up this odd example: Yosemite West is outside Yosemite NP, but only reachable by driving into the park. You must pass a fee station, but do not actually exit the park on the thru-road.
7396 Yosemite Park Way, Yosemite West, CA 95389 as an example address.
What then does our hack do for users going to places like this?
I can’t find anything in CenterCode about this problem. It’s easily reproducible at Skyland Resort or roads nearby. If we can find other areas where this problem exists, that will help when reporting to staff. I tried to reproduce in Glacier and Yosemite, and things worked fine there. So again, does anyone know of other areas where “avoid tolls” causes Waze to navigate to some other nearby, incorrect segment rather than the closest segment?
I agree completely with this sentiment in principle. Unfortunately Waze’s development priorities tend to be quite different from what many of us would want or expect, and we are often stuck choosing the lesser of multiple evils.
The exit-toll hack would tell these drivers there is a toll on the way out, but not on the way in. I doubt this would be a problem going in since such drivers would be well acquainted with the fee gates (and probably have some kind of exemption or pass). But on the way out, yup, this would be confusing and is a valid concern.
The idea behind the exit-toll hack is not that it would be a good solution, but that it may be a better solution than accepting that some unfortunate drivers may be routed onto hazardous roads; the lesser evil. Ideally, as you say, Waze would do something about this at their end.
See, that’s just the problem there … it’s a resort community, and while there are probably some full-time residents most of the places are rentals. If you rent a place and enter the address as “West Yosemite” you’ll have no idea you’re gonna enter a park. (I’ve been to West Yellowstone … that’s a big town, not part of anything NPS.)
If we’re going to consider guidance based on a few example of broken routing, we need to also consider the few examples of the toll display failing on our hack as well.
Concern #1 is that through routes involving fee gates, such as Yosemite National Park or the 17 Mile Drive in Pebble Beach, are effectively toll routes. As such, the “avoid tolls” feature should support drivers in choosing their routes through these regions much as it does in more traditional toll settings. I share this concern 100%.
Concern #2 is that drivers arriving at a destination may be unprepared for destination fees, and that we should therefore adapt Waze’s toll feature to advise them of such even when through routes are not involved. Am I hearing that correctly? Is that a direction we want to go?
I don’t think West Yosemite is a good example. Surely anybody taking a vacation rental in this dead-end residential enclave would be advised by the landlords that the only way in involves a $35 fee gate? And if they aren’t, I’m not convinced it’s Waze’s job to make up for that. But perhaps there are better examples that support Concern #2?
Personally I am leery of Concern #2 for many reasons…hopefully I’m misunderstanding.
Regardless, it sounds like we don’t yet completely understand the bad-routing-when-avoiding-tolls artifact? We may need to learn more before we try to work around it.
No, I’m saying we want to use the toll feature to announce entry fees. Leave that up to local leadership though as some people might see it as a sort of toll to drive into a National Park. Now that we have the ability to show the price, it could be nice-to know.
My main concern is making thru-roads through National Parks function like other toll roads as these thru-roads are frequently mH and higher, and the detour may or may not be huge to avoid them and users may have no idea they’re about to travel thru a park from one place to another.
I was using West Yosemite as an example where the ‘backwards toll’ mapping proposed would lead to confusion. For the record, the landlord we rented from did not share the fact that we’d pass thru the park on the way there. But my wife does good pre-travel research so no surprise (and we had mom-and-dad with us who have the senior lifetime ATB pass anyway).
To me, a passage toll and a destination entry fee are two different things. I’m all for using Waze’s toll feature to help drivers choose a through route, but I would balk at using it to alert drivers that their destination will charge an entry fee.
In the case of Yosemite, these two separate goals overlap as long as the toll is marked on the entry segment, and we’re in functional agreement.
Were we to adopt the temporary workaround of marking the toll on the exit segment, however, then it seems like the complaint is that there would no longer be a destination entry fee alert. What I’m saying is I don’t agree with that use of the toll feature, so the loss of the destination entry fee alert doesn’t bother me.
In any event, I think we need to learn more about the failure mode before we discuss further. Marking tolls on exit segments instead of entry segments has awkward downsides. I only suggested it as a sort of “outside the box” temporary workaround, but I don’t think we should try any workaround at all until we understand the problem better.
I wonder how Waze would handle routing if the toll is set up as entry/exit. If it doesn’t go through both (it only goes through the entrance), what happens?