Interesting idea Alan. A part of me wants to do away with any arbitrary length requirement, and your proposal does that. Of course, there’s always exceptions to a rule, so I would add a caveat that if a driveway would help navigation in adverse conditions, it’s appropriate.
Here is an example where the house can be seen from its road, but there is another driveway that will interfere with routing particularly when leaving the address.
Since there are two houses off of the one driveway it meets the current criteria for adding a driveway, but if 3191 Fiery Run Rd was the only house there it is prudent to add the driveway so that users don’t snap to the driveway for 12393 John Marshall Hwy and get routed to John Marshall Hwy.
Just an FYI, using the HN shaded area would change the current distance in the Wiki from 50 meters (164 ft) to 130 meters (430 ft)
Both of these driveways already meet the criteria to be mapped under the current guidance, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at in relation to adding the rural driveway guidance?
Take 2 below. Obviously, feel free to wordsmith, etc.
[code]Driveways that contribute to the navigation experience should be mapped. In low density areas, they can serve as useful visual references on otherwise featureless roads. Even in higher density areas, properties can be set back from the road by a significant distance, and the user experience is enhanced by front door navigation, rather than to be given an arrival notification 200 or more feet from the actual house. Finally, in many cases the actual entrance to a driveway can be obscured by trees, rocks, etc, making it difficult to determine exactly where the driver should turn into the property.
When a driveway is mapped, it is important to use a Residential Place Point (RPP), rather than a house number. A house number will still give the arrival notification at the driveway entrance. Remember to follow the accepted guidelines for mapping RPPs, found here [link to RPP wiki]
When to map driveways:
*If a property is set back a significant distance from the main road (200 feet or more)
- The driveway entrance is obscured by trees or other objects, such that a visual reference for where to make the turn would be useful
*The actual property is offset from the driveway entrance, so that the driver must make a turn after entering the driveway in order to arrive at the front door.
*If 2 or more properties are served by the same driveway
*If another properly mapped driveway would interfere with proper start up navigation. In other words, if a property would otherwise not qualify for a driveway, but still closer to another property’s driveway.
When not to map driveways:
*If the property is clearly visible when approaching from either direction in all conditions at typical speeds.
*If doing so would cause interference with other navigation features such as ETA calculations due to short segments on the main road.
[/code]
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Some smithing:
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Which is why I stated it meets the current criteria but used to show if the one house was singular and how the other longer driveway adversely affects the route from the one house
This sets the basis for the "If another properly mapped driveway would interfere with proper start up navigation. In other words, if a property would otherwise not qualify for a driveway, but still closer to another property’s driveway. "
Also for either of the proposals used, for mapping a driveway conditions there are four bullets and there is only one or between 3 and 4.
Recommend stating at the beginning if any of the following conditions are met … or add an or between 1 and 2 and also between 2 and 3.
I agree we undermap driveways.
I propose additional requirements:
- Map them when there are two or more driveways beginning close together at the street, say within 100 feet. In these cases, it can be very unclear which to take. Driving a 1/4 mile down the wrong farmer’s driveway may result in trouble!
- Map them when the driveway is significantly curved. In other words, a perpendicular line from the house to the main street will not result in the correct entry point.
- Map them when starting navigation will snap to a segment inaccessible from the house. For example, the screenshot provided by subs5 - Waze will snap the user to Vine Ln.
Instead of many rules, why not just tell editors to test it? “Using the app, find the ‘natural’ entry point for an address. If it is off by more than 25 feet, map the driveway.” A testing standard is more time consuming and will allay your concerns about bulk editing.
Should we explain why we do this? As most of you know, Google address points are frequently in the centroid of the property. Waze then finds the nearest segment and draws a perpendicular line to create the entry point. On large properties (which are typically rural), this more times than not results in the wrong entry point - either on the wrong segment or the wrong place on a segment. An explanation similar to this may help editors understand why driveways are important.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, however, your suggestions 2 & 3 are already covered in the second draft. I would argue that suggestion 1 is covered under both the significant setback rule and the opening sentence “Driveways that contribute to the navigation experience should be mapped.”
While I appreciate the suggestion to “just test it,” I’m actually more afraid of underutilization if we went with this approach. I, personally, am not concerned that there will be widespread abusive behavior. Almost anyone who has EA outside of urban, high density areas has gained that EA through the AM review process, and should, theoretically, be trustworthy enough to know how to read a wiki.
I absolutely agree that it’s important to explain the “why” behind the “what” for just about everything we do. Trying to draft a wiki that would anticipate every single situation is an exercise in futility and has the potential to either create mindless automaton editors who follow the rules to the letter, or drive good editors away. Neither is acceptable. That said, I think any explanation that references Google as a primary reason for what we do is not only incomplete, but wrongheaded. In this case, the solution to the Google problem is to create an RPP for the address in question.
While the current draft follows normally accepted rules of grammar, other wikis with similar lists of bullets do have an initial statement indicating that meeting ANY of the criteria means that the feature in question should be added. So, in the next draft I’ll add that statement.
Likewise in Oregon. I have drawn thousands of driveways as PRs and don’t relish the thought of changing them.
On a very basic level, driveways are “private” in nature, whether there is a locked gate or not. Parking lot roads are “public” in nature, used primarily in public places such as shopping centers. That is quite intuitive, even for new editors.
Unless there are technical issues that provide over-riding reasons for using PLRs for driveways, I am definitely in favor of using PRs.
Barring an overwhelming majority in favor of one route over the other, I’d propose leaving type up to regional preferences.
I am already somewhat liberal with adding driveways.
Though I don’t want to have tentacles off every road. Generally my rule of thumb is wherever it’ll help navigation. If the house is not visible from the road - driveway. If the house is set back in such a way that nav would default to the wrong road, driveway. A standard short rural driveway though I still wouldn’t draw.
I think the above makes for a decent best practice.
Grammatically, there are essentially two options:
"Do this if
- this,
- this,
- this, or
- this."
"Do this if any of the following is true:
- This.
- This.
- This.
- This."
The former is a sentence that just happens to be broken up by bullets but that follows normal sentence structure; the latter is a pure list. To emphasize that this is an OR relationship, emphasize the “or” in the former or the “any” in the latter. Either way is fine, but it’s best not to mix and match. The latter is probably more clear.
I have a similar concern. During one of the recent online office hours, one of the Waze programmers (wish I could remember who, and which weekend) said that the more separate segments we add to the map, the harder it is for the routing algorithm. Liberal mapping of driveways would add a lot of new segments to through roads (which is not usually a concern with liberal mapping of parking lots, because these tend to have a limited number of entrances and exits). Having said that, I can certainly see where there are benefits to mapping more driveways in low-density areas where houses are not necessarily visible from the road.
Can you provide an example of a road that would a) have many driveways mapped according to the proposed wiki and b) suffer from those driveways? If so, let’s look at it together and see what the solution might be. Dealing in hypotheticals doesn’t necessarily advance the conversation.
Just to throw some support from my region. I think these are good changes for rural driveways. Everyone who has concerns so far has brought up great points, but I believe this will really benefit rural users in the end.
Just a quick observation on short segments and high speeds, because this has come up with True Elevation and bridges: While the per-segment data as viewed in Route Speeds is definitely bad for segments where one “ping” is likely recorded due to speed, or even sometimes zero pings, I have not (yet!) observed undesirable routing results.
The potential is definitely there, but it may already be a scenario that has been engineered around. Or, also plausible, is that the cases of potential routing harm are mitigated by the stretch of road already being a “thru road” scenario. The short segments are part of “no outlet” nodes, so the sum of segments from branching-path to branching-path are cumulatively OK data-wise (examples: long Freeway with True Elevation bridge segments: the short segments are relatively insignificant compared to exit-to-exit total segment combinations. Rural driveways: the short segments are due to Driveway nodes between arterials that are spaced at one-mile intervals, with plenty of longer segments between arterials.)
Without a staff comment, I can’t offer anything better than caution tempered by lack of observed problems, so far…
Had a real situation from this week that I wanted to share, this UR the reporter said that anytime they wanted to drive south they were routed north about 5 miles out of the way to the shortest point south of their house was less than 1/4 mile. We went over everything made changes here and there but what fixed it was adding a driveway to their house. I can’t see cluttering the map adding a lot of driveways but it does help fix certain situations. This was the first time I ran into a situation like this one. Hope this helps some, just wanted to share this. Waze On!