The wiki has been updated for clarification of when to use PLR vs Private Rd - specifically relating to Apartment Complexes, Trailer Parks, Schools & Universities.
PLR should be used for these installations except when Private Rd is explicitly appropriate due to a gate/guard shack, etc.
https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Road_types/USA#Parking_Lot_Road
Thank you!
Should we add “Cemetery” roads?
Should they be Private or PLR?
It can be a combination, or one or the other depending on local practice and real world situations.
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I would like to see a rationale for how we decide when to use each. So far, we only have examples, which are not tied together by a common pattern.
The best I could do is: PLR is used for all actual parking lot roads, and in most other cases where we need a routing penalty to prevent through-routing. Private roads will do the same, but are only used in place of PLR where we need to in some way differentiate the design from simple and typical no-through-routing designs. In such cases, the use of Private Road serves to make editors aware that the design is unusual.
BTW, didn’t there used to be some sort of guidance to favor use of Private over PLR where the road is named?
Private allows traffic jam highlightimg, PLR does not. So private should be used for private streets which are used for driving not parking.
Edit: I’d like to see the rationale be
Private where there is a physical (gate, guard), or legal (Do Not Enter, No Trespassing signs) barrier to driving the segment.
PLR for others where we need the penalty such as parking lots, inside gas stations, etc. Which don’t meet the private criteria.
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You described a functional difference (traffic jams) but then expressed a preference that uses a rule that seems unrelated. Can we discuss how the functional difference might drive decisions?
Sorry for chiming in… But the penalty for PLR and PR isn’t the same (at least in ROW) we made several test which showed us, that the PR penalty is much higher than the Plot
When were these tests performed, are they still active, can you share it with us so we can try to reproduce?
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Those Tests Were made in 2014 don’t remember the correct date. It’s not active anymore. I’ll try to set it up again…
Try to set it up in a remote area where it is impossible to acquire any traffic data which can alter the results.
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Sure. 
I’ll post the results. But this will take some time. We have delayed tiles updates at the moment.
In this post it was suggested that Waze could warn drivers ahead of time that their route involves travel over Private Roads. I’m told Google already does this! So it is hardly farfetched, and might come to pass some day.
Were that to happen, however, ungated driveways marked as Private Roads would trigger the new warning. Drivers who take ungated driveways regularly might learn to ignore the warning and it would become an annoyance and not taken seriously.
This brings up the question of whether ungated but otherwise guideline-compliant driveways should always be set to the Parking-Lot Road type.
Should they?
I don’t see how the “warning” raises your question. If you’re route involves a turn onto a PR driveway, what would be so bad about getting a warning that you are entering a private road?
Plus, if the warning was set only if a penalty was applied, it would only occur when you travel TROUGH a private segment. A single driveway at teh end of the route would not trigger that anyway.
And this is all very theoretical, since Dev has not discussed this, only us pawns.
The idea came up in the context of the visitor-centric vs. resident-centric private installation discussion. The concept was that perhaps Waze could alert drivers beforehand that the chosen route was going to take them somewhere they’d better have access and that might cause them to pay more attention to the default route, and perhaps choose another.
A concern was raised that should this come to pass everybody who starts or ends on a guideline-compliant driveway would get the warning and it would quickly lose value and become clutter. Using PLRs for such driveways would solve this issue.
All that being said, I completely agree, we have no indication Waze is considering this (though apparently Google has already implemented it). There are better things to think about. Just tossin’ it out there.
Yes. lets keep it simple.
PLR unless physical or legal barrier then PR. NEVER EVER Trail, Boardwalk, Staircase
or
no roads at all EVER, just the area marker.
I’m still looking for a rationale based on how Waze uses them differently. So far, the closest alignment I can see between current practice and the system is as follows:
Private installations are essentially streets, but with unusual restrictions of entry. Therefore, Private Road is appropriate, because the entry/exit points shoudl have speed tracked like any other street.
Parking lots and driveways usually have no need for speed data, so they should be PLR. However, a very large parking lot, such as at some very large malls with multiple highway connections and their own “arterials,” may actually benefit from speed data. Check out Garden State Plaza. I only wish Waze was smarter about routing me out of there.
Alleys are marked in some states as PLR. Since they may have legitimate routing, they may benefit form Private Road. (And of course, my broken record pitch: I think alleys should be set to street, and let Waze figure out that they are slow.)
Other uses? Should be based on whether they are likely to be used as one of several alternative paths that should have speed measured.
I think this may be based on a misunderstanding. PLRs don’t show jam highlights. They do keep speed data.
Besides display of the segments themselves (live map currently, client undoubtable future), this is the big difference.
This might depend on the type alley, local laws, etc. I doubt it’s universally legal to travel through alleys willy-nilly.
Like I said, possible on PLRs as well
https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lon=-90.18033&lat=30.00232&zoom=4
OK, thanks sketch. Now, substitute jam for speed in my post. Does it still make sense?
For alleys, I didn’t mean to make it universal. I’m referring to alleys that are part of the public road network. Many older cities have extensive alleys, some even have them “in the grid.” But we have guidance in Road types/USA that alleys should be PLR, which would be inclusive of public alleys. This is a case of us trying to override the Waze default behavior instead of letting Waze worry about appropriate routing. I understand the intent, but I don’t think it is beneficial in the long term.
Of course, and whether or not jam highlighting is desirable/sensible makes sense as a criterion for the Private/PL decision. Parking lots contain slow-moving traffic by nature, whereas private roads may not.
I seem to recall that when we first did the FC conversion, we got a lot of complaints about Waze asking “Stuck in traffic?” when users hit a series of stop lights on major urban streets. My understanding at the time was that Waze was suddenly noting the jam false positives because the upgrade either turned on jam monitoring or lowered its threshold.
Is that still accurate, and do we know which variation is true? I actually got a stop light “Traffic?” popup on Manhattan’s West Side Highway a couple of nights ago, so I suspect it is true.
That would imply that lower valued segment types would have a high threshold of jam monitoring anyway.