Just to put in my thoughts on walking trails… If it’s a simple sidewalk or a short little path behind someone’s house or within a development, then there really isn’t much value in having it there except in instances like jason mentioned. However, if it’s a major trail, then I think it’s good to include. For example, there is a “Rails to Trails” program in Michigan, where they are converting all of the old railroad beds into well-maintained trails. These trails can be 50-70 miles long, are coated in limestone, and have bridges and culverts along the entire length as needed. The only motorized vehicles allowed on them are snowmobiles in the winter. These are regularly used and anyone running Waze while on them can definitely pollute nearby roads, which can include interstates. These sometimes follow roads and sometimes cut across country. I think major trails like these deserve to be mapped and can be helpful in avoiding the speed data pollution. They just need to be disconnected from all roads to avoid most routing problems (I’ve had to disconnect the ones that are mapped from many roads because the base map import connected them to the roads). You may have some minor issues with starting your route too close to one or with GPS lock problems, but those should be pretty limited. Just my opinion.
Just wanna make sure this is known in here as well…
I have an issue with that. If the walking trail goes under or over a road and there’s no parking lot or anywhere to park along the road, how is Waze going to determine that? Waze is already routing people to the back of large shopping centers in San Antonio, I can see where it’s going to start directing people to stop at a walking trail when the house they’re looking for is sitting right next to the trail, or the Taco Bell they’re looking for sits right next to the trail.
Yeah… routing should never try to route you to any walking trail or pedestrian boardwalk or any other non-drivable road unless either 1) you are already on a non-drivable segment, or 2) there is an address on the non-drivable segment and that segment is connected to the road. Waze should entirely ignore non-drivable segments for routing otherwise. Currently, if a walking trail is between a house and the road, you can’t route to that house unless you add a driveway. This is because the current implementation is that Waze will route you to the nearest segment and if the nearest segment is a disconnected walking trail, Waze will fail the route instead of using the nearest drivable segment. It’s rather frustrating when you want to have main trails, but Waze fails to route you if you include them.
For now, I wonder if just marking all trails as railroads for the time being is better. If the trails are large, you don’t really want to delete them and have to add them back later. It’s easier to just change the type. Of course, I don’t know if railroads have the same problem after they made their changes. I’ve only tested walking trails and pedestrian boardwalks and both fail to route in certain cases. 
I wouldn’t think this was such a pain in the … but I got another UR yesterday because of the Lady Bird Johnson Walking Trail in Austin and the constant “mucking” that Level 1’s do to it because it’s not “complete”. This time someone connected the trail to a street right next to a parking lot and the routing engine routed someone down the trail instead of the street. I deleted a short piece of the trail where the connection was made and that should fix it for now, until the next time it happens.
Silly question. Why not lock it at 2? 3? 4? …disallowing those edits?
Well today, I took jstrangfeld’s advice and locked a few segments around the Austin American Statesman parking lot. This has been the source of most of the trail related issues since I have been involved. I just had to disconnect the trail from the street system in this parking lot for the 4th time I think.
Navigation apps should be designed with more than one mode of transportation in mind. Seems pretty dumb that if I use Waze to get to the city, park at any of the numerous access points to the huge trail system and use my bike to get to a destination along the trail, or park at one museum and walk to three or four others in a 2-3 mile radius of that one, I have to use a different nav app for that part of the trip. When meeting up for a group ride, Waze’s social networking features sound ideal, but the functionality is completely lost because I can’t change modes and ride the trail to the meetup point.
Most of the OSM based apps seem to have options for routing that actually take restrictions into account and route differently for car, bicycle and walking. (Of course, it’s necessary since OSM includes bike and walking trails.) Not sure why Waze even offers vehicle type restrictions when it ultimately ignores them.
Even another checkbox for “avoid non-motor-vehicle routing” would accomplish the goal, though something more readily accessible would be best for those of us who may use 3 modes of transport on a single trip. Since I’m planning to do some longer drive-and-bike tours over the summer, this could end up being a deal breaker as far as Waze is concerned.