Dear All,
I am after you thoughts on Walking Trails and the over use of these.
I am finding in some areas almost every pavement is marked as a walking trail. Whilst I can see the need for these in some places, my thought is that over use encourages walkers to use Waze for navigation which we know it was never designed for.
So what is an acceptable level?
Please let me have some constructive comments.
My thoughts on this subject is that, if anything non-driveable could be mistaken for a road in the aerial images then it should be mapped out by someone who knows what they’re doing to minimise the risk of it being mapped out by someone who doesn’t…
As long as it’s not connected to driveable segments.
Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk
My view is delete them unless they’re relevant to stop people mistakenly adding a “road” that’s no longer drivable (e.g. the satellite image is out of date); a pedestrianised area etc.
Waze is about driving not about walking! 
The UK Wiki says this: “Non-drivable - aren’t really worth adding, as Waze is an app aimed at commuters who drive, but if you really feel the need to add these, be careful and make sure that they DO NOT connect to drivable roads as Waze has been known to route people along walking trails and the like!”
Meant to add, I think some people add them just to get more points :o
They can be a blessing and a curse, it’s open to interpretation. They can be handy, especially in a town centre, say you’re like me, and work in construction, I do a fair share of commercial fit-outs and in for example say Leicester city centre I want to find a paved road I know the shop is on but don’t know how to get there, I’ve permission to drive on it, but I need to find it, nav takes me to the closest road, and I can drive the last bit manual as I can see the road I’m after.
Flip side is having so much road information you scream on frustration seeing your target destination close by the “roads” in between to your target, and the nav takes you 6 ways to hell and back or you’re looking straight at a series of pavements and bollards where the route takes you.
You really need local people or people who are familiar with the area to mark the relevant ones.
I only tend to add them for real roads that appear in the OS data, but have been blocked off from traffic and pedestrianised. Obviously never connected to driveable segments.
If a named but disconnected walking trail is on the map, it exists in the Waze database as a location to navigate to, even if Waze cannot take you all the way there. I guess we have to trust Waze to implement a sensible routine to determine the navigation endpoint when the selected destination can’t be navigated to.
I suspect Waze are experimenting with this. A couple of months ago, there were several reports of the client navigating to the endpoint of a walking trail that was nearest the road network when the destination was somewhere on that trail. Just as it occurred to us that it would be an ideal solution to problematic locations like airports, that functionality stopped working. 
So they might be trying something.
Additionally, a walking trail put in for a genuine, but inaccessible road can have house numbers added, again improving the chance that drivers will be routed as close as possible to their destination.
My preference is to use some form of street for things which were built as streets, and keep "walking trail"s for things which were never intended to be drivable (which in practise means I personally don’t use walking trails at all).
What I am getting at is that I prefer to map a pedestrian precinct as a street and use restrictions to stop Waze routing along it. So a genuine full pedestrian precinct would be a “street”, with restrictions stopping all vehicles all the time in both directions - but it would probably be joined to other streets.
One advantage of this approach is that it easily covers semi-pedestrian precincts - those which are drivable by some people at some times. One near me is pedestrians-only during the day but drivable at night. Others are open to buses and taxis only.
This is a very good point. Lots of estates have a drivable roads with some of the houses accessed by footpaths. I can see that “walking trail” is a way of getting those house numbers in the right place.
and what about runways/taxiways/etc? There seems to be a small industry adding these!
Mapping runways and taxiways is pointless and could be pretty dangerous. If a routing engine issue or an editing mistake could direct people into the path of an aircraft it could be fatal. Presumably very low odds and probably requires a gate left open etc, but potentially huge consequences. Probably best not to map them!
Judging by many of the URs, some people don’t expect to look and act on what they see out of their windscreen. We have to be cautious.
Oh hell I’m a Gatwick airport picking up at the moment… Oh S#%t that’s a 747 heading my way 
The same argument could be put for railways too! (I’m sure Waze said they’d make railways visible in the client a long time ago, not even “soon”, but it’s not happened, which is why some countries cheat and use different road types that are visible.)
As long as the rule of not connecting non-driveable to driveable is observed, then there is benefit in mapping some real world reference points alongside the roads.
On the other hand, Waze will be ready for flying cars - coming ‘soon’ :lol:
Sooner than working in London in the rush hour …
Ok so the consensus is we shouldn’t be using walking trails as regularly as some are.
I agree that they need to used at certain times, such as streets where there are houses that can only be reached on foot.
Can I suggest that either one of our CM’s updates the Wiki to this effect or if they are happy then I can do this.
The Wiki might cover “pedestrian boardwalks” too. Like how are they different from “walking trails”, and when one should be used rather than the other, or maybe one of them should never be used in the UK?
I agree that would be useful.
Hi,
Some walking trails may be useful but for those streets that are pedestrianised BUT which allow vehicular access then I would think that boardwalk would be better. Sounds more “shopping” associated, which is where most of this type of “street” crop up. They also need to be restricted for entry and exit to make the penalty for using them too high - so they only route there if your destination is actually there.
Surely "some walking trails - connected BUT with restrictions on entering and exiting them will make the penalty in waze so high that it will not navigate on them. Furthermore, from what limited number I have seen, they don’t really show up in the client (map editors scheme) or at least hardly visible.
Des. . .