As I’ve been exploring more in WME, I’ve encountered more and more variation to how the ‘private road’ type is applied. Wazeopedia defines it as
, but there seems to be more to it than that - some roads that are marked on street signs as private roads are mapped as streets, some roads that are actually streets are mapped as private roads, and the differentiation between parking lot roads and private roads seems to be very case-by-case. Are there any hard and fast rules for deciding what is and isn’t a private road, or is this just something that will be learned by experience. If the latter, are there any good tips for newbies? I’ve put a few examples below (hidden) to illustrate - most of these have been mapped by relatively senior editors.
Apologies for the long question, just thought that there was a fair chance that others may be wondering the same thing and wanted to save people having to repeat themselves.
[hide]1. Clearly marked on all signage as a private road, but mapped as a street by an editor with lots of experience. 2. Mapped as a private road, but no signage to that effect whatsoever.
3. A road that makes no mention of being private or not, but that I was advised to map as private for routing reasons.
4. A road into a school car park that has been mapped as a private road.
5. A road into a different school car park that has been mapped as a parking lot road.[/hide]
Private & Parking road types act almost the same in the routing server, both have a large penalty when exiting a segment which makes them useful for preventing Waze using them for routing unless the user’s destination is along them or it is the only viable route. The only real difference is a Parking road type won’t show congestion highlighting in the client app, so they are a little interchangeable.
The clear cut reasons for use are;
Parking roads - when mapping a car parks, users will be driving slowly looking for spaces, and lingering with the app running after parking and before leaving, we don’t want congestion highlighting in this scenario
Private road - when a sign clearly states it is private
Private road - when the road is access via a gate or barrier system
Private road - when there are road signs that state ‘except for access’
I’ll try to give feedback on the listed locations;
As half of Manor Road is already mapped as Private there is no reason I can see for all of it to be mapped the same, signs at both ends also suggest it should be 10mph.
This is likely mapped as private as it unlikely to be an adopted highway and we don’t really want Waze suggesting it for through routing, according to the signs it has its own bylaws and the junction with Church Road is not a full junction but more of a driveway.
I advised you this might be better mapped as Private as Waze has a habit of using cul-de-sacs to get users to make a u-turn, as this looks like a gravel driveway we’d likely get complaints that Waze was routing users into private properties
This is likely mapped as Private due to the gated access, either road type would work
See second part of 4
It is a case of learning when to use Private road type in some scenarios as we also use it to make Waze suggest sensible routing, preventing Waze routing along a parallel service road rather than staying on the main road, etc.
Finally, even the most experienced editor can make a mistake, or mapping evolves as new tools / features are released. You’re always free to query mapping, we’ll endeavour to explain reasoning if we can or agree that it could be mapped differently
If the road is a dead end, then the segment type is almost completely irrelevant. Unless a segment/turn restriction prevents it, Waze will route onto a dead-end of any driveable type if that’s where the destination is.
The substantial difference between PR and PLR is traffic detection. The app will never show a jam on a PLR segment. In theory it can do so on PR (although I don’t recall ever seeing it!). The way the app prevents through-routing is by adding a very large penalty (2 hours?) on leaving PLR or PR onto a different segment. So routing onto a PLR where the destination lies works fine. Routing though Street-PLR-Street has a massive penalty.
There is quite a difference in how PLR and PR look in the App display. With large areas of “residents only” streets, this can make the app look a bit strange - lots of understated PR segments that look, in real life, like any other street. Your example 1 is probably a case like this. If you look carefully, you’ll see a tiny restricted segment in place to prevent through routing. With large areas of “residents only”, it’s common to use “gate” segments like this at the edge. Personally, I’m not a fan.
In the past, at UK meetups, Waze HQ have given us stats on map quality. One of the stats they use is unnamed streets - which simply ignores the fact that there are many thousands of rural UK roads that simply do not have a name. This makes it tempting to make dead-end rural access roads PR, to avoid the no-name stat. Personally, I only mark them as PR if I see an actual gate or “Private” sign. Beyond that, I’m happy that un-named roads have no names, even if Waze aren’t. :lol:
Lack of speed limit info is another temptation to use PR. If you can’t get an up-to-date GSV view and really don’t know the speed limit, then a PR won’t trigger the highlights from some scripts, or HQ’s stats.
Let me run through your other examples. (I covered 1 above)
A very narrow road by the look of it. You wouldn’t want Waze routing through here as a shortcut, so PR seems the best way to avoid that. I see you’ve put a 5mph speed limit on it. I would probably not do that. The only sign I can see is the writing on the wooden sign at the south. That is nothing like the proper round sign and I can’t see one on the north end. I would therefore be more likely to simply leave no speed limit on the segments. But this road could well be privately maintained, in which case any speed limit sign is just a request. If it’s clearly signed, I do set speed limits on PLR/PR, but don’t worry about it too much.
It’s a dead end. Making it PR, PLR, Street or Motorway makes no difference at all to routing! As a private driveway for 1/2 it doesn’t need to be mapped at all unless it solves a specific routing problem (like the GPS location returned for the property at the end of the drive is closer to a segment “behind” the house).
School access road. Type makes no difference to routing. I would have used PLR, because there are clearly-visible car park spaces. Assuming a teacher gets in the car, starts Waze, then gets in a discussion with their passenger, they could create a jam on that PR segment!
School access road with PLR - which is correct.
[EDIT] I know you’ve had a reply already. I started this half an hour ago, but the ex-wife showed up! I’m not wasting the effort. :lol:
Thanks both for the comprehensive replies, has really helped to clear up some of the confusion in my head! I think the big take home point is that I really need to keep reminding myself is that what really matters is how things look/work in the app, rather than making WME look pretty and 100% accurate :lol:
Ah that makes sense, I didn’t realise that was a possibility as there is literally a barrier (only openable by residents) at the location of that restricted segment.
As the half that’s mapped as private was changed to private by me when I was correcting a couple of names a while back, and before I quite appreciated the complexity/importance/implications of a quick edit, I wouldn’t necessarily take it as gospel :oops: That said, this road is definitely a private road IRL, so if it was just up to me I’d map it as such. However, since a street is also an acceptable way of mapping this and that’s already been done and appropriately mitigated with the gate, would editing it to be a private road on both sides of the barrier be acceptable? Or would it be more appropriate to leave it and remap the bit I did back to streets, or post on the forum/pm the last editor of those segments to discuss it since it’s verging more on changing something to my personal preference than making it meaningfully better? Or just leave it, but I don’t like that it’s one road with two mapping styles, even if the actual effect is negligibly different
We always want Waze to be 100% accurate but unlike other maps, that aim to map every minor detail or offer walking / cycling route, we want Waze to always provide accurate routing for the core market, commuters. This may mean we map in a more simplified manor, or even miss out bits
As for Manor Road, the small segment will always prevent routing of through traffic, as Waze can’t know if you are a resident it’s not really worth mapping at all. Road signs at both ends claim it is a dead-end, feel free to map all of Manor Road as Private.
