I’ve had a look at the wiki page and the forum post on car parks and just wanted to check a couple of things:
It’s made clear that we can add any car park that isn’t street parking, since Waze introduced the ability to set restrictions on car parks a few years ago. Does this mean we should add all car parks? Forum posts talk about the parking project wanting all car parks to be added, but can’t find anything on that since 2017 so wanted to check whether this was still the case. Lots of quite busy supermarket/other restricted car parks don’t currently exist, despite areas being recently updated by active senior editors - should I be adding them, or have they been left alone for a reason?
If an area place currently encompasses that place’s car park, should we be mapping the car park inside that area place (is this possible?), changing the shape and adding the car park, or just not bothering with the car park at all?
The Parking Project is/was one of the many “over hyped, get everyone engaged, screw all the hard work with a mass import of middling to poor data, spend months the auto imports that kept adding house number to car parks”, wonderful features that Staff role out when they think they have a good idea.
The Parking Project is dead (or at least so far on the back burner it has fallen down the back of the cooker). Having said all that, the client app will suggest the closest public car parks to your destination and even the most popular car park, so yes, all car parks can be mapped. They have likely been left alone as the priory at the time was public car parks, then there is the open debate of a supermarket/retail park being public or restricted, and it gives newer editor something to do
As for an area place… permalinks of an example really help, it is possible the area is draw wrong and should only be the building, and the car park is then separate, if not then the car park can still be mapped, as car parks can only be mapped as area having them overlap is not an issue.
Here is a recent one that I have completed today. Had to change the layout of the retail park before adding the car park as all of the buildings were not included originally. I haven’t included a linked google place as the actual retail park is linked.
I had a feeling that may have been the case with the parking project… thanks for clearing that up!
Sorry, I really need to get better at remembering to include permalinks/examples as a default when posting questions like these. This golf course is a decent example of the sort of thing I mean - there’s a reasonably sized car park half way up the western edge for patrons of the golf club only, which falls within the boundaries of the course and thus inside the current area, but reshaping the area to exclude the car park wouldn’t take too much effort. From what you’ve said it sounds like this car park is best mapped as an area within an area, like all the car parks within Richmond Park for example, but if it was a car park for a building then they’d be better off as separate areas as The_Airborne_Identity has done above.
Just one quick further question as well: a lot of the car parks in the area I’m editing have values in the cost field (low/moderate/expensive) rather than being left blank as stated on the wiki, and these have mostly been added by the same editor (seen when looking at the edit history). Is it considered bad manners to go around an area making several of the same minor changes to the same person’s work without reaching out to them about it, or is that ok? I wouldn’t want to keep editing the same thing back-and-forth, or allow the same mistake to keep being made in future because they just don’t know this one very specific guideline, but as a very new editor I’d be wary of sending a message to a much more experienced editor telling them how I think they should be doing things. I obviously wouldn’t be targeting every car park in that area just to edit the cost field - as a new editor I have the time and patience to look at things like car parks and places and make sure every detail is correct, and this is just something I’ve noticed when doing so in this area.
You’re instincts appear to be spot on regarding the example provided.
As for bringing mapping up to the correct standards, feel free to amend as required. As you say, car parks should not have the cost field filled in other than Free. If the edits to include the cost were done recently (erm, within 6 months, picked out of thin air) then a PM the the editor to tell them your reasons and a link to the wiki to politely remind them of the UK mapping guidance shouldn’t hurt… Any experienced editor should be following the UK guidance, if they aren’t they should have a good reason and/or be discussing it in the relevant UK forum, having said that we all make mistakes.
Car parks are something that I often find myself scratching my head about, to be honest.
Sometimes it’s clear whether or not one should be added - if, say, it’s a stand-alone council-run public car park (yes), or a small private parking area in front of something like, say, a Screwfix store which is marked out with parking spaces but is clearly not for public use and only for customers of the store (no).
What I’m never quite sure about, though, is things like large car parks for retail parks or supermarkets - are they public car parks in the true sense? If I look around the retails parks and shopping centres in my part of the world, I can find some with the car park mapped as an area (example), and some where it’s only mapped as PLRs and not specifically as a car park (example).
As a general rule, if it is a public car park, big enough to take more than about 10 cars (my personal opinion) it should be mapped. Less space than that, it is not particularly useful except in a small village. Make sure it has all the details such as name, address - city, road name (not number) and it has at least one PLR into it, with the area place having the entry point marked.
If it is a car park for a business or collection of businesses, again, of a reasonable size, I would draw it and label it as restricted. In the app, if you search for a business, Waze will suggest the nearest car parking. It is irritating navigating to a supermarket with its own car park just to be told the nearest parking is some distance away!!
As has already been identified, the buildings and the car parking should be drawn separately (unless the carpark is integral - above or beneath the business).
For open areas - parks etc, the car parking should be drawn within the boundary of the park, again with all the details, PLR’s and entry points marked.
Duly noted - thanks, Ian. So essentially when you’ve got, say, a moderate-sized Aldi supermarket (in a building large enough to have already been mapped as an area place) with a car park for 40 cars, the car park should be drawn as an area place as well as just having the skeleton PLRs mapped?
Car parks can only be drawn as an area place, if it’s a simple car park then even a single in/out segment should be enough. We only want to direct users into the car park.
Cheers, Chris, I understand the principles of mapping car parks, my question related more to the matter of whether a small-to-medium-sized supermarket carpark with no shared-use with other businesses (for example) should be specifically mapped as a separate entity to the supermarket, or only as PLRs. Every day’s a school day in the Waze forums!
Extra bit - Personally, I would add all the car parks you find that are public or restricted to someone using the associated business.
These are useful anyway, and having them in and correct helps when navigating to the business.
Also when / if Waze ever have another go at the parking project they will all need to be in and correct. The more we have already done, the less likely they are to repeat the chaos of the mass import they did last time which caused a backlash from all the community and killed the project.
