YanisKyr wrote:Most mapped Railroad segments in Ireland are at Elevation -5 and very rarely at ground level mostly without junctions with the same level roads (example). According to the wiki, Waze associates traffic data with level crossings only when segments are at the same level, with a junction improving accuracy of historical data.

Source: https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Railroad_crossing#Railroad

• Do NOT enter a name for the railroad segment unless the tracks are historical in nature, a major landmark, or a routine destination for Wazers and your local state/regional wiki guidelines allow for such naming. The Waze app now renders railroad tracks as such so naming serves little purpose any longer. (See more below on Naming railroad segments.)
• Always select "None" for the city name. This avoids city smudging.
• Lock the segment at L2.

• Do not map railroads below ground, as they do not serve any of the three purposes outlined above. This is especially true in urban areas where underground rail lines are common, and their appearance on the map would be confusing to drivers.
• Set the elevation just as you would a drivable segment. When tracks junction a road on the ground, the Elevation should be set to Ground.
• Create junctions between drivable roads and railroads.[rr]
• [rr] Note: The routing server will properly account for delays at railroad crossings through a segment without a junction. However, with a junction, the historical data for the rail crossing will be more accurate.

I did 2-3 before thinking to share it here, so I believe it's worthwhile to join Railway and Road segments to improve traffic stats, what do you think?

Thanks Yanis. The wiki page you linked to is for the US - although the principles in there all sound pretty sensible to me. Although we don't have our own local railway mapping conventions, the UK conventions might be worth looking at too.

The reason for the elevation -5 and locking at L5 that many of our railways have probably dates from when that was the guidance in the wiki. I don't see any need for either of those any more, and I don't see the need for naming them either. That said, I don't think there's a great need to go out and change what we have, but we might as well adjust railway segments as we come across them. (remove locks and names and change the elevation to Ground - and adding junctions where there are level crossings). I think we should only map tram/Luas lines where they don't run along a road surface though.

Do you think we need to come up with our own conventions, or will we use a mixture of the US and UK conventions?

This reminds me of a question I had actually: in a few places, we have mapped former railway lines and disused railway lines. If the tracks are still in place for a disused railway line, I think it's worth mapping (just to orient drivers), but if the tracks are long gone, I don't think we should map them at all. Opinions?

++David

There has been debate as to whether or not it is actually helpful to junction railroad crossings or not for Waze to calculate those times (the time across the entire segment most likely will be slower, so is it really necessary to include a new junction?)

And then of course there are a few examples where junctioning railroads, especially when there are some other close junction nodes that exist, could lead to really damage the map in terms of turn timings.