I suspect I'm notorious at this point for resisting the addition of display objects, at least those I don't think provide sufficient benefit to be worth the downsides. However, my first reaction to this proposal is one of caution.

You're right, historically we've used the "Airport" category to include everything from Chicago-O'Hare to an abandoned mountain airstrip accessible only by 4x4 in the dry season, which typically has the primary name field set to "Arprt". I agree that, just because the original basemap import gave us a lot of "Arprts" doesn't mean we have to adopt that as our editing standard. A lot of these old "Arprt" places don't need to be on the map.

At the same time, from nearby roads, drivers typically can't tell if if a small airfield has a paved runway or not. They CAN tell that there is a big open area with hangars and a wind sock and maybe some aircraft. To my mind, if a driver is passing such a location, it is an asset to have it show up on the app display. It's a large and potentially useful orientation cue, like a park or a body of water.

A separate question is whether we want limit the extent to which the "Airport" category pulls up minor airfields. Maybe -- if we did that, however, I think minor airfields should still get an Area Place if they are visible from neighboring roads. We could give them a different category. That's just brainstorming -- I'm not recommending doing this as I have mixed feelings about it.

Can you describe the failure mode? How is our current guidance manifesting in problems for drivers?

MacroNav wrote:Here's a couple "airports". Zoom out to 1 and pan around the map with GIS-L airports on. Have a look. Do you think all those dots should be airport area places?

https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lo ... 31.3875866

Those look like fly-in communities. I see multiple aircraft and a few hangar-like structures in what looks like people's back yards.

It is an interesting question how to map a fly-in community where people keep their planes on their own personal property, but those properties abut a single airstrip that by itself is a glorified dirt road. Or even a nice paved airstrip, but the point is that the airstrip is the only shared property, everything else is basically a suburb.

I don't think the editing community has ever addressed this question. We have determined that neighborhoods and residential complexes should not get Area Places. We have determined that airports should get Area Places. But what about a residential complex that has an airstrip?

If a driver from a nearby road does not see a big expanse of open space that is obviously an airfield, but rather a collection of homes that may have visible aircraft next to their houses, garages, SUVs, chicken coops, and Christmas decorations -- and the airstrip itself is not visible from the road but rather effectively in people's back yards -- then it wouldn't seem to me to do any good as an Area Place.

And heck, how would you draw it anyway? Would you include the residential properties, where the aircraft are kept, even though those wouldn't look at all like an airport? Or would it be just a long thin rectangle around the airstrip, even though that looks like nothing from the road? Yuck.

So...yes, I could see guidance that says: we should not map as "Airports" fly-in communities where all the normal trappings of an airport are kept on individual residential properties and the only thing shared is an airstrip whose surrounding open space is largely or completely invisible to passing traffic.

juliansean wrote:Having the AP lets me as a driver know I'm close and start reading signs or looking for what could be an entrance instead of following the app. Where does this happen the most --- small, private or semi private strips that have very little signage. (Emphasis DwarfLord's -- Ed.)

With respect, there are few (if any?) situations where the community actively uses the display aspect of Area Places as the primary means of guiding drivers on their final approach to their destinations. Our goal is to get the turn-by-turn instructions correct. Area Places are Area Places (instead of Point Places) primarily for orientation. They do assist with final approach, but I don't think we should consider Area Places as a substitute for mapping the destination pin and the approach roads correctly.

But to what appears to be the OP's main thrust here -- what about the specific case of a fly-in community where the only thing shared is the airstrip; the clearing associated with it is invisible from adjacent roads; and all the airport trappings are spread out across multiple private residences? Do "outside" pilots frequently use those? Do they need Area Places to find them with Waze, or would a correct PP with correct road mapping do the trick? If they need Area Places, how would you map them? Would you include all the residences, or would it just be a long thin rectangle around the airstrip itself?

juliansean wrote:9X1 had it's stop point on SH-99 W. Because there was an AP, I was able to see on the app that I was not heading to where the airport was. I had to figure out how to get to the airport. With no AP, I would have had to go home, get on google earth or something, and find where the actual entrance was. The AP allowed me to make it to my destination. Obviously, that night I fixed the stop point.

It's great you found your way despite the incorrect stop point and consequently busted routing, but I don't think the benefit of belt-and-suspenders mapping is by itself adequate justification for an Area Place. Otherwise we'd mark all sorts of things as Area Places just in case the stop point was wrong.

What I believe is adequate justification for an Area Place is just a vast open clearing with buildings and aircraft that screams "airport" to passing drivers. The two examples you gave are completely consistent with that and I'm perfectly OK with them getting Area Places.

But what about the example the OP gave, that I'm trying to talk about here. There is nothing formally recognizable as an airport. It is a suburban neighborhood where several properties happen to abut an airstrip along their back fence. Here is my proposal to address the OP's concern:

Proposed guidance wrote:Do not map as "Airport" or use Area Places for fly-in communities where all the normal trappings of an airport are kept on individual residential properties and the only thing shared is an airstrip whose surrounding open space is largely or completely invisible to passing traffic.

Does anyone have a problem with that specific language? Why? And, what would be better for that specific case and why?

dfw_gis wrote:...any public facilities included in the area place without encompassing the private residences and their wide and tall garages.

My proposed guidance not to map with Area Places is only for fly-in communities with no public facilities at all ("...fly-in communities where all the normal trappings of an airport are kept on individual residential properties...").

If a fly-in community does have "public facilities" then I imagine it should have an Area Place. What to include and what not to include in that area place is a good question -- and your suggested answer sounds good to me. It's a separate question from MacroNav's concern about using Area Places for isolated airstrips with no public or shared property beyond the airstrip itself.

dfw_gis wrote:To the extent of the area vs point, if I had to vote on the topic I would keep them all as AP however define the extent better (property for large airports, fence for small airports, aircraft movement area for the residential/private strips). [...] Keeping them as an AP but having a clearer definition of the boundary would keep the standard simple.

I agree that airstrips with any sort of facilities shared among the users are worthwhile to map as APs, and in the lower 48 that will probably be most of them. So to the extent there's a debate it is coming down to what in the lower 48 will be a very small number of airstrips.

Focusing on that specific case...

Here is a fly-in community within Anza-Borrego Desert State park called Borrego Air Ranch. There appear to be no shared or public facilities -- checking their website didn't turn up any suggestion of such, though I only scanned it and could have missed something.

Waze has apparently had an Airport Area Place for this community since the basemap import (when it was probably an "Arprt"). The current layout of the Area Place follows the general idea of mapping the runways. I think dfw_gis' proposal would be to map the taxiways as well.

This AP satisfies my proposal's requirements for an AP, because the "surrounding open space" is NOT "largely or completely invisible to passing traffic". HOWEVER I think it shows how quirky it is to map an AP for such a facility where all the actual airport trappings except the runways themselves are on private residential property AND -- this is the big one I think -- the "Runway" road type fails to display.

To my eyes this is a fairly unsatisfying AP. Without the runway displaying, it looks like a small residential community that has a weirdly-shaped AP on top of it. If the airstrip for this runway was not out where drivers could see it, but rather hidden behind the back fences of residential properties, I think it would be even more unsatisfying. In that latter case -- what MacroNav brought up -- I'd agree that such an AP would not be a win for drivers.

What we really want for these locations may be to have runways display

This needs to be said in big bold letters: Large Area Places are NOT primarily for the benefit of people routing to them!

We do NOT put parks on the map to benefit nature lovers, lakes on the map to benefit sailors, or schools on the map to benefit students. They may benefit those people of course. But that is a secondary benefit, NOT their primary purpose.

If it WERE their primary purpose, then we would be using large Area Places for sprawling office complexes, famous neighborhoods, and expansive private estates. We don't, even though Waze is for the people who go to those places too.

The primary purpose of large Area Places is to serve as orientation for drivers passing near them.

The question being discussed is NOT about whether pilots are worthy of keeping "their" Area Places. I have a world of respect for pilots and the astonishing level of dedication and skill piloting requires, but that is neither here nor there.

The question is whether a handful of practically nonexistent, minimally maintained, invisible-from-nearby-roads, backyard airstrips with no facilities whatsoever, surrounded by personal residential properties and/or wilderness, serve as orientation for drivers passing nearby.

By that standard, I believe the specific Alaska airstrips linked by MacroNav fail, and I continue to propose my guidance addition as follows.

Proposed guidance wrote:Do not map as "Airport" or use Area Places for fly-in communities where all the normal trappings of an airport are kept on individual residential properties and the only thing shared is an airstrip whose surrounding open space is largely or completely invisible to passing traffic.

I'm up with this proposal, some modifications suggested below.

Kartographer proposed scope with DL proposed changes wrote:[...]Private-use airports should only be mapped as Area Places if they a large clearing and/or easily-recognizable aviation-related structures are visually obvious from public roads, or could reasonably serve as a destination for drivers the airport offers services to the general public such as flying lessons or demonstrations. For how to distinguish between public-use and private-use airports, see Names.

===Category===
The airport category should only be used on either for facilities that qualify for airport area places and or on point places for airline terminals. For other airport-associated business places, such as charter services or air freight forwarders, use a different category.

I'm uncomfortable adding "or satellite view". Unless Waze starts supporting navigation for aircraft or spacecraft, the fact that something is visible from air or space isn't relevant to the question of whether it is mapped as an Area Place. We use aerial imagery to help us decide how to draw an Area Place, but whether to draw it depends on visibility to drivers on nearby roads.

Plus, if a usable, maintained airstrip exists, that by definition will manifest as a large clearing visible from above. And of course the runway itself should be visible from above if it has any kind of maintenance. If we accept "visible from above" as a sufficient criterion then are we not back at square one and the entire proposal is invalidated?

jm6087 wrote:I guess I am really confused on what the real desire to not map a visually obvious airstrip/airport is.

There is a desire to create Area Places for airstrip/airport places that are visually obvious!

But "visually obvious" from 1000' up is a dramatically different criterion from "visually obvious" from the ground. Wouldn't you agree?

If being visually obvious from 1000' up is sufficient for an airstrip to have an Area Place then this whole discussion has been a waste, because even the most minimally-used airstrips will satisfy that criterion.

The background theme of large Area Places requiring visibility from the road has been present in discussions of Area Places for at least five years, maybe more. It is the critical criterion in the Landmark provision of the global wiki, which became part of the US wiki when the latter came into being.

It's true that, in the interests of simplicity, the community has effectively stipulated that certain large Area Places are so likely to be useful for orientation that they get an automatic "pass". Parks and schools are among these. The question of whether any particular park or school is visible from the road never comes up, not because it isn't an important question, but because it's a very good assumption.

Airports historically were considered to be in the same category with Parks and Schools -- large, obvious, public-facing orientation cues -- so they got the same treatment. What we are discussing here are a handful of small, hidden, non-public-facing airstrips. I am sure the framers of the original Place guidance were not thinking of these when the "Airport" category was discussed as automatically getting an Area Place.

jm6087 wrote:I guess my biggest issue is that it is being decided to pick and choose what type of airports/airstrips should be mapped. To me, this is not much different than picking and choosing which restaurants or small businesses should be mapped.

I hope there isn't a misunderstanding on this point. I don't believe anyone is saying we shouldn't map them. The question under discussion is whether they deserve an Area Place so that they will display on every Wazer's app as they pass through, even though passing Wazers are very unlikely to be familiar with them or to catch a glimpse of them.

I for one would be completely fine with pretty much anything people want getting a Point Place unless it's permanently closed. We can map the heck out of these backyard semi-abandoned airstrips using Point Places and I won't make a peep, honest!

[EDITS: Fix a typo. And another.]