On the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, we mapped the crossovers. They're just like a crossover on an interstate, except that they're paved, and they're a bridge. They're the only place to go if you have an emergency since the bridge is 24 miles and has no shoulders.

We've had problems with it from day one. Originally, we had them as Parking Lot Roads. But people weren't happy with that because they couldn't see them, being that the two parallel bridges are very close together. Even with them marked as Parking Lot Roads, people would often select a destination close to the beginning of the bridge, and get routed onto the bridge and told to make a turn at the first crossover. We fixed that with Waze Places as well as we could, although it still seems to happen due to bad Google lookups.

The latest experiment was to make them Major Highways to match what's on the bridge. This caused even more URs due to people being routed on them. In addition, they still weren't at all visible in the client map, unless you were zoomed in all the way, which doesn't typically happen if you have Auto-Zoom turned on and you're traveling at 65 MPH.

The latest thing I tried was to change the crossovers to Minor Highway and then put a time-based restriction on them, restricting them all the time. I thought the Minor HIghway would provide some contrast and make them visible, and it works for the closest 4 zoom levels, however, I did this on January 31, and we have another UR complaining of this route as of February 16.

The next step will probably be to disconnect them completely so that it's impossible to route on them.

The Causeway is a special case, and isn't an interstate, but it behaves similar to one. I don't advocate putting any type of crossover on Interstate highways since it's never legal for any passenger vehicle to route on them, and they are bound to cause problems. They're not easy to make visible from the client map, and have little value as a visible point of reference.

CBenson wrote:

jasonh300 wrote:I don't advocate putting any type of crossover on Interstate highways since it's never legal for any passenger vehicle to route on them, and they are bound to cause problems.

I would have agreed with you up until this post was made:

dbraughlr wrote:Can anyone speak to what policy exists for crossovers which are legal and useful?

I don't see an example of that being a legal or useful crossover. The Interstate Highway Act prohibits such crossovers, so I don't think the Yield sign makes it legal for the general public to use. That's a major hazard coming to a near stop in the left lane of an interstate to make a U-turn.

nzahn1 wrote:Like a dirt road(s) making a connection with the interstate. You can see the Stop Sign for the dirt road facing the interstate from the desert on the North side. How legal this "interchange" is I have no idea.

I see that stop sign, but there's not really a road there. I don't see anything that could even be classified as a Dirt Road/4x4 there. I don't think that's somewhere that Waze should ever be routing. It may be access to some field that one person uses. I"ve heard that there are at-grade connections to the interstate in a few spots in Texas, and it's one of the rare exceptions to the standards, like the interstate that runs on surface streets for a few blocks in New Jersey just across the river from NYC.

Maybe if it's an official exception (there's a list online somewhere, I'll look for it), it could be mapped, but I wouldn't do so unless the few people who legitimately can use Waze to navigate to it actually request that it be put there.

sketch wrote:Something like that might be okay, although that is what this section tries to accomplish already:

Waze's definition of "highways" includes all these, but it also includes other roads that are not necessarily a part of any numbered highway system. In other words, think of the dictionary definition of "highway" ("a main road, esp. one connecting major towns or cities") rather than the legal definition of the term.

What about something like:
Waze considers through-routing precedence according to the 3 highway labels. The actual mapping to those 3 types is according to conventions in use for Functional Classification and route designations. Functional Classification has more than 3 ways to classify arterial road usage, so more than one Functional Classification and/or route designation criteria can be mapped to the same "highway" label.

If we are trying to make clear the meaninglessness of the term "Highway" for how Waze labels these in the editor, we should simply point out that we have Category Blue or Category Green (at least in the current default color scheme) designations for roads that are not limited-access which Waze can use for routing precedence.

Proper categorization for either Blue or Green roads as well as Primary Streets and Streets is done by consulting Functional Classification mappings based on State, Regional or National guidance.

Coloring is at least more helpful in avoiding any attempts at trying to clarify/define "highway" that will make any sense to newer editors.

Shouldn't the cross reference chart be near the top of the page?

I know I'm really late to the game on this forum, but just found a lot of roads that I can't edit in the mountains in California. When fixing other issues, should this setting still be used (PS acting as mH and mH acting as MH), or was this old school? I'm asking here since this doesn't seem to be a California only issue. Thank you.

I didn't know what it was called, but if it is called "routing preference" then yes. Here is a PL for one of the roads...

https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lo ... s=68325131

Thank you for helping me out on this.

Do you know whether I ask for an R4 unlock or an R5 to fix other issues? Thank you.

I cannot add or remove junctions. I can delete geonodes and update the SL. Since I had never seen routing preference before, I didn't know who to bug - our R4's or R5's to unlock for junction work. Thank you for the information though. When asking around in my local Slack, a fellow editor saw them in a different state. That's why I came on here since this covers multiple states. Hoping some of these answers with help other junior editors.