Re: Road Types (USA) – comprehensive overhaul of drivable ro
Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 5:43 pm
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.
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.