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Post by Poncewattle
I tried it and have the following questions which I believe the wiki should address.

* Elevation: Continue to set to -5 or make ground. I assume the latter, except...
* ... set elevation as appropriate for underpasses and overpasses
* turn restrictions. Ideally if it's not routable WME shouldn't even present a turn restriction option, but it does. So do we need to make sure we disable all turns into and out of the railroad or doesn't it matter?

Edit: Hmm, if one sets the direction to unknown, the turn restrictions takes care of itself. How about that for a practice?
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Post by Poncewattle
AlanOfTheBerg wrote: Ideally, yes, WME should not display turns at all. Testing has show turns allowed or not makes no difference. I vote for restricted, just for the sake of logic that most cars cannot/should not turn onto a RR.
I know you've already tested this on NA but I just had to do it myself in my ole small town that didn't have any railroad mapping.

https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lo ... s=82033202

I actually enabled all turns off the main street to the railroad and parked a place named "railroad routing test point" right up against the track and far away from any roads. I can't get the live map nor the app to route up the railroad to it.

So now I have a general Waze governance question. Once this hits the wiki, is it practice that work can begin on it, or does the decision on what happens when in each area flow down from the RC, to SM, to AM? Since I have no railroads mapped in my county at all yet, so I'm waiting until I can do it the new way basically :)

In the meantime, there's plenty of pictures to moderate... :lol:
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Post by Poncewattle
I know that in many cases all tracks are subject to be used for all purposes and/or directions as needed. For example, on Amtrak NEC through Delaware there's two primary lines for Amtrak and one for freight but any of them can and do occasionally get routed onto the other rails as needed depending on traffic situations. Now there may be technical limitations that prevent that in some cases, like some Metro North trains require third rail power so they obviously need to be on that sort of track.

From a programming standpoint I don't know if separate lines is needed by Waze anymore than we have to map separate car lanes. Rail line is set with a two-way direction, so a train can logically go either direction on it. Two trains can pass each other on the same drawn line. What we draw on the map doesn't have to match reality for rail any more than what we draw for roads. We just have to get it right for routing.

My other thought, track maps can get downright complex and confusing. Be careful of what you wish for! :)

Just my thoughts. I love trains, so I find this enjoyable! :)

Anyway, as to your final point, yeah, a closed mass transit system will definitely be a separate track. I think that'd be easy to spot too. Hmm, check this out.... in Baltimore... The "closed" line for light rail and a freight line "next" to each other...

https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lo ... 069&zoom=7

Interesting, especially since the CSX track is underground there, yet it's still mapped.
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Post by Poncewattle
DwarfLord wrote: The perspective that Waze, and Waze editors, are not responsible for drivers' safety comes up a lot. For my part I reluctantly support that perspective. Reluctant because as a driver I would hate being given suicidal instructions, and also because as an editor I would never want to feel guilty of contributing to an accident. But I am not sure it is our role to arbitrate safety when there is something to be gained for drivers. To me that's the critical question here.
We all have self responsibility. However, despite me being responsible to stay on the road, if I run off the road, there's a guardrail to stop me from driving down a cliff. And if I hit the guardrail there's an airbag to stop me from hitting my head into the windshield. And recently cars have lane guidance that will alert you if you are drifting out of your lane.

Humans are fallible. Systems that contain potentially life threatening features usually have numerous cross-checks and backups. The nurse who gives you meds has to verify your name and DOB despite asking you every hour in the past and it posted on your bedside. The engineer's drawings have to be verified by a number of peers and supervisors before being approved for construction, etc, etc.

Therefore I think even if there's a remote possibility someone could be given an instruction to turn onto a railroad tracks due to bad coding, there should be many many fail safes to make sure that doesn't happen. Relying on editors to make sure they don't enable a turn onto a track shouldn't be one of them. The editor itself should know a railroad should never allow that and never present that as an option. The internals of the routing engine should know never to do it. The Railroad road type should not have options that roads have like one-way, two-way, etc.

If Waze wants us to start junctioning railroads, that's cool. But they should put many layers of controls first to make sure bad things don't happen simply because it's the right thing to do -- and nothing a volunteer can do should be able to create a potentially life threatening situation.
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Post by Poncewattle
It'd be nice if WME would just hide the turn arrows for railroad junctions, like it now hides the u-turn selection for dead-ends. I know turn restrictions are not-applicable now but there's just something a bit unsettling about potentially seeing a green turn arrow onto a railroad line, even if it's ignored.
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Post by Poncewattle
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:Does this "voting" on my proposed change need to be done differently? So far, there are only 6 votes total, 3 in support, and 3 against.
+1 then

The wiki changes look good.

I have some concerns about liability, as in, "my client turned onto a railroad that you mapped" ... "But it wasn't supposed to be routable according to Waze" sort of thing, but that's a pretty deep dish of paranoia and losing focus on what the topic of what the wiki should be, not whether or not we should do it in the first place -- and it's pretty clear Waze wants it. Now whether each of us does it is for each editor to decide. I'll probably do it because I think the liability risk is insanely low, but I don't think it's zero.
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Post by sethzo
I think it very important to add the railroad crossing info; I pass several crossings on my roads and if a train approaches these are quite a delay. Sometimes there are alternates to avoid the crossings. If the crossings are noted the algorithm might be better- not only to indicate possible delays but to avoid them all together.
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Post by sketch
+1 on the changes, although I wouldn't necessarily say that they should or must be junctioned to roads, since we've had no indication that it'll make a difference with anything (e.g., railroad crossing warnings).

-1 (no) to the changes to railroad naming. I don't know what kind of crazy amount of "clutter" is going to happen for having a longer but easier to read name on what railroads there are. There simply aren't that many railroads on the map. We don't arbitrarily abbreviate every "Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd" to "MLK" even though it'd take up more space on the map, we spell it out because that's what the signs say.

"Clutter" is a big ol' bugaboo on these forums. A detailed, well-labeled map is not "cluttered", it's detailed and well-labeled. And it looks better.
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Post by sketch
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:
sketch wrote:-1 (no) to the changes to railroad naming.
No changes to railroad naming have been made, except to assert that the initial name be "Railroad" as the first step.
I know, but it was brought up, and I'm against that.
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Post by sketch
kentsmith9 wrote:Just saw my first MP on a Junctioned RR. Waze had a driver locked onto the RR that ran parallel to the road next to it. The driver turned left across the RR and the MP claimed the driver was on the RR and turned left against the restricted turn.

I thought Waze would NOT route onto a RR or would not even assume you could be on a RR? Did I miss something somewhere?
Do you have a link to the MP? Is it possible that the merger process thought the user was on the RR, but the client didn't? Given that the client doesn't even display RRs, I doubt the client snapping played a role.
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