Road Types (USA) - Walking Trails

[AlanOfTheBerg]

I would leave them alone unless they are actually causing problems. My guess is they're acting like railroads act now, and are essentially invisible to the routing server. My opinion is that they look quite nice

I verified today that Waze will still route vehicles over connected walking paths. So if they are connected they are definitely not invisible; in my test, Waze routed me from a street over a connected walking path and thence onto a connected parking-lot road.

I verified this a while ago, too. Walking Trails, specifically. I did not test other non-drivables though. Waze treats Walking Trail like a PLot or Private Dr in that it will avoid them as through routes, but will route onto them for destination or use them as a starting point. That is starkly different from Railroads, which the routing server appears to ignore completely.

[benandjerry]

with so much uncertainty and expertise needed on whether to apply WT's, i wish waze would set the creation/editing of these to like L4 or higher. I don't know enough so I just dont make them.

But I guess it IS a good new editor detector

[CBenson]

I have not been able to figure out a consistent behavior for walking trails. Addresses I've tested sometimes route to the end of the trail, then don't, then do again. Waze has never to my knowledge really explained what is the intended behavior for walking trails.

This is very difficult for me to test, as address searches in general have recently changed for me. They now route to the street in the address for me in the client.

My standby test has been to 1600 Ritchie Hwy, Arnold, MD 21012 as discussed here. Currently due to waze actually using the street name as the destination, the client gives me a route to Ritchie Hwy even though both Baltimore Annapolis Blvd and the B & A Trail are closer to the pin. However, the live map routes some where near the end of the trail.

I don't see as many issues reported with walking trails anymore. But some failures to get any route still seem to occur when the route is near a long walking trail. If I try to route to 1820 Wiehle Ave, Reston, VA, I can't get a route in the live map as discussed here. But the client now routes me to a point on Wiehle Ave.

I think I remember that at one time waze stated that intended the routing to work like the diagram in the wiki. But I'm not sure I've ever actually seen it work that way. Rather, the routing (when the walking trail effects the routing) seems to be to some point near the end of the walking trail, regardless of whether other segments come close (or ever cross) the walking trail in the middle.

This walking trail behavior has been unpredictable. I know others have attempted to use it as you have to get good routing to parking lots without success. I wish we could predict the behavior of walking trails better and use them to some benefit.

[CBenson]

How they behave if completely unconnected, I haven't checked. If they were as bad as Alan's tests from a few months ago suggested, I would have thought we'd have URs everywhere by now. So I'm lost as to just how dangerous the disconnected ones are.

I have dealt with URs within the past week or so where unconnected walking trails caused routing issues. For the trail I typically test, I get the same results I have for a while. This route is effected by the walking trail. If you move the destination pin up near Ashcroft Ct, but still nearer to the trail, then waze can't return a route at all. What has changed for me is how waze routes to Google address results in the client, making this issue much more difficult to reproduce in the client. There are much fewer circumstances where waze is simply routing to the closest segment it can find.

[CBenson]

But disconnected walking trails can effect routing. So this may not be enough. We need to understand how walking trails and pedestrian boardwalks effect searching and routing.

[CBenson]

Has anything happened with regard to to the proposed changes?

[CBenson]

I'm not getting TaterTot's results at the moment. I'm not even being routed onto the parking lot roads. But in any case, the walking trail doesn't seem to effect the route, so I would agree we should update the wiki.

[CBenson]

Agreed. Maybe we could say only where useful as landmarks.

[CBenson]

I'm not holding my breath. I've been told that staff has been looking into the behavior of walking trails for years.

[CBenson]

I'm not sure I understand what is different in Benelux. Are you saying that Benelux has simply given up try to route to places that you must walk the last bit to reach?