Has there been any change in how routing is effected by unconnected walking trails? Waze still kind of routes me to the end of unconnected walking trails. This route to 1600 Ritchie Hwy, Arnold, MD is still effected by the unconnected B & A Trail.

Yes, it does that in the app. It has done it for the past two years. I have not assumed them to be benign.

No. They effect the destination point even if they are not used in the driving directions. They do this even when not connected to any driveable segment.

I have had a similar problem and my search of the wiki brought me to this thread. I am now experimenting with a walking trail of my own. Interesting to note: Walking Trails are in the "Non-drivable" category, so I obviously assumed it would be safe to integrate into the regular mapping system.

In my case it is a small neighborhood park in an HOA which is accessible from three separate directions, by a walking trail only. All three walking trails are presently connected to the roads in the area. I originally set these up as Two-Way walking trails. The next day, I tested the route on my Waze app. To my surprise, Waze actually routed me through the park, which I cannot do in a car. https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=6&lat ... 24&env=usa

Today I changed each of the three trails to an unknown type and will check again later once the changes go live.

~Doug

Thanks so much for gathering and posting the references to the disparate threads. It would be great to consolidate this into a wiki entry except everything appears so hopelessly inconclusive. I was not aware that the routing distortion discussed in the wiki is not dependable or even consistently reproducible in the same setting. And here I thought I could at least take advantage of that behavior. Yikes.

CBenson wrote: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 see what you mean. But if I try from 1820 Wiehle Ave to 1820 Wiehle Ave I do get a route -- Live Map says it will be 4.11 miles on the Washington & Old Dominion Bike Trail, and those 4.11 miles will take me 0 minutes. That's some fast biking.

As far as I know, our guidance still says that Walking Trails that do not somehow improve routing for drivers are strongly discouraged.

But, Waze has that nice "Walking Trail" street type, and we have lots, and lots, and lots of new editors who don't spend much time with the Wiki or forums and are looking for something to contribute. I don't know about you all, but Walking Trails have been proliferating in my area and honestly I don't want to spend the energy involved in attempting to reach each and every one of their authors via PM. And then, quite possibly since so few of these folks check PMs, deleting a lot of someone's work. I hate deleting somebody's hard work just as much as they will probably hate seeing me do it.

But, walking trails that remain beget more walking trails, and more and more, as new editors see the existing examples and add their own. It's springtime for walking trails around here.

It would be different if these Walking Trails were obviously breaking things. But I have not been seeing URs pop up around them the way I would have expected if they really were so dangerous. And by current understanding they should be dangerous, as many are urban bike paths that come close to a multitude of destinations.

What do I do? Put on my walking-trail grinch hat and start PMing, answering questions, waiting, and eventually deleting, and find a good Waze therapist to help me through the guilt? Or limit the effort to disconnecting them where necessary, and accept that pretty soon we'll be covered in walking trails?

sketch wrote: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.

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.

AlanOfTheBerg wrote: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.

Hmmm...given that, in my test, Waze routed me from a well-connected Street to a Walking Trail to a Parking Lot Road that was also well-connected -- meaning the transition penalty for WT to PLR was negligible -- do you suppose that a Walking Trail is a Parking Lot Road except with different rendering? That would explain a lot...maybe...I doubt Walking Trails register slowdown detections...hmmm...

CBenson wrote:For the trail I typically test, I get the same results I have for a while. This route is effected by the walking trail.

This may be totally irrelevant, but that segment is 21 km long. Don't know if that has any effect on routing behavior. Perhaps it's exceeding some sort of processing threshold? Just a thought.

It occurred to ask, because if it were shorter I was going to suggest changing it to be a PLR and seeing if you get exactly the same routing behavior.