You are correct, if you look at the link I posted with the road classification, Windmill is a primary street.

@restless_in_nb has been active in this area. Please feel free to work with him to get some of this updated.

Colin: scroll up a little on that page, emphasis mine:

Changing of Types
As a highway enters a city/town, it often becomes a named street, and sometimes would no longer fit the usual criteria for a "highway".
Due to a number of reasons, including long-distance routing issues, as well as appearance, the highway should remain as the same type it entered the city/town (except if it's a Freeway -- if it no longer fits the Freeway criteria, it may be downgraded to Major Highway until it is again a Freeway).
The road type designation should follow the entire numbered route.

ColinsGoat wrote:Well that's interesting, and puts the current situation into a different light.

Notwithstanding the above, it still seems wrong to designate North Street (not to mention Windmill Road on the other side of the harbour) as major highway, as it does generally not to be able to categorize a street according to its function within the municipality. Perhaps in reality this amounts to little more than concern over semantics, but I would have thought that the routing algorithm would benefit from categorization that better reflects reality.

But then again, I'm still only a well-intentioned noob

Well, of course, you're welcome to either:
1) Lobby the provincial government to change the official route to one that makes more sense
or
2) Lobby your municipality to improve the road to the point at which it warrants being marked as the highway that it is numbered as...

Well, if we had absolute consensus, I'd be ok with considering a deviation, however the whole point of standards is that they exist for a reason.

If we downgrade a section of a designated highway, it could mean that there is no continuity between something at the other end of it, and something that connects to part of what we downgraded (i.e. if we downgraded a section of the marked Highway 16 in Jasper, AB, it's quite likely that Waze couldn't route from Edmonton, AB to Prince George, BC).

The issue with coming up with an alternative path is documentation -- yes, we decide here, but what happens when some other editor comes along and says "well, that isn't a numbered highway, and I don't see it on the functional classification list... downgrade time!"

Dose this include above mentioned North St? It is a single lane road and is not numbered and classified as a major. But on the other hand just at the end of North St the bridge is marked as Minor and it sees almost 3 times the volume a day than North St.

If there is a Waze editor from Halifax that was level 5 or higher they would agree with me and have this fixed by now, but as far as I can tell I am the only one actively editing in Halifax from Halifax.

Thanks for pointing me to this thread ColinsGoat...I have been tied up with personal stuff and not as active as I would like to be.

I have looked at this and agree there are issues to address...I know Halifax quite well and should have picked up on this when I was editing in the area.

I have created some unlock requests for the level 5 locks which are on many of the segments you've identified. Once these are lowered, I will make the edits. The ones where I am able to edit I've made some changes. Please let me know as you find more oddities in the map.

Cheers

Thanks, I just saw that today. I have asked for the lock to be lowered. Once lowered I will change it to N/S.

Colin, in looking at North St more closely, it is part of the Hwy 3 system which is, from NS classification, a major highway. As such, I will be leaving it as this. Please let me know if you have any concerns.

Cheers

Colin, here is how I rationalize this in my mind. The province/state wants to shunt traffic to collectors, arteries, etc. Even if it's a local road, it's still probably the more direct way to get to collectors/arteries...so waze should give it priority when routing.

In the cases you've mentioned, I can see your point. But, if these are not seen by waze as the main collectors...what should be in their place? In some towns in NB, and NS, a major highway is not much more than a chipseal road with a low speed limit, where in other areas it's a wide and beautiful road with a high speed limit. In the context of where they are though, they are still major in relation to other options for routing.

In PEI, almost every road seems to be a highway of some sort, so there I'm more likely to label some of primary roads, rather than highways...otherwise the whole province would be a grid of highways which I believe would causing routing chaos. Again, it's a bit of a judgement call.

This is not official waze wiki stuff, but it helps me make decisions on how to categorize roads. I love these conversations though, especially when folks like DoctorKB chime in because they have forgotten 100 times more about waze that I know...

Cheers!