daknife wrote:In areas where the HOV lanes are physically separated from the travel lanes it is standard practice to draw in the HOV lanes and connect them with P-lot roads at the entrance points.

According to the Carpool, HOV, Transit lanes section of the Wiki, the entire HOV lane should be marked as a Parking Lot Road, not just the entrance points. This is due to the way Waze handles the "penalty" for driving on a Parking Lot Road.

Other than that, your assessment is spot on.

As to the shields, it's a work in progress. We hope to someday gain the ability to assign which shields show on a segment (useful in areas where multiple hwy's are bound in one road) Currently if a segment sits un-edited long enough (editing a segment means a delay of some time before a shield will be regenerated) and the name is properly formatted a shield may be generated. Some claim to have found the magic formula for making sure this happens, but I have yet to.

I to am not big on following the left coast in anything, except this is actually a good idea. (Amazing I know).


As to University Pkwy, we could put it into the alternate names, but ask most long term residents of Utah Valley where SR 265 runs and the vast majority will be clueless, even if they drive it every day. Ask just about any resident of Utah where University Parkway is and the majority of them can tell you. The alternative name field is an option, but as that does not currently display in any way in the client, it's not really worth the time. Should they enable the alternative names to provide shields I would be all for taking the time to add those alternative names, but at the current time the primary focus is to list the locally known names. Thus State Street is marked as state street and in the rest of the state it should be marked as US 89, except for when it becomes Main street or State street again.

Please ask your friend to NOT use waze while biking. There are apps for biking, Waze is for driving. Such use corrupts the traffic data and is thus strongly discouraged. And the corruption of said traffic data is a reason Waze is not likely to provide a bike option anytime soon, GPS's just aren't accurate enough to discern between a bike lane and the neighboring traffic lane. Also walking trails are not to be mapped in. Waze is designed for commuter use. They may increase the scope in the future but that is still likely to be a long time out.

Do not add walking trails, I will delete any and all I see. While they are not totally forbidden in the wiki, anytime they start getting added they start getting junctioned with the road network and that will cause problems. Waze will try to avoid such routes but if available it will give routings on such supposedly non-driveable routes.

HOV lanes are not currently handled by Waze. In areas where the HOV lanes are physically separated from the travel lanes it is standard practice to draw in the HOV lanes and connect them with P-lot roads at the entrance points. Where our lanes are simply another lane along side the main travel lanes (again not really detectable with the accuracy of most Cell phone GPS's) drawing them in is counter productive. As waze will see two different sets of speed, the Wazers able to move smoothly through a jam in the HOV lane will corrupt the traffic data and nullify Waze's ability to give alternate routes as it did for me last Friday coming home from work. I-15 from 90th south to 123rd S was a parking lot, but thanks to the corruption that the HOV lanes throw in as that lane was moving steadily faster it corrupted the reported average speed of I-15 and thus waze ignored surface streets. I took the frontage roads on the west side of I-15 from 90th to Bangerter and cut twenty minutes off the travel time Waze was predicting, and I dare say probably more like 40 minutes as I-15 was not moving anywhere near the speeds Waze was showing.

Should Waze add a HOV capable flag to the client user interface (with which you could indicate to the app that you can use the HOV lanes and another easily tappable button to indicate when you are actually in an HOV lane) we might reconsider. But at this time they are not to be drawn in with the exception of the 4th South ramps in SLC. Those are in place as per the standard. Not having them there was a source of constant UR's and having them as regular travel lanes was a source of constant UR's.

No, those lanes are there the driver can see them without them being drawn in, the resolution in the client isn't great enough to show them clearly anyway they would only serve to clutter the screen with the possibility of the client choosing to display such names instead of important names like street names. There is simply not enough separation between the travel lanes and these specialty lanes for them to portray accurately. A single or even double strip of white paint is not sufficient separation to indicate a separate lane of traffic when running right next to three, four, five and even six lanes of traffic. And what indicator would you leave, we don't want long road names I-15 N and I-15 S are long enough.

And Andy is right, I hadn't really delt with HOV lanes for a while and had forgotten they'd decided on solid p-lot road for those lanes, but only where there is physical separation from the main traffic flow lanes.

If Waze ever adds the ability to indicate if one is able to travel in an HOV lane and indicate when one is entering such a lane (or planning on it), and/or the ability to indicate that the user is riding a bike (thus flagging their data to be separated from the regular traffic data we will re-visit but until then the standard is no to both.

Okay lacking any nay-sayers. We will start (a couple of us have already started) doing this. Just a reminder, look at the alternate names, Joseph I found areas of US-89 that you renamed near Salina but you left the alternate names with the longer format, either US Hwy 89 or State Hwy 28 (that section of 89 is double shielded with a state rte as well.)

So take a look at the alternates, if any they must be re-labeled as well to the format, and if the only alternate is the same as the primary delete the alternate.

I think that it sounds like a fantastic idea. I have seen all sorts of versions (i.e. State Rte XXX, State Hwy XXX, State Route XXX, etc), and I agree that a standard would be helpful...do I like Cali's version/way? Well, not necessarily, but I think standardizing it would be in everyone's best interest.

Speaking of which, I noticed that University Parkway (aka State Route 265; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_State_Route_265) is not marked on Waze, even though it is clearly marked as such on I-15, and along the route as well. Perhaps we could add that designation to it as an alternate name, daknife? I'll PM you about it as well.

There are several other State Routes/Highways (unmarked, mismarked, etc.) that I'm in the process of updating as well, but such a standardized way of doing it would make it much neater and cleaner for us all I imagine.

FYI, several different signs on State Routes that I regularly drive use the SR-XXX format, like when you get off the freeway, at intersections, etc. Also, the UDOT website uses the S.R.-XXX format too. In fact, even on the local radio stations they say "SR-XXX", so I see no reason why we shouldn't either.

Speaking of State Routes, I've noticed that a little circle will sometimes appear over S.R. roads with the SR # inside the circle, like SR-125 heading East out of Delta (or a little white shield w/ a # inside, like US-6/US Highway 6, or the blue and red shield for the interstates). Yet in other areas, these circles/shields do NOT show up in the app. Why is that? Is there a way in WME to make it so that said shield/circle will show up, or is that something beyond our control? It has always bugged me how that happens, so if there is a way to fix it, please let me know. Otherwise I'll just accept that we cannot change it and leave it be.

#1:As you stated, it would be nice for the Waze app to show both the local name of a street (when/if used) (i.e. University Parkway/SR-265, Pioneer Crossing/SR-145, Redwood Road/SR-68) along with the State/U.S. Route/Highway designation. This seems especially appropriate considering the fact that in recent years UDOT has made an attempt to quite visibly mark all State Routes/Highways as such. Hopefully that is a feature that can be added to the next update of the Waze app.

#2:On a slightly different note, does Waze currently have any designations (or future plans) for designated bicycle routes? I personally think it would be prudent to have roads that DO have a designated bike lane to show up as such on Waze, to help motorists be more careful and aware that bicyclists may be driving with them. Also, I have a friend who bikes, and who has started using Waze...perhaps this would be helpful to him as well.

We might use "non-drivable" designations, like the current "walking trail," so as not to interfere with other vehicular drivers...but is this something that will be added to the next WME version, do you know? I have seen all sorts of debate on the subject elsewhere, but I'm wondering what others here in Utah think, since as of late we have been adding lots of these lanes and it is something we might want to discuss.