Great job. Thank you. A marathon effort.

I notice that Waze is now giving some good alternative routes, avoiding the tunnel. That's going to help a lot of Wazers tonight and during the future planned closures this year.

Great job. Thanks for your help Iain. I'm sure quite a few Wazers will benefit as the app guides them around the closed tunnel and the queue.

My Level: 1
Area Manager: No

Would a level 5 or above please add this closure. Thanks, Andrew (a2bpdq)

Location: M4 Brynglas Tunnel (Eastbound Only), Newport, Wales Permalink
Reason: Tunnel Refurbishment
Start: 24 October, 2017 20:00
End: 25 October, 2017 06:00
Sources: Traffic Wales, M4 Cameras (Seen closed at 8:14pm)

Thanks Andrew (PealRinger).

I can see the vehicle in the hard-shoulder getting ready to close off the road. Thanks for setting up the closure for tonight (Wednesday 25th October 2017). It looks like the tunnel will be closed more or less on time. Usually by about 8:12pm.

Andrew, thanks for updating the closure time for tonight (26th October 2017). 8:20pm should work better than 8:00pm.

Last night, Thursday 26th October, the tunnel closure worked much better.

Thursday
8:20pm Tunnel Closed on Map
8:20pm Waze giving Diversion Routes
8:40pm Tunnel Actually Closed

Better than the night before.

Wednesday
8:00pm Tunnel Closed on Map
8:00pm Waze giving Diversion Routes
8:05pm Tunnel Automatically Re-Opened on Map (Despite being programmed as closed)
8:40pm Tunnel Actually Closed
9:25pm Tunnel Closed on Map (Again)
9:30pm Waze giving Diversion Routes

So closing too early can cause Waze to ignore the closure and then it takes 40 minutes of actually being closed before Waze gets it right.

Last night we were lucky that the Tunnel did not get automatically reopened. Waze was only wrong for 20 minutes last night when it had the tunnel marked as closed when it wasn't actually closed.

Ideally, the closure would be applied as soon as we see it is definitely closed. I plan to watch it tonight starting 8pm.

My Level: 1
Area Manager: No

Would a level 5 or above please add this closure. Thanks, Andrew (a2bpdq)

Location: M4 Brynglas Tunnel (Eastbound Only), Newport, Wales Permalink
Reason: Tunnel Refurbishment
Start: 27 October, 2017 20:00
End: 28 October, 2017 06:00
Sources: Traffic Wales, M4 Cameras (Seen closed at 10:20pm)

Friday
10:20pm Tunnel Actually Closed
10:20pm Tunnel Remains Open on Map
10:20pm Waze continues to Route Through the Closed Tunnel

Last night the map was not updated with the tunnel closure at all. So Waze would have been wrong for up to 7 hours and 40 minutes.

Apart from driving to the location and using the app to mark the road as closed, we rely on editors with higher ranks to do the closures for us. Unfortunately none were available to do this on Friday night.

We should not expect volunteer editors to be on duty, as such, but it would be good if some procedure could be set up allowing an observer of the actual closure to get the closure implemented more or less immediately.

The ranking system prevents damage to the map by inexperienced editors but it also puts the responsibility of doing these motorway closures on the level 5+ ranks (in this case).

Can anything be done to make this work better?

Some ideas would be:

• Setting up a semi-automated closure system, similar to ClosureMonitor
  • The system has the authority to add and remove closures
  • Users of the system can include any Wazers who are on the operators list
  • Operators are trained/authorised
  • Operators can instruct the system to add or remove the closures
  • A list of closable segments limits the scope of the system
  • All activity is logged to ensure correct use of the system
• Temporary downgrade of lock level
  • Downgrade M5/A4 to level M3/A4 on the tunnel segment
  • Allowing the closure to be added by a level 3
  • This increases the number of editors who could do the closure
  • Takes pressure off the L5+ editors
  • Re-locked most of the time and downgraded temporarily on scheduled work nights
  • Currently the downgrade is needed every Monday to Friday from 8:00am to 6:00pm

Everyone here puts a lot of work into Waze and their efforts are much appreciated but we are all let down when the Waze map is wrong. So I do hope some solution can be found.

Andrew (a2bpdq)

My Level: 1
Area Manager: No

Would a level 5 or above please add this closure. Thanks, Andrew (a2bpdq)

Scheduled for Eastbound but actually seen as Westbound.

Location: M4 Brynglas Tunnel (Westbound Only), Newport, Wales Permalink
Reason: Tunnel Refurbishment
Start: 31 October, 2017 20:00
End: 01 November, 2017 06:00
Sources: Traffic Wales, M4 Cameras (Seen closed at 8:40pm)