I've updated the first post regarding the remaining area F county highways that need completed. I'll get the ones I mentioned, but there are 2 that are entirely outside my area and one that is half outside my area. If anyone can finish those, then once I do the last two in my area, all of areas C and F will be complete -- i.e. every road in the County Highway System north of US-10 in the lower peninsula. I'll probably finish the last two in my area tomorrow.

The NFC does take a little getting used to. It can be difficult to stop thinking in terms of what a highway is and instead think in terms of what the road is used for. If the purpose of the road is to be the main route through an area, then it will be classified as a principal arterial. Along the same lines, if it's meant to be the main route through the area and isn't a freeway, then it should be the maximum classification Waze has, which is major highway. Don't think of roads in terms of street and highway. Think of the roads in terms of the purpose of the road. Is it a side street with mostly just local traffic? Is it a collector - a street meant to bring traffic from local streets to arterials and back? Is it a good route through the area, though not the main route? Or is it the main route or one of the main routes through the area? Forget about what you expect a highway to look like. Highways can vary greatly depending on where you are. Some are many lanes and some are not. That doesn't make the highways any less important to the area. Some roads may not be what people would consider a highway, but are nevertheless functionally more important than alternative routes.

So yes, it takes a little getting used to and you do need to think of it in a different way, but you'll find that routing and the maps themselves look better overall when you use the NFC.

Very nice posts, davielde. And thank you for linking the document explaining the classifications. I didn't read the entire thing of course, but I did scan through the classifications themselves and a few other areas and it's quite informative. As you said, some classifications may just feel "off," but there is likely a good reason for that classification that we just are not aware of. And for everyone, don't forget that we can still increase the classifications if we feel that there is a good reason to do so. I did that for a short little section of road (probably under 100ft) because the NFC had a major collector running east toward a state highway, stop just short of it and head south. It just really made sense to connect the collector to the state highway instead of leaving it as a Street. So the NFC is the main guideline, but it can be tweaked if necessary. You should avoid downgrading a road from what the NFC says unless there is a good reason, however. For example, if a Major Collector gets permanently closed on one end and you are certain that it will no longer be a Major Collector once the NFC is updated.

Note that the first post in this thread has been updated with what I've completed.

Yeah that looks pretty awful. Some of those roads in the primary street and minor highway groups have 6, 7, 8+ lanes wide. It makes a useful map of the freeways at best.

I want to note here that the Detroit area is in severely bad shape with regard to road types. I intend to start on reclassifying the roads in the area consistent with NFC at some point, but it's going to be a big project and anyone who would like to get started wherever they can is welcome to do so, of course.

Just to point out how absurd it is: https://editor-beta.waze.com/editor/?lo ... TT&env=usa

Metropolitan Parkway, which runs east-west, is in every way a thoroughfare. In fact, from Schoenherr Rd all the way to its eastern terminus, it's an expressway, with a 55 mph speed limit and grade access only at major intersections. Nevertheless, it, along with many other 45+ mph roads, is set as a "primary street". That doesn't even hold water along the current unclear standards.

It's not a freeway, since it's not fully grade-separated, but it is an expressway at least at that point; IMO all non-freeway expressways should be Major Highway. And it's certainly a principal arterial!

Contrast it with this map of New Orleans, which has been updated to mostly match NFC (with a few adjustments since our maps use 2000 census data): https://www.waze.com/editor/?lon=-90.14 ... 7498862956

The amount of red may be surprising to editors used to the old, vague system, but it looks great in the livemap: https://www.waze.com/livemap/?zoom=12&l ... =-90.13802 and it seems to be working quite well for routing, too.

I agree, it does seem pretty excessive looking at the editor. But that's sort of my point: how it looks in the editor, based on what we've been doing for the past few years, isn't relevant because that's not what users will see. It's the live map and the client which matter.

As for those primary streets in the French Quarter, well, NFC had a couple of those in either direction marked as collectors. But none of those streets is really more important for drivers than any of the others, they're all one-way, all 25 mph, all congested, and so forth. So I figured it would be wise, and would look better, if the main grid of the French Quarter were uniformly set at Primary Street.

I wasn't sure if that live map not loading thing was just me. The WiFi I'm on can be pretty unreliable. Oh well.

Hah, that's not nearly as bad as the general Wayne County map. I'll get to it.