Get a sneak peek at whats next for Permanent Hazards on our April 7th Office Hours!
The place to get information and ask questions about everything to do with properly and successfully editing the Waze Map.

Use this forum for all general editing questions, and the sub-forums for specific types of Waze Map Editor features.

Post Reply

Service Roads

Post by WeeeZer14
I'd like to nail down a clear definition of Service Roads to update the wiki with.

My definition is:

A service road connects to or parallels a high-volume road and provides access to businesses and residences which themselves do not have direct access to that high-volume road. Those businesses and residences have addresses on the high-volume road and therefore the service road has the same name as the high-volume road.

The high-volume road may have a continuous frontage road or the high-volume road may have been re-aligned leaving segments of the old alignment in place to serve local businesses and residences.

In the frontage road case, if the road is designed to carry significant volumes of traffic in addition to providing access to local addresses, a classification other than service road may be appropriate.

Some examples of Service Roads:
Old alignment - S. Illinois Ave, Oak Ridge, TN

Frontage road - Van Wyck Expressway, Queens, NY

Old alignment - McCarter Hwy, Newark, NJ

Some examples of NOT service roads:
Frontage is high volume also - North Freeway (I-45), Houston, TX

Discussion? Agreement? Disagreement? Caveats? More examples?
WeeeZer14
Posts: 3761
Has thanked: 21 times
Been thanked: 252 times

POSTER_ID:283192

1

Send a message
iPhone 5s (AT&T) • iOS 7.0.3 • Waze 3.7.6.0
[img]https:///V68te[/img]
✰ Mega Driver ✰ Mega Mapper ✰ 1M Points ✰
Country Manager: USA • Regional Coordinator: USA South Atlantic (KY, TN, NC, SC)
Navigation/Routing ExpertForum Moderator

Post by WeeeZer14
mapcat wrote:I agree with all four of your examples. BUT: Even though the urban frontage roads in Texas, Oklahoma, and a few other states are major roads in and of themselves, worthy of being called primary street due to their heavy use, should they be considered as part of the "primary road" type selected for long-distance routing? Assuming that primary streets fall under "primary road"; at the meeting it seemed that Waze isn't quite sure they do.
If Primary Street is modified to be given higher priority than Street, I would hope that it is still less than the priority given to Minor Highway or above. But we don't know how granular their priorities can be.
mapcat wrote:I also wonder if there's a strict need for a special "service road" category, if they truly are treated like regular streets (and I don't have any reason to think that they aren't).
Maybe not. Based on how the Service Roads are rendered on the Live Map (not at all except for name), I assume the original intent was to reduce clutter at certain zoom levels. No need to show these frontage roads since it follows the main road, so just show the main road to users until they would actually need the frontage road. But the client doesn't seem to hide them like the live map does.
mapcat wrote:Once you have these sorted out, do you think you'll have the stamina to establish the final verdict on major/minor highways?
Maybe. :lol:
MReiser4670 wrote:The reason I had even asked about how Waze treats Service Roads in routing is this particular little segment of road in my neighborhood: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=5&lat ... s=63831524
Good example to look at. I could argue Private, Parking Lot, and Service Road if I tried :)

If we use Service Road, maybe restricting the right turn from the little segment to Oklahoma would be enough? Of course I am sure people would violate it and throw up errors and some well meaning person would enable the turn again. Sigh.

This is where my thought of more turn options would be nice - allowed, restricted, not preferred. We could then set the turns through that segment as not preferred.

Any chance average speeds would eventually make the shortcut less appetizing?
MReiser4670 wrote:Also, here is an example where I agreed with your thinking on when a frontage road is NOT a Service Road: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... 2,41768702

Woodhaven Rd (PA 63) is a limited access freeway with highly-traveled frontage roads in both directions. Their primary purpose are as connections to on & off ramps for the highway so I gave them the Primary Road designation.
And this fits into my "rule" that any ramp should terminate on at least a Primary Street as well. (Except for say rest areas or ramps to a private/secured campus.
WeeeZer14
Posts: 3761
Has thanked: 21 times
Been thanked: 252 times
Send a message
iPhone 5s (AT&T) • iOS 7.0.3 • Waze 3.7.6.0
[img]https:///V68te[/img]
✰ Mega Driver ✰ Mega Mapper ✰ 1M Points ✰
Country Manager: USA • Regional Coordinator: USA South Atlantic (KY, TN, NC, SC)
Navigation/Routing ExpertForum Moderator

Post by WeeeZer14
All I have ever seen stated is that Service Road is treated the same as a regular Street. Thus the need to treat them differently if they are indeed meant to carry significant volumes of traffic as opposed to just providing access to driveways an entrances.

By the way, I should have mentioned I was approaching this from the US view. I am not sure how things would work in other countries. If there are already some good standards elsewhere, please share :)
WeeeZer14
Posts: 3761
Has thanked: 21 times
Been thanked: 252 times
Send a message
iPhone 5s (AT&T) • iOS 7.0.3 • Waze 3.7.6.0
[img]https:///V68te[/img]
✰ Mega Driver ✰ Mega Mapper ✰ 1M Points ✰
Country Manager: USA • Regional Coordinator: USA South Atlantic (KY, TN, NC, SC)
Navigation/Routing ExpertForum Moderator

Post by txemt
I found a service road I was talking about!!!

https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=6&lat ... s=48894570
txemt
Posts: 4774
Has thanked: 25 times
Been thanked: 919 times
Send a message
Just wazeting my time to help you waze your route smoothly.

Post by txemt
andrewfatcat wrote:In texas I use frontage rd if no other name is given because most of time you see frontage rd is used in some of the highway exits.
Good point, but have you seen the signs the city puts up that says "I-xx Service Road"? The exit sign may say "frontage", but the city decides to call it "service."
txemt
Posts: 4774
Has thanked: 25 times
Been thanked: 919 times
Send a message
Just wazeting my time to help you waze your route smoothly.

Post by txemt
PhantomSoul wrote:In situations where a highway has inner express lanes and an outer local roadway with all the exits and turns, I've used ramps to represent the outer roadway, as seen on State Rte 18 here. They seem to carry just enough of a penalty to prevent Waze from routing over the local segements unless it actually wants you to exit off them, but also won't route you away from those exits just because you need to traverse a whole bunch of "ramps" to get to it.

Of course, these local segments also don't have any driveways, be it residences or businesses. Personally, I think it would look a little silly for ramps to have addresses, and I'm not sure how that would even affect Waze's routing to those addresses.

Have we reached any kind of consensus on this?
That's not quite what we're talking about. https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=5&lat ... 2,46960608 is more of what we're talking about.
txemt
Posts: 4774
Has thanked: 25 times
Been thanked: 919 times
Send a message
Just wazeting my time to help you waze your route smoothly.

Post by txemt
jasonh300 wrote:The service road probably came with the "I-35" name from the basemap. That's totally wrong. IME, service roads always have some signed name, even if it's "I-35 Service Rd" (don't abbreviate Svc, as you said). Other times, it will be "Frontage Rd", or it may even be "Juniper St" or some other name unrelated to the freeway it fronts.

Here, we have a lot of "N I-10 Service Rd W" with the different non-sensical directions and cardinals. The signs all say "Svc" but the pronunciation is so bad, I converted them all to "Service" a year ago.
I'll also go with what's already around. If there is "frontage rd" already labeled, I'll stick with the "frontage" instead of changing it to "service".
txemt
Posts: 4774
Has thanked: 25 times
Been thanked: 919 times
Send a message
Just wazeting my time to help you waze your route smoothly.

Post by txemt
sketch wrote:
mapcat wrote:I agree with all four of your examples. BUT: Even though the urban frontage roads in Texas, Oklahoma, and a few other states are major roads in and of themselves, worthy of being called primary street due to their heavy use, should they be considered as part of the "primary road" type selected for long-distance routing?
Having lived in Houston for some time, I would say yes, for sure. If traffic is bad on the main road, as it often is, it's sometimes faster to drive along the frontage road. At least it certainly felt that way! :lol:
I've driven from Austin to Dallas on the service road a few times because traffic wasn't moving on I-35, which brings me to another point about service roads.

I've noticed (I've changed a lot of them) that service roads are simply labeled the highway they run parallel to. For instance, the I-35 Service Rd is simply labeled "I-35" and the app actually puts the Interstate Shield onto the service road instead of the actual Interstate. I have gone through and changed a bunch of them, which is why I don't have a permalink attached. But it leads me to another question about service roads.....what should they be labeled?

I know the Wiki says to label a street by it's local name, but if that's the case, then we go back to some service roads being labeled "I-xx" when in fact they're not. Businesses on the service roads are actually given an address with the interstate in it, such as "ABC Storage, 145 N I-35" which tells you that the storage place is on the interstate somewhere on the north side of town. But as we all know, the storage place would actually be on the service road, not the interstate. But looking at the green city sign, it may say "I-35"

Also, is there a set way to name service roads? I've seen "I-xx service rd," "I-xx frontage rd," "I-xx svc rd" (which Waze actually spells out "s" "v" "c"), and some which are given names which have nothing to do with the interstate, the city just named it something else. For consistency purposes, I've been labeling them as "I-xx Service Rd" and marking them as service road on the editor. For those that have a different street name altogether, I've left those alone.
txemt
Posts: 4774
Has thanked: 25 times
Been thanked: 919 times
Send a message
Just wazeting my time to help you waze your route smoothly.

Post by Timbones
Does Waze treat service roads differently from regular streets? I find that routing is happy to use either (on world).

via TapaTalk
Timbones
Coordinators
Coordinators
Posts: 7357
Answers: 2
Has thanked: 952 times
Been thanked: 2916 times
Send a message
Timbones(6) • UK Coordinator • Forum Moderator • Closure Monitor
Scripts: WME Colour HighlightsWME Route TesterWME Geometries

Post by sketch
mapcat wrote:I agree with all four of your examples. BUT: Even though the urban frontage roads in Texas, Oklahoma, and a few other states are major roads in and of themselves, worthy of being called primary street due to their heavy use, should they be considered as part of the "primary road" type selected for long-distance routing?
Having lived in Houston for some time, I would say yes, for sure. If traffic is bad on the main road, as it often is, it's sometimes faster to drive along the frontage road. At least it certainly felt that way! :lol:
sketch
Waze Global Champs
Waze Global Champs
Posts: 6765
Has thanked: 1118 times
Been thanked: 1664 times
Send a message
ALL US EDITORS READ: New USA road type guidance
the guidance linked above is now almost a decade old, but the link gives me a laugh every time i see it, so it stays (:
assistant regional coordinator • south central region • usa
waze global champ • beta leader • and more • new orleans

bye bye fuelly badge! i'm an EV guy now!