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Post by HavanaDay
Thought I would way in as a wazer newbie on this one. With the search function basically broken I am making some assumptions from reading the wiki.

I make a few assumptions, and please correct me if I am wrong. If a Road does not have enough data by wazers then the road type assumes the road is a certain speed limit. If there is enough data from wazers then it uses the average speed recorded by wazers.

Now what I am not sure of is exactly how it determines traffic congestion. Does it compare the driving wazers speed to:
(A)Road Type speed for the segment or
(B)All Wazers average speed for the road segment

If it is A then I think the speed limit for the road is key. Although, I think that would mean changing the same road to different types over some length which might look a little messy when displayed. I have a road that goes from 50 to 45 to 55 to 45 over a little over 12 miles.

If it is B then I believe that we should just do the following:
Major Road - US Routes (but not Bus. US Routes)
Minor Road - US Bus. Routes and State Routes
Primary Roads - Is trickier. I found GIS maps from the counties I am working on and use that as guidance as to what they consider a primary road. Definitely think this is a judgement call.

I think this issue is #2 behind when to separating roads when it comes to having a defined plan on how to handle roads. If we could get these two issues to a consensus then (me personally) great strides could be made in road building and functionality.
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Post by HavanaDay
sketch wrote:I think road type might have something, but not everything, to do with traffic reports. I don't know. It may be a combination of that and average speed, just in case the average speed is low because it's often travelled during rush hour. We'd need developer's word on this to be sure, though.
Well that is the problem if it is tied to road type then my post holds no water but if it is tied to the wazer data then why not just make US Hwy's Red. It is after all only a color. But I am like you and think that the road type is tied in some how to traffic reports which makes it more complicated. Maybe support will weigh in on this topic?
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Post by HavanaDay
This is the response on how road types affect routing. Not sure if this clears things up but at least they responded.

My question:
We are all wondering how Road Types effect the routing or anything Waze?

Their answer:
Indeed, the type of the road affects the routing. First of all, Waze will navigate through drivable roads, in contrast to non-drivable ones (like walking trails). Secondly, Waze routes while taking into account the speed of each road.
The speed is determined by the average of the users' drives and of course this depends on the type of the road.
For example, the speed average of a major highway will be different from a the average of a minor highway.
So in that case you can say that the type of the road matters.
However, the type matters in the outside and not in the cartouche.
Meaning, you can define a specific road as a street, primary street, or a minor highway, but it won't change the fact that in reality this road has a speed limit.
You, defining it a "faster" or "bigger" road won't change it.

So in my conclusion of reading this it is all user driven speeds. It appears not whether the road is major minor or primary but that it is for display purposes only (ie. freeways show before major roads, major roads before minor, etc). The only thing that confuses me is the first sentence. It seems to contradict with the rest of the response.

Thoughts?
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Post by HavanaDay
I agree with the previous posters that what they are saying is that the user-designated road type does not affect routing.
unwallflower wrote:
mapcat wrote:In light of the above two comments, is there agreement that the user-designated road types need better definitions?
I'm pretty sure everyone agrees with this. However, as I've stated before, I don't believe that we can define road types too strictly because every area is so different.

If you have some changes you'd like to propose I'm sure that it would encourage discussion.
As I read your post and others I think you agree that user defined road types do not matter when it comes to routing. So I think we can nail down a set of "rules" for each type.

Freeways - Limited access, interchanges only. NO at grade crossings. Doesn't matter if it is a state road, interstate, US Route. I think toll roads should for the time being be labeled this way as such. Not sure if anyone is doing it that way or not now. I have not come across a toll road yet in my area. Hopefully soon we will be getting a toll road option in cartouche and the map. I think this would solve unwallflower's argument about the state road he has in his area.

Here are the tough ones Major and Minor Roads and this is one I have been back and forth on but think we can still nail this down if we can agree that there is no difference between a Major and Minor Road. I have proposed this before with a couple of modifications in light of what support has written to me:

Major Roads - US Highways (that can't be classified as freeways)

Minor Roads - US Highway Business Routes and State Highways (that can't be classified as freeways)

Primary Road - State Highway Bus Routes and other applicable roads.

I am against using lane size as a factor for the labels major and minor roads, I just don't see any logical reason for it. If someone can bring up a good point about why using lane size as a factor I am all ears (or eyes).
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Post by HavanaDay
unwallflower wrote:I don't think there are ANY US highways or US Highway Business Routes/State Highway Bus Routes (what are these?) in my area. I don't know. Maybe I need to do a little bit more thinking about this.
What area are you in again? If I remember correctly San Diego'ish. If so I guess the closest US Hwy would be US-101 but I think that starts just north of Los Angeles. At first glance I didn't see any down San Diego area way. That is interesting that there are no US Highways down that way. I found something about US Hwy 80 being down there but was shut down after I-8 was built.

Here is a US Business Route in Trenton, NJ. Not my area just the first one I found. It is a parallel road (Brunswick AVE) just north of US Hwy 1.

http://www.waze.com/cartouche/?zoom=3&l ... 1=31680488
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Post by HavanaDay
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:I too have misgivings about the Major Road/Minor Road classifications as well. (HavanaDay: did you mean to use "road" in your post instead of "highway" as the current naming is?)
Yes I meant to use the road label names of Freeways, Major Highways, Minor Highways etc. Sorry for the confusion.
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:Question: what about combination roads? Do we go with the highest classification? ie., 2-lane highway through the mountains or the desert that is both a US and state route would be a Major Highway, correct?
Yes that is my thinking. I would suggest taking the higher classification. Just as, at least in my area, a lot of US Routes join the interstate system. These should not change to Major Highway but stay as freeways.
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:The Primary Road definition of "other applicable roads" is so broad, I don't know why we'd use that. I define a primary road as any road that is not a interstate or highway, but which is used by a considerable number of vehicles per day, typically has a higher speed limit than surrounding roads, and/or is a major thoroughfare between suburbs, etc.
I agree with you that other applicable roads is too broad, but not sure if it is definable. I used Primary Road mainly to point out that State BUSINESS Routes should be labeled as such and didn't want any one to think that there were no other roads to consider for primary roads except State Business Routes.
In my area I have a local county gis map that they label as major roads. This includes roads that aren't Interstates, US Routes, State Routes. They are just main thoroughfares. So I label these roads as primary roads. Your definition of a primary road is also a valid one. So right there we now have what I would consider two definitions on what makes a primary road so there may be a lot of interpretation in the primary road classification. But, if we put our heads together we maybe able to find a good definition as well for Primary Road.
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Post by jondrush
Good thoughts. I've been thinking about this too, and I think you are approaching it from the wrong direction. It's not the designation of the highway but the design that defines it. With one exception. If it has an Interstate number, it has passed an engineering review and should qualify as a freeway in 99% of the cases.

So then, what is a Freeway? I think it should be defined as any highway built to Interstate standards or close to Interstate standards. These are the traditional Interstate engineering criteria
-Passing lanes for each direction of travel
-No grade crossings, no casual access (driveways, farmers lanes)
-Ramps of sufficient length that acceleration and deceleration is not required in the travel lane
-Car-width breakdown lanes
-Separation of travel directions by physical barrier or distance
-Gentle grades and curves
-other less important criteria about things like sight-lines, drainage and the like.
These were all designed in for the safety and maximum efficiency of travel, thus the Free in freeways refers to the free-flowing traffic, not the lack of tolls.

So a Major Highway would fail at some, or most, of these criteria and thus be subject to more traffic problems and less efficient travel. This is relevant because our desire with Waze is to navigate the most efficient path.
I'd define a highway as a Major Highway if it has:
-at least two lanes of travel in each direction
-Mainly ramp access. A few, widely spaced, grade crossings permitted
-Some casual access
-Ramps that are too short
-No breakdown lanes or breakdown lanes that are too narrow to fit a car width
-No center barrier
-Sharp curves or steep hills

Here is an example of a road that changes character quickly. It is US Highway 1 near Langhorne PA. If you pick the correct aerial shot, you see it rapidly changes from a highway that looks like an Interstate to something with no breakdown lane and a series of short ramps between it and the service roads. So I designated the lower section Major and the upper Freeway. Guess what, traffic rarely has problems on the freeway section, but there are frequent backups, slow-downs and accidents on the Major highway section.

A minor highway would be anything with US or State highway route number designation with less than four lanes, or if it has any number of lanes with regular grade crossings.

Two-lane County roads and unnumbered key roads would be Primary Roads

I thought of making a flow chart to help people decide between Free, Major and Minor. What do you think?
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Last edited by jondrush on Thu Nov 11, 2010 6:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

Post by jondrush
I think you are in agreement with me then. Where do we disagree?
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Post by jondrush
WeeeZer14 wrote: Speaking of Freeways, would any one say there should be a minimum posted speed limit to qualify as a Freeway in Waze? Like if the road is absolutely built to Interstate standards but for some reason only has a 45 or 35mph posted speed, should we knock it down to a major highway?
How about if we hold a tar and feather party for the politicians or bureaucrats who allowed the people's tax money to be wasted on road designed to interstate standards but are not permitting the taxpayers to drive at Interstate speeds? :twisted:
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Post by jondrush
On a more serious note, I don't think I'd worry about posted speed limits as a criteria for assigning a road type. Waze's user speed database should take care of any differences in navigation efficiency eventually. Stick to design criteria and we will have a more uniform method for the entire country. The only reason I even mentioned using designations for Minor and Primary in my post is that Waze has asked us to do it that way. If I had my way, I'd divide it strictly on design.
Interstate standards or close (Freeways)
Limited access 4 lanes or more (Major Highways)
Regular access 4 lanes or more (Mix of Minor Highways and some Primary Streets)
Key roads less than 4 lanes (Narrow State Routes, county roads and other Primary Streets)
Streets

Passing lanes are an important key to efficient navigation, that's why I use it as a differentiator.
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