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Defaulting Roads to One Way - A Major Bummer

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Hey all!

As I've mentioned in other posts, I'm editing a pretty raw piece of map in Colorado Springs.

Here's an example - I'm putting "Constitution Ave" through now.
http://www.waze.com/cartouche/?zoom=4&l ... FTFFFFTTTT

There aren't a ton of wazers in the area yet, but we are a proud few! So, what's the problem?

In Colorado Springs, like most areas of the country, our roads are predominantly 2 way roads. Particularly, our "seldom traveled" roads are most likely 2 way roads. While building this map, I've noticed that every "unconfirmed" road I travel on turns into a 1 way road not long after I travel it. What does this mean? There are literally tens of thousands of roads in Colorado Springs that are 2 way roads, but Waze has made them one way roads.

I'd like to propose something then...

Perhaps the server can do something smart here when deciding whether to make an unconfirmed road 1 way or 2 way. Here's my suggested algorithm.
1) If the road hasn't been traveled, and gets traveled once, assume it's a 2 way road (especially if most of the roads near it are also 2 way roads).
2) Set a threshold. If the first 5 people to travel the road, ONLY travel in that one direction, then convert it over to a 1 way road.
3) All bets are off now, do what you will with the directionality of the road based on your current rules.

Benefits:
1) More initial accuracy. Roads that are seldom traveled are usually 2 way roads. (You wind up with 1 way roads primarily due to congestion issues in urban areas - you'd expect more wazers there!)
2) Less map editing required to fix up suburban areas.

Drawbacks:
1) It's possible that some 1 way roads will be identified as 2 way roads temporarily. Perhaps there's a way to limit this by trying to identify if you are in an urban area (then default to 1 ways).

Thoughts?

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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
Waze currently has a lot of minimum thresholds and statistical math going on behind the scenes in order to determine when a road is a certain type of road. The way it is, and it is unlikely to be changed (not that your ideas don't have merit), is that it requires user use of roads with the client or editing of roads in Cartouche in order to determine road directionality. It would seem your suggestions would be a big change to the model.

One person traveling on a segment of road does not make it a 2-way road. I can't make that leap. I think it's a "dangerous" assumption. Many streets in cities are one-way which is why Cartouche defaults to one-way when adding a road. Now, could you also make some argument about density of streets to determine your in an urban area which would signal that a street is more likely to be one-way ... perhaps. Is the current algorithm any more incorrect in assuming a single trip = 1 way? No.

Personally, I like driving a road for the first time, getting all those munching points, then go into Cartouche and get editing points for turning the road into a two-way. When doing edits, I always go around neighborhood areas and convert streets to two-way. One-way streets are rare in neighborhoods...

Did I waffle a bit in my post? Yeah, because I'm a verbal processor and it works with typing too. :)
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
harling wrote:... people will be a lot less annoyed if Waze uses a roundabout way (pun intended) to get from Point A to Point B because it assumes two-way roads are one way, than if it keeps trying to send them the wrong way down one-way streets because it assumes they are two-way.
And a lot less dead.
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Last edited by AlanOfTheBerg on Tue Feb 01, 2011 3:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by dmcconachie
I'm firmly on unwallflower's side with this one! I can't see it being changed from the conservative method it uses either!
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Post by freddiechopin
Everything is true, but...
1. how many 1-way roads are there in reality? I say 5% at most (I'm not counting two one-way streets like in a highway)
2. what does that change how waze records roads if recorded and un-edited roads are NOT displayed and NOT used in navigation? First they have to be edited to be usable - now look at point 1 - it's simplier to convert 5% of segments to one-way than to convert 95% of segments to two-way.

Just my 2 cents.

4\/3!!
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Post by harling
unwallflower wrote:I'm sorry, but I just don't see why roads should default to two-way. That may make things easier for you, but all it would do is throw all that extra work over to areas that have one-way roads. Waze is meant to be conservative... it may be slower that way, but at least that way it learns correctly rather than making baseless assumptions.
My impression is that there are people who use Waze for fun (chat, road munching, fixing update requests :) ), and there are people who use Waze to navigate. When navigating, people will be a lot less annoyed if Waze uses a roundabout way (pun intended) to get from Point A to Point B because it assumes two-way roads are one way, than if it keeps trying to send them the wrong way down one-way streets because it assumes they are two-way.

Moreover, there is liability involved. When you drive the wrong way down a one-way street because your navigation program told you to, you can be cited, and you may cause an accident. You can't be cited, and probably won't cause an accident, because your navigation program told you not to drive down a two-way street.
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Post by jondrush
I know how to solve this. Give half or quarter points to munch a road the opposite way from which you first drove it. A valuable incentive to munch new 2-way roads both ways. Maybe graphically convert the pellets to triangles to indicate the munched direction of travel, but make 'em distinct from the one-way arrows.
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Post by mihmax
+1 here:
there's no point making more rare option the default, given waze won't navigate the road before it's edited
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Post by rlpl
Your suggestion is really fine. For now you have a simple workaround: you can select multiple roads keeping the Ctrl key pressed (Command if you have Mac) and then change their direction. Cartouche is smart and will update only this property if you don't change other (city name, street name, etc.) Unfortunately, you will still have to deal with the turn restrictions which will not update automatically.

By the way, I think that Cartouche should be even smarter and update the turn restrictions when you change the road direction.
jrhamilt wrote:Drawbacks:
1) It's possible that some 1 way roads will be identified as 2 way roads temporarily.
You can always split the two-way road into two parallel one-way roads which seems to be easier than turning one-way road into a two-way one.
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Post by rlpl
I like the waze system being conservative about the road direction, geometry, connectivity, etc. The only thing I would support is to change the original assumption about the direction of the road which has been first registered by the first wazer. In my opinion, assuming that the road driven only once is a one-way road is as arbitrary as assuming that it is two-way. In my area and as far as I know in whole my country most roads are two-way. Whenever I register a new road I need to change its direction and all junctions in Cartouche. Whenever someone registers a new road and leaves it unedited it is only half usable for waze because the system assumes that driving in opposite direction is not allowed unless many other wazers drive both directions.
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Post by rlpl
Please see the example of the one-way road I would like to be a two-way: here is the beginning, and here is the end. Not all segments are connected but most of them are drivable from west to east. None in the opposite direction. The edits you can see are mine but the road inside is not. The distance between them is 32 km (20 miles). Do you believe that they have built a national road and made it driven only one way? Even if that was a dual carriageway I would prefer it being registered by waze as a single two-way road because it would be drivable in both directions. Now it is not.
unwallflower wrote:Edit them. Drive down them the other way.
Even to edit I need to gain the permissions and I will gain them only if I drive them. I like traveling but it takes time and money. Waze could preserve our effort which we can put on registering the new roads rather than driving multiple times the half-registered ones.

I know that I can also become an AM but finally I would end up as an AM of whole country. This is not what I would like.
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