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Private roads: which ones make the cut?

Post by mapcat
Lots of private roads show up on the maps around me. Besides the obviously necessary ones (roads with names and, at least potentially, addresses, such as those in apartment complexes), which others should remain, and which ones should be deleted?

I'm wondering mostly about:

roads within large parking lots (how many are necessary?)
roads on the property of a business, connecting buildings to each other
roads in cemeteries or city parks
private driveways or farm pathways

Per the wiki, a private road is "A road that is not open to the public. You can drive on it, physically, but there may be legal (and physical) restrictions or it is a privately maintained road on private land."
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
mapcat wrote:Lots of private roads show up on the maps around me. Besides the obviously necessary ones (roads with names and, at least potentially, addresses, such as those in apartment complexes), which others should remain, and which ones should be deleted?

I'm wondering mostly about:

roads within large parking lots (how many are necessary?)
roads on the property of a business, connecting buildings to each other
roads in cemeteries or city parks
private driveways or farm pathways

Per the wiki, a private road is "A road that is not open to the public. You can drive on it, physically, but there may be legal (and physical) restrictions or it is a privately maintained road on private land."
Parking Lot roads are not Private Roads, they are Parking Lot roads. I have seen some parking lots fleshed out with every single drive aisle along the parking slots and I think that is ridiculous. I am OK with their being a couple main drive roads as parking lot roads. And I've even had Waze route me directly to the front door of a business whose address was on the main road, but Waze routed me off into the parking lot road right to the front door. Very cool. But the whole parking lot? No.

Private business roads I am okay with as long as they are a main way through the parking lots or from one building to the next.

Cemetery and city park roads are fine, and many in both areas are driveable, especially cemeteries. I am not sure if Waze stays completely away from private roads for routing or not. However, because they are typically closed-loop and don't go anywhere else, and the average speed of the segments are pretty low, I doubt we need to worry about Waze using them.

Private driveways we have discussed previously in the forums. When a residence is set a good distance back from the main road way, it makes sense to have those marked as No Entrance private roads in Cartouche. What constitutes a "good distance?" Well, that's up to interpretation, but my limit is anything longer than 10-15m.
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Post by jondrush
If a parking lot road is big enough to have its own light or ramps, then I usually include it, because lots of people are using it. Also some parking lot roads are used as through-roads, even though they are private property, those I include too. I will try to include the outermost ring roads of major shopping centers and other places that are intended to draw the public. I include and any other clearly delineated major "roads" through the property.

I don't spend a lot of time on them or worry about connectivity other than where they join the public streets. I see them more as a nicety than a necessity.
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Post by mapcat
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:Parking Lot roads are not Private Roads, they are Parking Lot roads.
Right, I didn't think to edit the subject after I added that. I realize they're a different classification.

Edit: So what do we call the unnamed road that leads from, say, the stoplight on the public street TO the parking lot? Private or Parking Lot Rd?
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:I have seen some parking lots fleshed out with every single drive aisle along the parking slots and I think that is ridiculous. I am OK with their being a couple main drive roads as parking lot roads. And I've even had Waze route me directly to the front door of a business whose address was on the main road, but Waze routed me off into the parking lot road right to the front door. Very cool. But the whole parking lot? No.
I didn't realize Waze was sharp enough to know the business was back from the highway--that IS cool. My initial thought was, "Why do we have all of these parking lot and private roads? No one is searching for an address at one of those, and if they're getting directions from that spot to somewhere else, they ought to be capable of finding their way out of the lot on their own." But now I see the possibilities. Thanks!
WeeeZer14 wrote:On the topic of Parking Lot Roads, I usually make sure at least the perimeter of the lot is defined. This way driving within the lot should snap to one of those parking lot roads and NOT the main roads surrounding it. This helps to prevent false traffic alerts on the real public roads.
Never thought of that. Good to know!
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:Private business roads I am okay with as long as they are a main way through the parking lots or from one building to the next.
Is it wrong to think that these can unnecessarily clutter the map? The roads criscrossing this concrete manufacturer (everything between Howard St and the river) don't seem all that necessary to me. The address for the business is on one of the streets intersecting Howard, not even linked to the rest by a road, so it's unclear how someone would get routed to this part of the property anyway. I agree with "main way through the parking lots" but here I'd really like to eliminate most everything else.

The idea for this post developed from being asked by another user to delete a similar set of roads. I left the driveway leading to the office, but deleted the building-to-building paths, the trails to various fields, and what appeared to be the result of someone recording new roads inside one of the buildings.
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:Cemetery and city park roads are fine, and many in both areas are driveable, especially cemeteries.
Good point.
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:I am not sure if Waze stays completely away from private roads for routing or not. However, because they are typically closed-loop and don't go anywhere else, and the average speed of the segments are pretty low, I doubt we need to worry about Waze using them.
OT: if Waze isn't going to use the segments, why have them? Same goes for the walking trails, railroads, stairways, etc. This college campus presents some examples. Some of these pathways are private roads, parking lot roads, or otherwise meant for vehicles, but others are clearly meant just for pedestrians (and maybe maintenance people in golf carts). Yet most of the walkways aren't marked. The lack of consistency annoys me.*
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:Private driveways we have discussed previously in the forums. When a residence is set a good distance back from the main road way, it makes sense to have those marked as No Entrance private roads in Cartouche. What constitutes a "good distance?" Well, that's up to interpretation, but my limit is anything longer than 10-15m.
When it gets to the long private driveways (I'll try searching for the discussion you mentioned), roads are present in Cartouche for some parts of my area, but not others. So in the interest of uniformity, should I be adding them where they don't exist, or just leaving them alone where they do?

*confession: I was a geography major in college, specializing in cartography, and was advised not to pursue a career in cartography since the industry was going through a major upheaval at the time. So ever since I've had a bit of an obsession with map design.
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Post by mapcat
This seems to be the driveways discussion AlanOfTheBerg referred to.

The post that seemed to best sum up the directive was:
jondrush wrote:I delete every driveway that goes to a single house and keep all that are shared between two properties or more. I mark shared driveways private, no entrance. My logic is this, WAZE is about navigation, if you can be guided to the base of a driveway for a single property, you have unambiguously reached your destination, if two or more houses share a driveway, then additional guidance may be needed to find the proper destination. Single-property driveways amount to visual clutter and false navigational complexity. Don't forget that every driveway left on the map is another intersection to be passed over and unnecessary time to be added to the route calculation. Eliminate spurious roads and intersections, please.

If I'm not sure if it is a shared driveway, I leave it.
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Post by WeeeZer14
On the topic of Parking Lot Roads, I usually make sure at least the perimeter of the lot is defined. This way driving within the lot should snap to one of those parking lot roads and NOT the main roads surrounding it. This helps to prevent false traffic alerts on the real public roads.

After that, I would then worry about "roads" within the parking lot. These are usually wider, have no parking spaces directly accessible from it, or have lane markers painted down the middle. Only really important for large lots, like at a shopping mall. You'll know them if you have them, and as AlanOfTheBerg said, you probably won't need every single parking row.
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