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Southeast Region Functional Classification Implementation

Post by banished
Change is good, right? After much challenging discussion with US Champs and Country Mangers, the Southeast Region (Alabama, Florida, & Georgia) is embracing the new "hybrid functional classification" system. The Southeast was among the last holdouts, but in the end decided for adoption because it is reasonably close to what we are already doing and meets a need for road type rules to be applied at a national level.

This discussion pertains specifically on how to consistently set road types, be it freeway, major highway, minor highway, primary street, or street. Road type has a bearing on how long routes are pruned during Waze's process of selecting the best route. Until now the Southeast has followed the KISS policy, which is:

Interstate = freeway
US Hwy = major highway
State Hwy = minor highway
County Road = primary street

KISS has worked for the Southeast because all three (3) states have the same type of road systems. It results in reasonable routes, but not the best, especially when there are minor highways that would be faster than major highways.

So what has changed with hybrid-FC? The KISS policy still applies, but also incorporates each state's functional classification system. The hybrid implementation makes it permissible to bump up (never down) the level of a road type one or two notches IF that bump-up is supported by the state's functional classification system. The most common scenario is a state highway set as road type minor highway under KISS, may be designated by the state as a "principal arterial." In the new hybrid-FC system, a principal arterial is a major highway, so you would bump up the road type from minor highway to major highway.

Because this is more complicated than KISS, a https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Southeast wiki page was developed to ease the transition and to make a few things clearer that might be lost in the depths of the all the other Waze wikis. It is suggested you bookmark the Southeast wiki page as your starting reference point.

At present, the greatest challenge is online access to the individual states' functional classification system. Alabama is the easiest. Florida is only during business hours and Saturday. Georgia's are offline, but the metro Altanta area is available. Your starting point -- and what you should read before doing any additional editing in the Southeast, is the just mentioned wiki page which also covers when to set a dirt road as Dirt.

Please PM me or start a forum discussion for your state (viewforum.php?f=944) if you are uncertain of the correct road type for a particular segment. For the sake of consistency with the new hybrid-FC "USA Standard," we're not deviating from the hybrid-FC in order to be consistent with the new Waze USA standard. If you cannot find the functional classification for a road, then just stick to KISS. It won't help make routing better, but it won't make it worse.
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Post by wmadjones
Thanks for the update and the Southeast Wiki page.
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David Jones
Fixing the southern suburbs of Atlanta one segment at a time