I'm kind of waiting to see how the map appearance changes in version 4 to have an opinion. I'm getting the impression that there is a core of waze staff (but not everyone) that are working on the assumption that bridges will have their own segments.

I haven't seen any movement on a national standard. If I understand, the main issue is whether junction nodes should be added at bridges. I agree that adding two junction nodes at every ditch or ravine is unnecessary work. I would suggest that we only raise the elevation where a bridge on a road segment goes over another mapped road segment.

Is it time to revisit this discussion, or are we waiting for national guidance?


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Seconded.


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stephenr1966 wrote: 3. Bridges (yes, even over water) should be sectioned off by nodes on either end and +1 (both for display and to defeat the "suppress unneeded junctions" tool in WMETB).

I do believe the main debate is over Stephen's Point #3. All else is documented pretty well in the wiki as Stephen said. While I do agree that this would be nice for bridge closures when they do happen. Do we really want to add two segments to every single road that goes over a body of water, ditch, or ravine? Sorry, but this just sounds like a lot of extra work on the editing community. A lot of bridges are not that obvious from satellite view and some are not even that obvious from street view. Culverts are even less obvious. I had to add culverts since they do carry water thru them and seem to fail all the time resulting in a road closure. Thoughts?

I think having separate segments for the bridges and just changing the elevation on those looks better on the Live Map (and if Waze ever adopts that style for the app, it will look better there, too). It's also easier to maintain because almost all interchanges can be handled with only +1 and sometimes +2 elevations.

Also, I'd suggest that if a road is physically underground, it ought to have a -1 elevation, whether or not any other road crosses over it. Again, this is largely for LiveMap appearance purposes.

So many issues to consider and so little on the wiki. For what it's worth, as it does not currently have any effect on routing, elevations are really a minor point. That being said, it does affect the Livemap (and eventually the app) display and could affect routing inasmuch as closures are concerned.

So, for the TL;DR crowd I offer the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front):
1. Only tunnels should be negative elevation (primarily for display purposes).
2. Above ground segments should be minimum E0/Ground; +1 if crossing over an E0, +2 if crossing over +1, etc.
3. Bridges (yes, even over water) should be sectioned off by nodes on either end and +1 (both for display and to defeat the "suppress unneeded junctions" tool in WMETB).

I've not seen any arguments against the first two points. They pretty much say to make the map = reality and make sense from display perspective if nothing else. I will confine my Wall of Text to the third point as there have been several points and counter-points on that subject.

Point: "When a new node is created along a current or new segment, the node will default to a 5 second penalty through that node until someone drives across it and the map tiles are rebuilt with the new data. After that point the 5 second penalty is removed and the measured transit time through that node is used." (from https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Routing_pena ... igurations)
Counter-point: I submit that this is irrelevant since "...the 5 second penalty is removed and the measured transit time through that node is used." If we sweat the initial new segment penalty then we would never add a new segment and the map would remain static...and useless.

Point: More than a few folks have made this point, but Kevin(Triage685) summed it up nicely above with "Lastly, Virginia had been making junctions at the bridges but, since closures can be routed into (still not through) the reason behind creating a bridge segment was void."
Counter-Point: So, if we have an unbroken segment of several miles with a bridge somewhere in the middle and we "close" the whole segment (because the bridge is out)...then some driver starts out on that closed long segment with a destination on other side of bridge, but still on the closed segment...the route will be through the closed bridge vs around the long (but, possible) route. If we section off the bridge with nodes on either end we can close just the bridge itself and route the driver correctly.

Point: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Elevation should only go up one if over another segment. All else is overcomplication.
Counter-Point: I love simplicity and am a big supporter of the KISS principle, but:
a) Display in Livemap (now) and in the app ("soon(tm)") would be better with +1 for bridges
b) The "suppress unneeded junctions" tool in WMETB would likely delete one or both nodes around bridges without elevation difference.

All above is just my personal opinion. I welcome and encourage debate and counterpoints to my counterpoints.

I know most places are not like the mixing bowl (spaghetti bowl) in Springfield, Virginia, but having long stretches at one elevation can cause problems not in a screen view. For the mixing bowl, we wouldn't have enough Elevations if some segments did not have a node or two added to make different elevations.

I occasionally find a E1 crossing another E1 a distance from the bridge or exit that caused the first elevation.

Also if adding a minor street or railroad under a freeway in the outbacks of a state, is it worth getting a new editor to get unlock for the freeway to bump it up if on the ground over two hills and the minor dirt road/street/railroad is now ground? Or is it easier for them to put it at -1 since you can't see the sky due to the freeway above?

Sorry, forgot about underground. Yes, by all means if it goes underground, it should be reflected as such by a negative value as long as the roads are kept in altitude order. For example if you have 2 tunnels crossing each other, one should be at E-1 and the lower of the two should be at E-2.

I believe the hesitation for the segments for bridges spawns from the wiki post regarding routing. "When a new node is created along a current or new segment, the node will default to a 5 second penalty through that node until someone drives across it and the map tiles are rebuilt with the new data. After that point the 5 second penalty is removed and the measured transit time through that node is used." Keeping that in mind, I do believe that the individual segments are easier to maintain.