[Page Update] Junction Style Guide

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Or maybe we're just grinding on this too much.

Feel free to check on other topics if this one doesn't interest you. The JSG has been languishing for too long and I intend to get it right.

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That's not what I meant. We sometimes get more specific than we need to. That doesn't mean the page is great as-is, there's definite room for improvment. But I'm uneasy with your specific guidance in this case.

What I'm trying to do is make the guidance less specific. It currently says, essentially, "stick to 22°", which I read as "make the angle exactly 22°", which is bad guidance. My intent is to loosen it up significantly; I mention the 10-15° interchange guidance because it's inconsistent and already in the wiki, not because I think that should be normalized for all "stay" instructions.

Rather, the guidance should be something like, "For intersections, keep it as close to the actual angle of the intersection as possible, keeping the resultant turn instruction in mind. Avoid angles between 35 and 55 degrees, as angles near the transition point can be harder to eyeball. For interchanges, follow the guidance in the JSG/Interchanges guide." (Thanks to PesachZ for suggesting some of the particulars here.)

The guidance to "stick to 90°" for turns is also too specific. We don't need doglegs on 75-80 degree turns. (The text is also erroneous: 90° is not the midpoint between 45° and 150°, nor is 45–150° the actual range where the "turn" instruction is given).

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Don't know how I missed that. Done.

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Don't know how I missed that. Done.

Im still seeing it incorrect in my browser here

...
3. The two exiting segments must have departure angles of 20 to 30 degrees from the entering segment

Fixed. Let me know if there's anything else. I'm busy with other stuff so I'm doing these changes quickly and as they're brought to my attention.

The wayfinder revision looks great.

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OK – the last two posts are talking about two similar but related things, which I will nonetheless address separately.

The 'to' to be removed, what about if it is on the BGS? I have seen "to i-##"

Are you sure? I've seen BGS that say "to I-##" at say freeway splits. But I've not seen it in the circumstance that we are defining as a wayfinder, that is where there is an exit, but we also want to give a user an instruction directing them how to continue on the road that the user is already on.

Actually yeah, I've seen something like this. Near the end of I-471 in Cincinnati, there are a couple wayfinders signed for I-71 N, because that's where continuing eventually brings you. It's still a "wayfinder" by construction since you're still on 471 for a time, but it's not signed for 471. (That one doesn't actually say "TO" but it's the same idea.) This construction is typical where you're still on the same road but the sign on the wayfinder is for a different road, often near the end of a particular freeway. "to" is appropriate in those situations.

The 'to' to be removed, what about if it is on the BGS? I have seen "to i-##"

What I do is put the (to I-xx) in parenthesis at the end of the exit.

Sign PL. In this case, the ramp is named "to I-43 S / Milwaukee (to State Hwy 29 E)" since the ramp takes you to I-43, then the road you exited on to (I-43) takes you to State Hwy 29, which is extra information that the DOT deems as applicable info, hence the parenthesis.

Unless I missed something and the ramp (or wayfinder) that you're thinking of doesn't have primary info on it (to I-43 / Milwaukee, in my example)

I actually quite like that construction. It's not technically wiki-supported but it's one that I've used before. Anything that actually says "TO" on the sign, I relegate to the end (I just do it after another slash, but the parentheses are a nice idea).

This way, I don't lose clarity on an unnumbered exit signed "TO US-61 / Cleary Ave" (the exit is directly onto Cleary; Cleary takes you to 61). By naming it "to Cleary Ave / to US-61" Waze properly says "Exit right to Cleary Avenue, to US-61", which is what you are indeed actually doing. "to Cleary Ave (to US-61) might be even clearer, I dunno.

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Oh, also, I'm not crazy about the "2 dropped lanes on the expected side" rule, exactly—what of the situations with 1 continuing lane, 1 option lane, and 1 dropped lane? The "only 1 lane continues" rule doesn't really apply unless we explicitly exclude option lanes from that count.

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I don't like parenthetical statements on ramp names. To me, anything in parenthesis is optional and should be dropped for simplicity. You need to make the call, is it critical info and should be there as another data point, or is it not critical and should be dropped.

I pass a under a sign that says "to I-276" every day on my commute. But I-276 is 30 miles away, so I deemed it non-critical and dropped it from the ramp name.

It depends on the situation. In your case, yeah, leave it off. But for the unnumbered exit I mentioned, you only traverse a couple hundred feet of Cleary before getting to US-61, and the "TO [US-61 shield]" is prominent on the sign, so it's worth including in the instructions. It also depends on how long the name would be, so if something is like "I-32 E / I-43 N / to I-226 / Cooltown/ Chillville", sure, leave the "to I-226" off. But on an onramp with a WEST I-610 shield and a TO I-10 shield, "to I-610 W / to I-10" is perfectly fine and useful information.

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I want to incorporate davielde's median U-turn intersection, restricted crossing U-turn, and displaced left turn pages into the Wiki. This will require some level of inclusion in the JSG/Intersections page. They will be placed in a subsection of "split road intersections" following "four way" called something like "Special configurations".

The MUTI page is pretty long; the others somewhat less so. My question is – should we just throw the content in there, at the risk of the page becoming very long? Or do we create an MUTI page, an RCUT page, and a DLT page (and a Jughandle page), and link to them from summaries in the main article? I'm currently leaning toward the latter, to keep the size of the Intersections subpage down somewhat. If we do that, do we use the structure "JSG/Intersections/MUTI" etc., or do we just leave them on their own page (e.g., "MUTI")? The former is more in line with the Guide, but it gets a little cumbersome.

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How about this (already applied; as before, feel free to revert or modify as desired):

Other conditions exist that may suggest a split rather than an exit (use your better judgement, and discretion) -- for example:

• The physical roadway itself forks or diverges with no clear straight-ahead direction;
• Signage and striping do not clearly provide all expected "exit" indications, or do so inconsistently; or
• Signs are present with arrows pointing left and right but no sign clearly establishes the continuation.

I like this. But, do keep it at the end of the list. There's a reason we take so much time writing a well-defined standard for wayfinders.

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Good catch. I think that guidance should be reversed. Let detour prevention do its job. Enabling the thru movement allows people who mistakenly get off to be told to get back on again, and perhaps more importantly allows for closures on freeway segments with detours that use interchange ramps—which is common—without having to wait for a tile update to enable that movement.