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Post by jasonh300
The service road probably came with the "I-35" name from the basemap. That's totally wrong. IME, service roads always have some signed name, even if it's "I-35 Service Rd" (don't abbreviate Svc, as you said). Other times, it will be "Frontage Rd", or it may even be "Juniper St" or some other name unrelated to the freeway it fronts.

Here, we have a lot of "N I-10 Service Rd W" with the different non-sensical directions and cardinals. The signs all say "Svc" but the pronunciation is so bad, I converted them all to "Service" a year ago.
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Post by mapcat
I agree with all four of your examples. BUT: Even though the urban frontage roads in Texas, Oklahoma, and a few other states are major roads in and of themselves, worthy of being called primary street due to their heavy use, should they be considered as part of the "primary road" type selected for long-distance routing? Assuming that primary streets fall under "primary road"; at the meeting it seemed that Waze isn't quite sure they do.

I also wonder if there's a strict need for a special "service road" category, if they truly are treated like regular streets (and I don't have any reason to think that they aren't).

Once you have these sorted out, do you think you'll have the stamina to establish the final verdict on major/minor highways?
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Post by mapcat
WeeeZer14 wrote:If Primary Street is modified to be given higher priority than Street, I would hope that it is still less than the priority given to Minor Highway or above. But we don't know how granular their priorities can be.
It definitely needs to have a higher rank than Street (otherwise, what's the point, other than to make them stand out in the client?). But besides that, my general feeling is that primary streets and a minor highways fulfill the same roles, only one has a highway number (US or state) and the other one doesn't (or it's a county highway). Rare exceptions apply, of course.
... my "rule" that any ramp should terminate on at least a Primary Street as well. (Except for say rest areas or ramps to a private/secured campus.
Good rule. Ought to be the standard.
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Post by mapcat
bmitch3020 wrote:I've seen service roads used for the "official use only" connections between the sides of the interstate (e.g. those bits of road used by police). I'm pretty sure they should be changed to private or parking lot roads.
Please feel free to delete those. Since it's usually illegal for drivers to use them, and because anyone getting driving instructions that uses them will think Waze is clueless, it's best to eliminate the possibility of a route including any of those segments.
Right now, I'm planning to use "Private Road" for anything that shouldn't be routed and isn't a parking lot.
There's no shame in using parking lot roads for segments that need to be on the map, but shouldn't be used for routing. Current wisdom is that they have the highest driving penalty. Some editors are conducting tests so we'll know for sure.
CBenson wrote:I would add one more dimension into this discussion. It seems to me that the service road type may have been necessary when waze seemed to be maintaining it own address numbers. Thus, we might need some guidance from waze on what the long term plans are for address numbers. If the only difference between "street" and "service road" was that routing worked better to address on the "service road" if there was an adjacent highway of the same name and waze is going to rely on third party sources for address information going forward, then the "service road" type may well be obsolete now.
Different Waze staff have different answers about this. Consider the address number database to be in flux.
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Post by mapcat
bmitch3020 wrote:I hate the idea of abusing a road type because of how it's used by the app, rather than fixing the app to handle other road types better, but you make a good point.
Same here, but eventually you recognize the typical turnaround for changes on the backend and realize you have to resort to kludges like this if you want it to work correctly before next year.
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Post by MReiser
The reason I had even asked about how Waze treats Service Roads in routing is this particular little segment of road in my neighborhood: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=5&lat ... s=63831524

By definition, it is a Service Road, but I didn't want to route anyone between Fitzwatertown Rd and Oklahoma Rd on this segment as it's not really designed to do that. So, I designated it as a Parking Lot Road...it's there and drivable, but not to be used for routing.

Now that we're discussing it though, those houses have a Fitzwatertown Rd address, so should I alter my thinking on this? I think this is a situation where a more clear definition and understanding would go a long way.
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Post by MReiser
Also, here is an example where I agreed with your thinking on when a frontage road is NOT a Service Road: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... 2,41768702

Woodhaven Rd (PA 63) is a limited access freeway with highly-traveled frontage roads in both directions. Their primary purpose are as connections to on & off ramps for the highway so I gave them the Primary Road designation.
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Post by MReiser
WeeeZer14 wrote:Only thing I have every heard or read is that service roads are the same as a regular street to the routing server.

Yes I believe some are using service roads for alleys. I am not sure if that is a conflict with the definition I am working with or not. I think it would work okay. Do you have any thoughts either way?

I'd tend to think that parking lot road may be better -- only go there if your destination is on that segment. It will also suppress traffic reports. Not many people will care that there is slow traffic on a back alley somewhere.

Of course I have been known to use narrow cobble stone alleys in Hoboken NJ for blocks and blocks to bypass the regular roads. But I would NEVER recommend that route to someone else with out a ton of disclaimers.
Take a look at all the alleys here in Brigantine, NJ: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=5&lat ... 6,32115965

I made them all Parking Lot Roads because I couldn't imagine the routing disaster that could occur if Waze started sending people down these little driveway access roads. There is no way these could be considered anything that might use them for routing.
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Post by phantomblack
mapcat wrote:
bmitch3020 wrote:I've seen service roads used for the "official use only" connections between the sides of the interstate (e.g. those bits of road used by police). I'm pretty sure they should be changed to private or parking lot roads.
Please feel free to delete those. Since it's usually illegal for drivers to use them, and because anyone getting driving instructions that uses them will think Waze is clueless, it's best to eliminate the possibility of a route including any of those segments.
I had been wondering this myself so far I have been setting them as parking lot. I figured they should be deleted but couldn't bring myself to do it. I remember how impressed I was with an early navigation software that actually showed them "wow what detail" Destinator I think it was or maybe and early version of I-Go. Since then I have come to appreciate the ability to see a potential radar trap location just over the next hill.
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Post by PhantomSoul
In situations where a highway has inner express lanes and an outer local roadway with all the exits and turns, I've used ramps to represent the outer roadway, as seen on State Rte 18 here. They seem to carry just enough of a penalty to prevent Waze from routing over the local segements unless it actually wants you to exit off them, but also won't route you away from those exits just because you need to traverse a whole bunch of "ramps" to get to it.

Of course, these local segments also don't have any driveways, be it residences or businesses. Personally, I think it would look a little silly for ramps to have addresses, and I'm not sure how that would even affect Waze's routing to those addresses.

Have we reached any kind of consensus on this?
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