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Primary Streets (US)

Post by
Branching off the discussion on Primary Streets which started from the discussion on Service Roads.

Summary of thoughts so far:
mapcat wrote:
WeeeZer14 wrote: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.
mapcat wrote: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.
bgodette wrote:That's exactly how I look at it as well. There's lots of 2 to 3 lane and some 4 lane wide roads here that aren't numbered highways, and if they weren't urban no one would have qualms about saying they were highways. I've made them Primary as I come across them, but the only preference they seem to be getting is on account of their generally higher average speeds.
WeeeZer14 wrote:What is the point, well it may be that the original intent was display only. Just like my thought for Service Roads. Priority is part of what we are trying to hash out in the discussion of NJ road types. Right now I am thinking that primary street should be a tier below Minor Highway. It is something that is important/high volume, but calling it a highway would be very generous.

I guess this touches on some of the difference between a highway (a physical structure) and a route (a logical designation). Sometimes they play nice together, other times they bash heads.

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Re: Primary Streets (US)

Post by AndyPoms
A couple of points...
  • You need to make sure you are using the FEDERAL Functional Classification Maps/Info for each state. Some states have their own Functional Classification Maps in addition to the Federal ones and there are differences between each.
  • Each state uses different colors for their maps, so, specifying anything by color is a bad idea
  • These maps are updated every 10 years
  • In 2009 USDOT Changes the Definitions to eliminate the distinction between Urban & Rural - this change caught several states mid-cycle, so there's a good change the new definitions won't make it to all the states till 2019
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Re: Primary Streets (US)

Post by bgodette
mapcat wrote:Let's say you have two urban roads with similar volume, similar physical structure, similar number of curb cuts, etc. One has a state hwy number, one doesn't. Do you make the one without a number a minor highway, or do you make the one with a number a primary street?

Personally I'd make the one with a number a minor highway and the one without a primary street. I'm basing this on pure speculation that the routing server doesn't care anything about the road type in this case. Someday, I'd really like to have a long discussion about this with the routing server. Eventually I think it would come over to my side.

Maybe that's the problem here. I don't associate "highway" with physical structure, at least not in the IF physical structure=highway THEN category=(major, minor) highway sense. For example, the road we're currently calling "US Hwy 23" is sometimes a freeway, sometimes a major highway, and sometimes a minor highway in Ohio. When it goes through some small towns as a 2-lane street, it's really no more or less important than the 2-lane streets it intersects at stoplights. But they're not marked with state highway signs, so they get to be primary streets on the map, and it passes through as a minor highway.
So you're of the opinion that:

Interstates are always Freeway.
US Highways are sometimes Freeway if built to interstate standard, otherwise Major
State Highways are sometimes Freeway if built to interstate standard, otherwise Minor
Other roads (unnumbered) are sometimes Freeway if built to interstate standard, otherwise Primary or below depending on functional considerations.

But you would like routing to consider Primary to be the same as Minor as far as base transit cost and route pruning.
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Re: Primary Streets (US)

Post by bgodette
jasonh300 wrote:
bgodette wrote: But you would like routing to consider Primary to be the same as Minor as far as base transit cost and route pruning.
I agree with all of that except the last sentence in that I feel that Minor Highway should be given a higher priority over a Primary Street.
So as far as the "long-route" algorithm is concerned, Primary should be considered just like Freeway/Ramp/Major/Minor, but base cost should be slightly more than Minor but less than Street.
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Re: Primary Streets (US)

Post by bgodette
mapcat wrote:
and also, that the routing server will not consider a Primary Street in the first or last, what, 10km of a route?
That was what I wasn't sure about. It seemed that Waze wasn't sure themselves. Has anyone done a definitive test?
I'm expanding the tails of the rig so long-route can be tested as well, means adding a bunch of segments to extend out more than 10k from the north and south.
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Re: Primary Streets (US)

Post by bgodette
jasonh300 wrote:Can you do that without interfering with real roads? I guess you could always do switchbacks to cover the distance.
I level 9'd everything, yeah it crosses over some "roads" but it doesn't matter as it'll only exist for one update cycle. If we want to keep something like this around on a more permanent basis, it'll have to be rebuilt someone more out of the way.
jasonh300 wrote:Every time I hear mention that the Waze developers aren't sure of something, I start to wonder if the software has developed a mind of its own and the development team is no longer in any kind of control of it. :lol:
Which is why I build these rigs. There's also the problem of it may work one way today, but be different next week.
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Re: Primary Streets (US)

Post by bgodette
skbun wrote:... and beyond about 10 miles, Waze won't route THROUGH a 'street' no matter how good the speeds on it are.
Not that there's anything wrong with your suggestion, but this has been demonstrated to be false using both the client and livemap.
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Re: Primary Streets (US)

Post by bgodette
skbun wrote:...if it has, I believe I can prove that that behavior has changed - well, on reflection, or at least that there's a limit of 20-30 miles out. Route: State Rte 89 Scn at 121.41816,40.70436 to Susanville, CA. The obvious route for this is CA-44 (which is 62 minutes, 59 miles).
...
I'm more than open to the idea that I could be wrong...have I missed something? (I just want to say I wouldn't have made this assertion without having something to look at.)
AFAIK long range routing hasn't significantly changed since the last time they fiddled with the Point to Point distance vs Driven distance ratio, which was nearly a year ago.

It's going to be very hard for me to find an example that uses Street as the principle route as all my well edited areas are for the most part Typed as functional class. However I can give you my favorite "long range" with Primary as principle as well as Primary in the middle (Shelburn to Colrain is Primary with a point-to-point of 7.29372 km).

Another thought had occurred to me regarding the NanoRep list and what it actually could be. That thought was that those were the point-to-point radius limits from the current decision point (Node). However I have a well edited example that doesn't fit that idea as well: 311.440 km PtP, works, 313.460 km PtP, fails. Both destinations are on the same exact 29.255 km segment.
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Re: Primary Streets (US)

Post by bgodette
skbun wrote:B -> A: Fails with 'no route found'.
C -> A: Fails with 'no route found'.
D -> A: Fails with 'no route found'.
E -> A: Usually works, but what Waze considers 'Hyampom, CA' to be is not the same as what you get in Hayfork to Hyampom, below. The destination point is literally different, a few km short of the town. This suggests to me this might be right on the edge of failing. Good test case?
F -> A: Works, reliably, using Hyampom Rd, and shows the endpoint at the proper destination point.
Some interesting things...

Trying to route to this node (-123.455451, 40.617244) in Hyampon, CA from geometry point #134 (-123.469421, 40.741238) of this segment works. (Livemap 13.8533 km PtP)
Try from #135 (-123.469881, 40.740938) and it fails with "No street found at this point". (13.8234 km PtP)
If the destination is moved closer to this node (-123.45345666819, 40.617490946621) the route works from point #135 (13.8118 km PtP).

As a test how about changing the Type to Primary for Underwood and Corral Bottom. Since all these segments have zero transit data we're working with pure default speeds. But what's likely killing the route is a pruning on PtP vs Driven ratio that's Type dependent.
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Re: Primary Streets (US)

Post by bgodette
skbun wrote:The 'right route' especially at this time of year from Weaverville or Douglas City is CA-3 to Hyampom Rd, but even then you can see the routing engine fails to find it. That definitely shouldn't happen. How about for the sake of experimentation, because so few people drive this, I make Underwood and Corral bottom primaries, and Hyampom road a minor highway, and we see how it handles it on its next update? (This is a really good testbed.)
I predict that Burnt Ranch->Hyampom will work if you change Underwood and Corral Bottom to Primary. There is Type based pruning, but the rules aren't as simple as the NanoRep response seems. There's likely also different PtP/Driven ratios based on Type.
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Re: Primary Streets (US)

Post by bgodette
skbun wrote:Change from street to primary and primary to minor is done!

CA-44 has good highway speed traffic between CA-36 near Susanville and CA-89 (my other example), and the routing engine won't route through that one either to get to the far side - yet. That one we'll be able to see the effects of sooner, because it's been upgraded to a major highway.

I'll be curious how these two sets of upgrades help or don't help routing...
Since we're dealing with mountain roads here, I wonder if a general rule could be applied that anything paved that connects towns in the mountains should probably be Primary if not already a state/us highway or freeway. They are after all the "primary" route outside the highways. Inside the towns, normal urban rules apply.
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