Parentheses are nothing but clutter. And the only reason "Exit" is on exit ramps is that exit ramps actually say "Exit" on them, along with a number. The idea is to reproduce signs as accurately, as clearly, and as briefly as possible.

I do actually like the "Exit 220: I-310 S to Boutte / Houma" idea, but I cannot get behind using the same format when it's not a control city, like "Exit 232: US-61 to Airline Dr / Tulane Ave", because that's counterintuitive. Also, we lose the pause, which does a lot for TTS clarity. And do we do this just to avoid double colons, or do we also do "I-10 E to New Orleans" on entrance ramps? I've really been digging how the colon pause has been sounding on this.

jasonh300 wrote:I do think each onramp should have a control city, whether it's signed or not. The control city remains the same until you're past that city and then the control city changes. I've always been able to find a sign by an onramp (not EVERY onramp) between major cities to tell me what those control cities should be. There probably are examples where there are no such signs, but common sense should tell you what the major cities are.

There are a number of ramps to the Interstate in New Orleans itself that don't have control cities on their signs. Hell, the ramp from Broad to 610 doesn't even have a sign! Actually, neither do many of the entrances to Business 90.

I assume Slidell, LA is only a control city because three major interstates intersect there.

That and it's the biggest city directly served by 10 until Mobile, which is two states and two hours away.

My only question is what control city to use when you're inside of a city with a lot of exits. If you get on an onramp in the middle of New Orleans, you're going to New Orleans regardless of which way you go, so do you jump to the next control city (Slidell or Baton Rouge)?

This is typically how it works. No entrance from Carrollton to Read uses "New Orleans" as a control city. Bullard uses it for its I-10 W entrance, and the I-10 E entrance at West End Blvd is signed as "New Orleans Business District", since it is technically in New Orleans, but only just. (There are no control cities on the signs at Metairie Rd / City Park Ave; interestingly, the entrance to I-10 E from Airline Dr is simply marked "Westbank".) The control cities between these points are typically Baton Rouge and Slidell.

I'm not sure if I support this fully, though. It almost seems like we might confuse people by asking them to look for signs that aren't there. The idea from the start was to reproduce signs as accurately and as clearly as possible, because we have the power to, and because most nav systems are pretty bad at this.

AlanOfTheBerg wrote:

tibble wrote:Exit 298: 1-176 / PA-10: Morgantown / Reading

That's how I do it now, but to make the TTS sound best, I think it would be Exit 298: I-176 to Morgantown / PA-10 to Reading.

This is optimal.

Signs may be read left-right then up-down, but we'd be doing people a service by breaking it down logically, I think. Plus, it breaks down better.

[*]"Exit 298: I-176 / PA-10: Morgantown / Reading" is okay but for the double colon.
[*]"Exit 298: I-176 / PA-10 to Morgantown / Reading" is kind of okay right now, but once pauses are returned for flashes, it'll break down wrong, and "PA-10 to Morgantown" will be the only complete logical unit, which is wrong.
[*]"Exit 298: I-176 / PA-10 / Reading / Morgantown" may read okay when the slash pause is added to TTS, but we can't say it'll read "exactly like the sign", because we can't say that people read shields and control cities at the same speed, and so forth. We also have to respect that some people won't be using TTS so we should keep it legible on the client as well.

AlanOfTheBerg wrote:The only exception I employ for not putting ALL the info on the sign into a single segment is when a ramp exits to two distinct exits and the BGS for the first ramp shows both the exit numbers.

For example, ramp exits with BGS showing "Exit 12A: I-95 N / Cityname1 ; Exit 12B: I-95 S / Cityname2" and then down the ramp is a split in some manner into both ramps. This BGS is too long for a single segment name to be useful and to have TTS fit into an announcement before the next split into the actual ramp happens. TTS would be too late.

The standard agreed to in previous ramp name threads (I think it was agreed to) is to not name the first segment, and let the next ramp segments be named and propagate "backward" so that if the driver is heading to 12A, they will get "Exit 12A: I-95 N / Cityname1" for the first exit and the next, which will match part of the first BGS they see, and will match the second BGS they see.

I agree with this. I do this whenever one ramp has two separate signs which are replicated exactly at the split further down the ramp. This is indeed commonly found in "Exit 12A / Exit 12B" situations.

If you're missing exits because they have two separate signs, I might recommend paying closer attention to the arrows at the bottom of exit signs. That, and Waze tells you to exit when you get there, so there should be no confusion concerning whether this is the right exit. Better to display information relevant to the user's current route, and to get TTS directions out of the way of the next direction. Putting two interstate signs full of information on one segment is poor form when there is inevitably going to be another important instruction pretty soon ahead.

The double colon proposal is not an interim solution. I feel strongly that the double colon is more logical than the slash in some places.

I-110 S takes you to Biloxi. What's the clearest most logical way to signify this while using the fewest characters possible?
"I-110 S: Biloxi"
"I-110 S / Biloxi"

It's the colon. A slash implies an option, a choice. You are not choosing between I-110 S and Biloxi, you are taking I-110 S to get to Biloxi.

And, you know, now that I've been thinking about it, I don't like the "to" either. It can be ambiguous: is it "US-90 to Gulf Shores" or "US-92 / Gulf Shores"?

The only objection to the double colon, as I see it, is that it's not accepted in English sentence constructions. But we aren't constructing sentences here. We're trying to get our points across logically and clearly, both visually and aurally.

banished wrote: I am having to go back and fix ramps were people added the double-colon in my local area to get those segments into conformity with our agreement.

In the interest of fairness, just about all the ramps I have edited or am planning to edit were either not named at all or named incorrectly.

FrisbeeDog wrote: If we start linking roads and cities then we start reorganizing the signs. So no longer do the segment names correspond to the way people read (right to left, top to bottom), but start jumping all over the place. I think this becomes confusing to the driver and is distracting. It also introduces further complexity for the editor because they then have to link the roads and city names. This requires even more work and sometimes isn't the easiest thing to do as that information is not always apparent from what is provided on the exit sign.

You're absolutely right. I've been taking time to consider this as I waited for the map update to go through. The point has always been to match the sign, and that's what we will continue to do. Matching the highways to their destinations is a nice idea, but it's not actually a good one, and that's why we have discussions for things like this.

My original proposal is this:
Exit ##: I-xx / US-yy / US-zz: City 1 / City 2 / City 3

We threw around a bunch of other ideas, but it's all coming back to this, to me. The only material difference between this and the existing standard is that this includes a separation between the shields across the top and the cities down the bottom.

Hang on, Alan, when did we decide to add this to the wiki?

http://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php?titl ... ldid=14856

This is a place where I thought "to I-10 E: New Orleans" was a no-brainer.

Ah, I see. The logic does seem a little ambiguous without pictures of the signs themselves.

The difference is shields. The original standard, as I wrote it a couple years ago, did not include any punctuation separating a shield plus direction from the words below it, whether street names or control cities. Back then, TTS wasn't even really expected to happen anytime soon, so I figured there wouldn't be any confusion between some letter and number combinations and the text that followed. This logic was kind of faulty in the first place, though, if I'm honest -- there's no accounting for the difference between "US-49 E: Azalea Pkwy" and "US-49: E Azalea Pkwy".

The "to I-10 E New Orleans" sign is a shield and text. For the past couple months, I've been testing "to I-10 E: New Orleans", and I think it sounds and looks great.

The "to Causeway Blvd N / Mandeville" sign is two lines of text. Even though one is a road and one is a control city, they're presented as equals in a list, and to me this should always be accompanied by a slash.

--

At the heart of the matter, on the most granular level, the best way to name everything is this:

[Exit numbers]: [Shields]: [Text]

There are three groups, and everything within a group is separated by a slash. "Exit number: Shield / Shield: Text / Text / Text". Not everything has every element. So,

"to I-10 E: New Orleans"
"Exit 228: Causeway Blvd / Mandeville"
later, "to Causeway Blvd N / Mandeville"
"Exit 220: I-310 S: Boutte / Houma"

and so forth.

R4CLucky14 wrote:

sketch wrote:Hang on, Alan, when did we decide to add this to the wiki?

http://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php?titl ... ldid=14856

This is a place where I thought "to I-10 E: New Orleans" was a no-brainer.

I disagree. The parsing engine drops "to" from the TTS (It would say "Turn right at eye 10 (pause) New Orleans"), from my experience, at least.

I believe the "to" is to stop the Select All feature from selecting ramps.

As far as the colon, I don't think it's appropriate. I believe "I-10 E to New Orleans" operates much better for on-ramps with control cities. Without a control city, I would suggest not naming the ramp. It will use the name of the highway to turn onto, exactly as if some wrote "to I-10 E".

That's my personal opinion, at least.

The "select all streets" function is indeed why the leading "to" was put there in the first place.

I'm going to be testing ramps without the leading "to" in my area with the next map update. I'm provisionally for getting rid of it; the only thing I'm not sure about is whether leaving ramps without control cities unnamed is a good idea. This is okay for singular ramps, but with complex urban interchanges, it's often not so simple.

As for the "to" in the middle, well, half the point of the colon is to stop things from running together. "I-10 E to New Orleans" isn't a huge problem, but is it "US-20 to Little Farms" or "US-22 Little Farms" or "US-22 / Little Farms"? Or are you going to some place called "Two Little Farms"? Sure, that last one will give us a pause.... eventually. Maybe in a year or so. But the colon is here now and, I think, makes more sense anyway. And, if we're just going to separate shields from text with "to", then, how do we make sense of "LA 3139 to Earhart Expy" when LA 3139 is Earhart Expressway?

Another problem, though, is that some interchanges undoubtedly exist that are too complex for the first ramp in the series to be left unnamed.

Not always, though. There is an alarming number of entrances with no control cities in the city of New Orleans.

I've done enough testing at this point and I think I've seen enough support to be able to move this forward.

R4CLucky14 wrote:I say we go with the double colon. I'm convinced.

{SIGN}={[EXIT]<SEPERATOR 1>[SHIELDS]<SEPARATOR 1>[CITIES]}

[SHIELDS]=[<SHIELD><SEPARATOR 2><SHIELD>……]

[CITIES]=[<CITY><SEPARATOR 2><CITY>……]

<SEPERATOR 1> = ":"
<SEPARATOR 2> = "/"

Thats how I came to this conclusion.

That's it, broken down in its most basic form.

As for the "to", let's just keep it. It's already there, it's logical, and while it does take up some valuable space, keeping it will save us a lot of time and keep the select all street function easy.

I do propose one other thing that isn't included in conventions, but that was mentioned in this thread: control-city pathfinder signs, the big ones that they put on the interstate when a large number of lanes split off onto another freeway or some other big exit. The format for those would be as follows:

I-10 E: New Orleans Business District

In this case, we don't have a standard, so we don't have to worry about changing up existing labels. Further, using "to" wouldn't be very logical -- since you're already on the indicated road, you're not really going "to" it, you're continuing along it. And this is not a superfluous addition -- there are two locations on my drive to work alone where the left three lanes exit straight ahead onto another freeway, and to stay on I-10, you have to keep and then veer right. Hugely confusing to an unfamiliar driver. I think I've shown these examples before.