voludu2 wrote:First - what's the simplest explanation we can give to newer editors to help them get RR junctioning right most of the time?

As a general rule, you should create a junction when a railroad crosses a street at the same grade.

DwarfLord wrote:More than one person has told me the current wording isn't clear, and I absolutely support wordsmithing to improve that!

I think the current language resulted from a heck of a lot of frustration and despair over what had been introduced as a mass editing campaign for everywhere and always. As a result of this "everywhere and always" language our urban areas got sprayed with useless and often counterproductive junction nodes.

And, as always seems to happen in these cases, once the downsides of these new nodes became clear, the editors who had worked so hard to add them seemed to evaporate, leaving the mass cleanup to the ones who were uncomfortable about the mass campaign in the first place.

Since I (and the SF Bay Area) are still reeling from this event it's hard for me to get behind language that starts out too encouraging. Perhaps there's a good middle ground? Perhaps something like

In general, you should create a junction for grade crossings involving regular, scheduled train traffic if no other junction node is nearby. Junctioning active grade crossings near existing junction nodes, or junctioning abandoned or seldom-used grade crossings, may be counterproductive.

DwarfLord wrote: or the trains that pass do so at irregular unscheduled times, then this additional delay information gathered by Waze with respect to the train passage will be more or less meaningless. It may even degrade routing because Waze might say "there was a train here last Thursday at 9 AM, and here it is Thursday at 9 AM again! I better give the driver a different route in case that train reappears". This is one of the things the existing guidance means when it says "will not benefit routing and may in some cases degrade routing".

DwarfLord wrote:The USA guidance is definitely to junction RR grade crossings, it's just we don't do it in certain conditions where experience suggests doing so has zero or negative benefit.

DwarfLord wrote:it's hard for me to get behind language that starts out too encouraging

jm6087 wrote:As a general rule, you should create a junction when a railroad crosses a street at the same grade.

DwarfLord wrote:In general, you should create a junction for grade crossings involving regular, scheduled train traffic if no other junction node is nearby. Junctioning active grade crossings near existing junction nodes, or junctioning abandoned or seldom-used grade crossings, may be counterproductive.

In general, you should create a junction for grade crossing where the track appears to be active. Junctioning active grade crossings near existing junction nodes, or junctioning abandoned, may be counterproductive.

jm6087 wrote:Are you wanting to discuss this in here or would it be better served to be discussed in the US Wiki forum?

DwarfLord wrote:The USA guidance is definitely to junction RR grade crossings, it's just we don't do it in certain conditions where experience suggests doing so has zero or negative benefit.

With all due respect to Yigal, this is the same company that told us to map every parking lot in the world.

jm6087 wrote:In general, you should create a junction for grade crossing where the track appears to be active. Junctioning active grade crossings near existing junction nodes, or junctioning abandoned, may be counterproductive.

In general, you should create a junction for grade crossings where the track appears to be well-maintained and active. However, it is often counterproductive to junction active grade crossings that are near other existing junction nodes.