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Documenting Soft and Hard Turns

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I wanted to get some information documented into the Wiki on all that we know about Soft and Hard turn restrictions and the proper terminology. Below are some bullets with what I believe are facts on this topic that I will use as the source for the prose in the various sections. I would appreciate any feedback from the team if you see any errors, have a different spin on the information, or have more I should cover in area.

Definitions and operation:
Soft Restricted Turn -
  • Initially all new segments are automatically created with all turns set as soft restricted turns.
  • The routing server will consider a lower penalty for routing through a soft restricted turn, vs. a hard restricted turn.
  • Both soft and hard restricted turns look red on the map editor. There may be a time in the future where soft restricted turns may have a different color to aid editors trying to resolve routing issues.
  • Once a soft restricted turn is changed to any other turn type, it cannot be returned to this type and cannot be created manually.
Soft Enabled Turn -
  • These are created by the routing engine when it finds Waze traffic going through a soft restricted turn enough times.
  • The routing engine cannot override a hard disabled turn with a soft enabled turn. (Or can it?)
  • [color=#BF0000]
  • (Does a soft restricted turn have a higher penalty than a hard restricted turn?)
  • (Is there any other reason beyond the different turn penalty for not wanting a soft enabled turn?)
  • (Can a soft enabled turn automatically convert back to a soft restricted turn?)
  • [/color]
Hard Restricted Turn
  • When an editor clicks on a turn arrow and changes its status from red to green or green to red, the eventual red setting will now be a hard restricted turn.
  • Hard restricted turns have a higher turn penalty than soft restricted turns.
  • Editors set hard restricted turns when they know a particular turn is not permissible from a junction on the road.
Hard Enabled Turn
  • Created manually by Waze editors when clicking on a red turn arrow (either soft or hard disabled) and making it green.
  • All turns in a junction will be hard enabled after pressing both the Q and W shortcut keys.
  • Caution should be taken after using the QW key sequence to be sure if any of the underlying road junction turns should be disabled manually by clicking on the arrows to make them red.
General
  • Waze does not currently support time-based turn restrictions.
  • After creating a new junction, it is best to initially Disable and Enable all turns using the Q and W keys. Then manually set the individual restricted turns. If most turns are disabled, then just use the Q key and manually enable each allowed turn by setting those turns as green arrows.
  • Shortcut key Shift-Z toggles between 1) displaying all restricted turns for visible segments, and 2) all turn types for the selected segment.
  • Shortcut key a toggles between making the visible turn arrows 1) clickable, or 2) transparent enabling selecting object directly below them.
  • Shortcut key s toggles between 1) making displayed hidden arrows visible from below another, or 2) directly aligned with the direction of the connected segments. Pressing this key also updates the current display when viewing all restricted turns with Shift-Z.
  • [color=#BF0000]
  • (Does pressing the W key alone simply not change the soft enabled turns to hard enabled turns?)
  • (Do the extended tools properly set all turns to hard enabled? This may not go into the final wiki.)
  • [/color]

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Post by bgodette
I'll update this later this weekend after I review both production and beta WME. There may be some changes in behavior.
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Post by bgodette
kentsmith9 wrote:Definitions and operation:
Soft Restricted Turn -
  • Initially all new segments are automatically created with all turns set as soft restricted turns.
  • The routing server will consider a lower penalty for routing through a soft restricted turn, vs. a hard restricted turn.
  • Both soft and hard restricted turns look red on the map editor. There may be a time in the future where soft restricted turns may have a different color to aid editors trying to resolve routing issues.
  • Once a soft restricted turn is changed to any other turn type, it cannot be returned to this type and cannot be created manually.
Once a outgoing turn of a particular segment is modified, it confirms (locks/hard) all outgoing turns from that segment at that intersection. Disconnecting and reconnecting a segment will reset the lockedTurns state of that end of the segment (makes the turns soft again). Creating a new intersection with a segment also results in resetting that end of the segment being used to soft, it probably also makes the target segment soft as well if a node doesn't already exist.
kentsmith9 wrote:Soft Enabled Turn -
  • These are created by the routing engine when it finds Waze traffic going through a soft restricted turn enough times.
  • The routing engine cannot override a hard disabled turn with a soft enabled turn. (Or can it?)
  • [color=#BF0000]
  • (Does a soft restricted turn have a higher penalty than a hard restricted turn?)
  • (Is there any other reason beyond the different turn penalty for not wanting a soft enabled turn?)
  • (Can a soft enabled turn automatically convert back to a soft restricted turn?)
  • [/color]
Hard Restricted Turn
  • When an editor clicks on a turn arrow and changes its status from red to green or green to red, the eventual red setting will now be a hard restricted turn.
  • Hard restricted turns have a higher turn penalty than soft restricted turns.
  • Editors set hard restricted turns when they know a particular turn is not permissible from a junction on the road.
Hard Enabled Turn
  • Created manually by Waze editors when clicking on a red turn arrow (either soft or hard disabled) and making it green.
  • All turns in a junction will be hard enabled after pressing both the Q and W shortcut keys.
  • Caution should be taken after using the QW key sequence to be sure if any of the underlying road junction turns should be disabled manually by clicking on the arrows to make them red.
There's effectively 4 states because there's the two states of the actual connection (turn), either enabled or disabled, and two states for the origin segment's turnsLocked status for that side of the segment. Once drive analysis enables a turn I'm fairly certain analysis will not later disable a turn. If the outgoing turns of a segment are locked on that particular side, drive analysis will not update the turns originating from that segment. A hard restricted turn has a significantly higher routing penalty vs a soft restricted turn. It's unconfirmed whether a soft enabled turn has any routing penalty, I know of no testing that's been done for this.
kentsmith9 wrote:
  • (Does pressing the W key alone simply not change the soft enabled turns to hard enabled turns?)
  • (Do the extended tools properly set all turns to hard enabled? This may not go into the final wiki.)
  • [/color]
'W': only if it changes a turn from restricted to allowed, and only for the segment that turn originates from, all other segments would still be "soft".
ET does nothing more than effectively pressing 'W' on all intersection nodes when using AAD.

Additional information: Reverse Connectivity, which only exists on one-way segments, is fixed by 'QW' or by disconnecting and reconnecting. Self Connectivity can exist on both one-way and two-way segments, and can only be cleared by disconnecting and reconnecting the segment.

How 'Q' operates in WME is it goes through all the connections of the intersection node and checks to see if the turn is "legal" based on the directionality of the From and To segments. If the turn is not "legal", based on the directionality of each segment, it disables the turn. Unfortunately it does NOT check to see if the From and To segments are the same segment (Self Connectivity/U-Turns). This functionality is also different from what Cartouche did, which was to completely remove all connections (turns) from the node.

How 'W' operates in WME just like 'Q', however it enables turns based on if it is "legal" according to directionality, but does not enable turns to and from the same segment.
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Post by bgodette
CBenson wrote:Can you change turn restrictions from soft to hard by doing anything other than enabling or disabling a restriction from the same segment?
In the public WME not without writing a script. However the current beta allows you to mark the turns hard without modifying the existing turns.

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Post by bgodette
CBenson wrote:There is this section of the wiki. But that gets into the morass of what waze means when it says "lock."
They're talking about locked turns, because that's what the attributes are actually called (fwdTurnsLocked/revTurnsLocked), and it used to be a property of the segment's locked attribute a couple of years ago. "We" called them hard/soft to avoid confusion with the segment's locked attribute.

What it boils down to is: for that example, if there's soft turns there's the option (with a high penalty) to turn left, so routing will give a turn instruction since there's two options as far as it can see. With the turns hard (locked), there's only one option so no turn instruction is given.
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Post by bgodette
WeeeZer14 wrote:Here is a T example that I know gives a turn left...

Livemap route

Editor Permalink
Might have something to do with being unnamed?
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Post by CBenson
mapcat wrote:
kentsmith9 wrote:
mapcat wrote:Waze does not support time based restrictions, so if it's not allowed for a specific time frame, then it's not allowed.
I recall many threads discussing this, but I don't recall a final recommendation. I think this thread could spawn that decision here or in a related thread. If it was decided, I missed it in my search and I don't recall it getting into the Wiki yet. We should note that some restrictions are for commute traffic flow control and some are for other reasons. I know one road in my area is no right turn during late hours when most people are not around. Otherwise the majority of traffic is allowed. Shall we play it safe and say No turn if "ever" restricted even if only for 3 hours on a weekday?
I recall reading some opinions on this that seemed to indicate a decision had been made, but maybe it was just wishful thinking.
I don't remember see any discussion of a decision. I do remember first seeing the statement added to wiki here and writing to Jason to explain why I do not argee that all limited time restrictions should be restricted. If the turn restriction is for both rush hours or the entire day I have no objection to disallowing the turn. However, I find if the turn is allowed for most drivers (e.g. only restricted during one rush) then it is frequently better to allow the turn.

My reasoning is as follows:

If the turn is disallowed in waze but currently allowed in reality, waze may route in an inefficient manner. If taking the turn would be a better route, there is no way for the user to know that waze is providing an inferior route based on the erroneous assumption that the turn is disallowed.

On the other hand, if the turn is allowed in waze but currently disallowed in reality, waze may try to route through the disallowed turn. If the user is familiar with the restriction, the user can immediately see that waze is basing the route on the erroneous assumption and select an alternative. If the user gets to the intersection, the user should obey the time restriction, and waze will then recalculate a good route based on not taking the turn.

In my experience in Washington, DC which is full of time restricted turns, the latter is easier to deal with as a user and results in a better experience in more circumstances. Either approach will result in many user reports and the disallowed approach will result in many map problems popping up.

Currently, my practice is set the turn as allowed if restricted only for a couple of hours a day, set the turn to restricted if restricted all the time, and leave turn restriction as it is if the turn is restricted for most of the day or for both rushes.
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Post by CBenson
Was this information ever added to the wiki?
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Post by CBenson
Can you change turn restrictions from soft to hard by doing anything other than enabling or disabling a restriction from the same segment?
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Post by CBenson
bgodette wrote:
CBenson wrote:Can you change turn restrictions from soft to hard by doing anything other than enabling or disabling a restriction from the same segment?
In the public WME not without writing a script. However the current beta allows you to mark the turns hard without modifying the existing turns.
Right, in both editors you have to click an arrow to change turn restrictions from hard to soft. But no other edits to a junction or segment will cause the hard/soft characteristic of the turn restrictions to change, correct? (I understand that deletions can eliminate a turn and thus eliminate turn restrictions and additions can add turns and thus add both soft and hard restrictions.)
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Post by CBenson
kentsmith9 wrote: feel free to either comment back here
I think there is a significant difference between the statement in the OP:
"Initially all new segments are automatically created with all turns set as soft restricted turns."
and the statement in the proposed wiki:
"is generated automatically by the Waze routing engine on newly created junctions between segments."

My understanding is that the soft/hard characteristic is really a property of the new segment not the new junction. Thus when you add a segment and connect it to existing segments, the restrictions from the new segment to the existing segments will be soft restricted, but the restrictions from existing segments to the new segment will be hard restricted.
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