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Time-restricted tolls

Post by iainhouse
In London, we have a Congestion Charging Zone. This covers a large portion of Central London: if you enter the CCZ you have to pay a fee, so we've obviously used toll segments. However the Zone is only in operation 07:00-18:00, Monday to Friday. Outside of those times you can enter the Zone without charge

Now that time-based restrictions have arrived, there has been discussion on the UK forum here as to how we can use them to more realistically implement the CCZ.

Since I haven't heard any suggestion from Waze that they plan to implement time-based tolls, I have worked out a method to implement them using the currently available tools and we will be using this for the CCZ. I have created a wiki page to document this (and related) methods. I have not linked this page into the main Wiki.

I'm posting here to ask for opinions on 2 questions:
  1. Should this be added into the Wiki and, if so, where?
  2. Do editors outside the UK even think this is a good idea?
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Post by CBenson
I think it is worth adding to the wiki. I suspect that short parallel segments to account for both restrictions that can be handled by the restriction dialog and for toll restrictions may have other applications as well. We have HOT restrictions in the US where you are able to use the road if either you pay a toll or you have enough people in the vehicle. The segment restrictions with the HOV-2/HOV-3 designations should eventually allow access based on HOV compliance. The toll checkbox allows access for those that are willing to pay the toll. However, similar to your situation, if you mark one segment HOV and apply the toll checkbox, you are essentially indicating that both conditions have to be met rather than either condition. To provide access if either condition is met, you need to resort to a tactic like you suggest with dual entry segments.

We haven't been able to really test this method as the HOV restrictions aren't yet live. It will be great to see you iron out the kinks with this approach for time-based/toll combinations. Then we should be able to handle HOV/toll combinations in a similar manner.
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Post by CBenson
Before your reply here I saw this thread and tried to delete my post in the validator thread as being more appropriate here. I added some reference to the flowchart. So here is my comment again.
kentsmith9 wrote:I believe if both road names are the same, you will NOT get any instructions. I believe this has been tested many times and is the subject of this page on turn instructions. We have reviewed this logic and now Waze is confirming it is accurate.
I think that if both road names are the same, both road types are the same and the road names are the same as the segment before the split you should not get any instructions. Merely making the names the same shouldn't necessarily eliminate the instructions. My understanding is that overlapping the segments will eliminate the instructions regardless of the road types or names.

There are a number of ways through the flowchart in the cited page that will give instructions when the both roads leaving a split are the same name. For instance if both segments have the same name but there is no name segment before the split you could go through the flow chart as follows: 01, 19, 02, 04, 13, 05, 10, 11, 08, 25, 15, 17 to "Keep Right."

However, for this application the road names and types should be the same for all the segments, no? If that's the case, then yes I would think that the overlap is redundant to suppress the "keep" instructions.
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Post by CBenson
Iainhouse,
I am looking back at a few of my routing notes and see that I did some tests awhile ago that agree with you tests and disagree with my statement:
CBenson wrote:I think that if both road names are the same, both road types are the same and the road names are the same as the segment before the split you should not get any instructions.
I did get "keep" instructions when everything is the same. So I retract my previous statement and agree that the overlap is necessary.
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Post by CBenson
That's putting a lot of faith in the timed turn restrictions to indicate that there is only one valid route at any given time.

My first thought is that, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, this technique, applied here for time-restricted tolls, would be equally useful for vehicle-restricted tolls, that is HOT applications, when we get the ability to indicate our vehicle type in the app. For HOT applications we would have one leg tolled and the other limited to HOV compliant vehicles. In that case to avoid the keep instructions, you need to assume that waze will give different instructions for each vehicle type depending on whether there are multiple "keep" choices at each junction available for the selected vehicle type. It will be interesting to see how that works out. But I'm not sure that's how I want the restrictions to function. I'm not sure that at a split in the road that a big sign on the left branch saying "NO TRUCKS" should suppress the "keep right" instructions for trucks, even though that's the only way they can go.

Overall, I'm not sure why we should be avoiding the overlapping segment method as it has been demonstrated to work.
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Post by CBenson
PesachZ wrote:We may determine that the concept can be applied to HOT, but will need a modified implementation to active the wanted instructions.

I think here if we can active or goals without bending rules we should. If it doesn't work then we revert to whatever does work, in this case overlapping segments.
In the context of preparing a wiki article on mapping CCZs, I would prefer to document a method that also works for HOT. That seems better than altering the tested method currently used for CCZs to a one that would need to be modified to work for HOT. I'm not sure that eliminating overlapped roads is a waze commandment. If there is good reason to overlap, then what's the harm?

My biggest concern is the possibility that the the lack of instructions for a pair of overlapped segments is not a feature but rather an unintended/unrealized side effect of someone's programming that may change at any time.
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Post by deeploz
So what is the final status about this Time-based_Tolls page, which is still stand-alone, without any in-bound links ?

- modification of the page according to suggested adaptations ?
- linking of this page from one page (which one ?) from the main wiki ?

Note that, without a clear statement, this page won't be migrated into the new wiki platform dedicated to the global content and will be either used locally in UK (if they remember that this page exists) or lost in the wiki limbo.
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Post by foxitrot
sketch wrote:Just want to mention: rather than "7a-6p" and "6p-7a", the restrictions must be entered as 7a - 5:59p and 6p - 6:59a (or similar– see below) or else you're going to have two minutes each day where both will be restricted.
This could actually be a job for WME. It could visually warn, that some otherwise identical restriction do timewise partially overlap.
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Post by iainhouse
kentsmith9 wrote:Did you say you already have this testing in London?
Yes. And no!

There are 110 segments that are either entries or entries & exits to the London CCZ. I started re-doing them all on Saturday night and finished them off on Sunday night. Unfortunately we've now had an INTL update to December 1st 20:49 UTC - so approximately 40% of the CCZ has out-of-hours toll-free access whilst the other 60% does not. :oops:

That means we may get some odd route results: drivers coming from the north or west side of London outsite the toll hours may get routed around the "barrier" unnecessarily until the rest updates.

Anyway, I'm on the "right" side of London (coincidence, honestly!) so I'll be testing heavily for the next day or two. Currently, I can only find a toll route into Central London (which is correct). After 6pm, I should be able to get a non-toll route. I'll try & test some routes across the CCZ as well, although this is complicated by a current problem where Waze frequently fails to return cross-London routes at all during the rush hours.
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