Road Types (USA) – comprehensive overhaul of drivable roads

[bgodette]

I'm not going to mark it as such in Waze, because the residents would not appreciate a sudden influx of misrouted Wazers, nor would the Wazers appreciate the routing.

What makes you think that'll happen?

In any case it's a historical highway, not a current active US highway. I've got plenty of that around here from I-70 making large parts of US-6 historical and un-maintained except by the state.

[bgodette]

One word, Construction. As I mentioned in another comment changing the road to a preferred road type would dump traffic because of a major construction project nearby, the sectin in question runs between a mH and a Primary road, a good deal of traffic is being diverted over to the primary road, but on a road designed for increased capacity.

Again, what makes you think that will happen just because the type is changed? Type does not include any preference when there's historical data and this has been demonstrated ad-infinitum. All type does it determine when a potential route running over it will get pruned depending on total route length, run length of the section in question, and where in that route that section is. Pruning is not preference.

So unless this section of road exists in the middle of nowhere with no cell coverage or was just deleted and redrawn in the last week, type is meaningless in terms of reroutes due to construction.

[bgodette]

Is this an incorrect assumption? If so, can the Wiki be updated to clarify that it is acceptable for the segments used for entrance and exit ramps to be something other than "ramp" type?

Have you got an example of this where the Fwy/Expy isn't ending and no longer limited access?

[bgodette]

A freeway can certainly end or begin at another type road, and many do. I thought of adding that a few days ago, but I wasn't near a computer.

This is what I was getting at with my early comment. Interstate/Fwy/Expy all have common occurrences of terminating into another road type, and it's usually the next step down in NFC.

As for mid-freeway connections to major/minor highways, this is possible as well, especially at the beginning/end of a concurrency (say, when US-11 and I-59 run together for a time). This will be covered by this section of the Interchanges JSG, which is pending a rewrite. That's still a type of interchange, though. Interchanges may use non-ramp segments if they are freeway/highway splits, mostly to achieve visual continuity on the map, but the point is that it's an interchange and not an intersection.

If there's another type of junction you're concerned with, I'd like to know.

When a concurrency diverges I'm not sure we can really get away with not using ramps simply because there's usually a need for pathfinders, at least until we get that new feature.

[bgodette]

What conclude (for now) by looking in AZ to see what they did I see two things I will try to describe more in a bit:

(1) Phoenix, a rather large city, is comprised of a bunch of Minor Highways and Major Highways. This seems odd at first. It seems biased toward having Major Highways every half mile or every mile or so. Take a look. It seems highly differentiated.

(2) Rural areas of AZ currently seem biased to be less highways and more primary streets and streets. So the major arterial between distant cities can be primary streets. It seems under-differentiated.

So, does this make sense?

There used to be separate Urban/Ural FC guidelines until 2010(?) and the last directives were supposed to unify the two, however some states have either not completed that work or have yet to publish it to publicly accessible locations. If you've got FC maps that have Urban/Ural legends, it's the old system and judgment must be applied.

As far as inter-city connectivity goes, US/SR minimum typing tends to resolve that in most cases. Fixing failures of reasonable expected routes will be a judgement call based on local knowledge and "how would I get there looking at this paper map" . Until we get in-editor annotations, exceptions are going to be an issue that can only be protected by higher locks and documenting in the state's wiki.

[bgodette]

Then the style/best practice for this should also clearly state that any MPs which arise as a result should be closed "not identified", just to be clear that we aren't going to let an MP tell us what to do.

No, don't ever close an MP as "not identified." IGNs get involved then.

But would be unable to do anything since they cap out at L3.

[bgodette]

I've seen them editing in various places, specifically places. I found a few segments (random) in dfw from December 2014, so they're still editing.

But not as a result of MPs, and for this particular issue of emergency access connectors between *ways, they would be unable to do anything if the *ways are locked as they should be.

The whole MP discussion is silly since the Wiki would have us not connect them which throws MPs just like not having the segment.

[bgodette]

I thought reason originally made for mapping the turnarounds was to prevent pollution, and the no connection was to prevent routing onto them in extreme traffic.

That may be, and would work, but the disconnect would still throw MPs.

[bgodette]

I was reviewing a situation on Frontage Roads in a very rural area.

I see in April 2014 we initially added a section on when to mark Frontage Roads as Primary Streets.

https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/index.php?title=Road_types%2FUSA&diff=64510&oldid=63685

There are a lot of statements on what Frontage roads do and how they work. The change points to this thread, however after searching this thread I cannot find a single entry about Frontage Roads.

Is the logic we are following on Frontage Roads possibly covered in another thread? I could not locate any thread discussing the operation of Frontage Roads and why they need to be Primary Streets if the FC maps do not indicate such.

The case that brought this up is here along I-15 in the desert.

https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=usa&lon=-116.71707&lat=34.92801&layers=645&zoom=4

The FC map clearly shows the Coyote Lake Rd that crosses the freeway should be Primary, but the parallel roads like Yermo Rd. is not indicated to be Primary.

I think at a minimum we need to reword the entry for Primary Street to be more clear if the FC map shows resolution for other Primary Streets, but the frontage road is not marked the same, then there is no requirement to make the frontage road Primary.

Unless someone can tell me why that would be still necessary.

It's a developed rule of thumb for the west and midwest states. In rural areas frontage roads of freeways tend to be alternates to the freeway with a 55+ speed limit. IMO in certain states if the FC map doesn't class them as Minor Arterial and they're not a SH/SR/US they might want to be promoted PS.

FC and FC+ are a first effort to achieve consistent nationwide routing, the are a first step before adding any special case handling. With that said we want to achieve best alternate routes in either closed or heavy traffic conditions on a freeway; so if the rural "highway speed" frontage road is Street it'll not be considered for routes over X* distance, if it's PS it'll get dropped from routes over Y* distance, and if it's mH/promoted PS it won't get dropped until you're in long routing mode and your route is over Z* distance.

*numbers redacted.

[bgodette]

The checkbox isn't functional in the app from what I've seen. Original plans were to deprecate the type, but I'm not entirely sure that's still the plans.

We do have an ask out for more information from staff to better understand how things will ultimately work so we can revise guidance.

Well it can't be re-used without first converting all existing to something else + unpaved checkbox. Once the unpaved checkbox affects routing it's then possible to automatically re-type and checkbox all existing unpaved-type. What people are asking for as a type replacement, 4x4/high-clearance, isn't really a type and is just another property checkbox which also doesn't necessarily also imply unpaved.