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Post by Daknife
Okay, But now we have Champs putting out conflicting information. Some champs are saying it must be a MH to route really long distances, when it hasn't been a requirement before. And you state how I thought, that no such change had been made.

All I know for certain is that a year ago and a couple times since then, I used a route from Richfield UT to Flagstaff AZ to test US-89 when the landslide broke it. First to ensure the scenic alt worked, then that the New 89T worked. Yesterday based on what I was seeing in this thread, I tried my test route again. Flagstaff found very long routes using mostly freeways, so I shortened it to Page, There it errored out. So I shortened to Kanab UT A distance of 144 miles. Live map gave via 89 as the primary route with alternates going I-70 to I-15 to Cedar City UT, then over to 89 to the end, and the third was freeway down to Vegas, over to 89 and up the 89 Scenic, to Kanab. So I traced the 79 miles of road from Kanab to Page and verified nothing broken. So has it always had a 200 mile limit, and somehow worked fine before, or what?
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Post by Daknife
To bring back a somewhat dated point, simply to prove we can always find an exception in this wacky world.
sketch wrote:If you're suggesting to me that the AASHTO/Congress/US DOT keeps routes around for their historical significance alone, …
But they do in fact do so. I live a few blocks away from a seemingly quiet side street, mostly residential except at one end where it connects to a major arterial surface street. It doesn't look like anything but a residential street, except for the Red White and Blue Hwy signs that read Historic Lincoln Highway. The interstates chopped up segments of the LH and this one came to look like and be a residential street, if not for the sign I wouldn't ever guess that half mile stretch of road was in fact a US Hwy. 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.


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Post by Daknife
One more quick correction to a comment by Sketch on the last page. There is more than one scenic route. US-89 alt is also a scenic route, it goes from Kanab Utah south into the Grand Canyon (it's how you get to the North Rim park entrances) and crosses the Colorado down in the Canyon before rejoining 89 proper.

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Post by Daknife
US 89 Scenic is marked as such. So how it can be so marked and not be so is beyond me.

As to the other segment, it's not in competition with the Interstate or US 89, but with other arterial routes (I don't recall the SR designators at the moment. SR-73 and 114 are both almost 100 miles away from where I am referring to.
In this case were I to mark that section of road as a Major Hwy it would get routing preference over the Minor Hwy routes that are the arterials the one it comes off of is under construction and does see major slowdowns, the other end of that segment is a primary street and is a suggested detour, but not through that neighborhood, the detour is at a higher capacity intersection and connector, but if I suddenly change the segment to Maj Hwy, it WILL dump a lot more traffic onto a road that cannot and should not handle it.

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Post by Daknife
A bit more on my example, my point was originally that some designations are kept and signed for historical purposes. The segment in question is not even a SR at this point (it's in Riverdale UT) much of the Historic Lincoln Hwy in that area is a SR, this segment has lost even that designation.

The Key is that the Lincoln Hwy is not part of the US Highway system, it isn't a local name, It is a National Historical route, but one that hpos frequently between road classifications, much of it's lenght it is US Hwy, other areas it is SR, other areas are part of the Interstate System (I-80 across the salt flats). Further the designated route has either been changed to match newer improved roads (like the Interstate in some areas) or has been downgraded all the way to residential street having a prior US route designation taken from it to be used on newer, better nearby arterials.

But the Lincoln Hwy, the first Highway, does still exist running coast to coast and carries the designation hwy, even if the street is not a hwy by today's standards.

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Post by Daknife
On that we can agree and that was my original point. Maybe I was misunderstanding but I read the conversation at that point as saying the Lincoln Hwy should be marked as such because of it's historical status, you said (my interpretation) nobody is keeping such designations for historical reasons, and so I pointed out a section of said Hwy that is not and should not be marked as Maj Hwy, even though it is part of the original hwy as built.

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Post by Daknife
Not entirely, in that area yes existing roads were linked together, but in many areas new roads were built, introducing a newer higher quality engineering.

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Post by Daknife
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. Further I also stated that my point was in reguards to what I understood as someone claiming the Lincoln Hwy as equal to a US Hwy.

So no, there is no need to change the road type. But should such a change be made it would in fact result in a great deal of traffic being dumped onto that road as the construction currently has speeds well below the 25 mph of the residential road.

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Post by Daknife
Fredo-p wrote:Could it be possible to have every state champ create a list of sorts for how every state recognizes and classifies their road types, then submit this information in one massive pool with all the champs to examine?
Just a nitpick. Not every state has a champ. A state may have an L6 CM like me but no champ, or may not even have an L5 CM.

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Post by davielde
sketch wrote:In Detroit I saw a much bigger difference (because Detroit's much bigger and has way more roads to choose from); basically where it used to make me backtrack to get on the nearest freeway entrance, it now sends me along a Principal Arterial (Major Highway) or two for a few miles to get to the next useful freeway entrance downstream. It actually saves a couple minutes.
I think that it is key to reinforce that having a glut of principal arterials classed as MH still helps direct or funnel longer distance routes to a freeway. Even when presented with numerous principal arterials, as long as the freeway truly is the fastest route, Waze will opt for freeway even if it is way out of the way (assuming "fastest route" intended). To one of PhantomSoul's points, I agree that most urban principal arterials are meant for more local use (i.e. non-freeway suburb to suburb or even intra-city) and and not long distance trips, but those are also mixed with US and some major state routes that also have the principal arterial designation and would be more suitable long distance routes. In any case, you still normally get "sucked" onto a freeway as long as your "avoid major highways" option is disabled, but you also have legitimate alternatives at a lower road type if appropriate from the start--not just mid-route as a detour or in the first or last few kilometers.

As an example, entering downtown Detroit from the east side of Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti (about 40 miles), there were only two initial routes suggested pre-NFC: 1) I-94 all the way, and 2) backtracking to get to US-23 to M-14 to I-96 (all freeways). Looking at my routes now from the same location, my primary route is still I-94 (purple in the image), but look at the two alternatives. The green is a bypass off of I-94 using state highway M-39 (previously mH in that stretch, now MH/principal arterial) for about three miles to join I-75. This was not even an option before but it is only three minutes more than the direct I-94 route. The blue alternative is part of the pre-NFC suggested route, but instead of backtracking to take US-23 to M-14 to I-96, Waze now suggests a road straight north to get to M-14 (previously primary street, now mH/minor arterial).

Another consideration is that people should look at how their state DOT actually classifies the roads in your state if you have not. You will find that some states fit the traditional Waze road types well, and others are nowhere close. sketch references the links on each state's mapping resources page, but since those are not altogether complete, here is a link to current FC maps.
russblau wrote:Comment: in general, I think FC is a good basis for assigning road type; I think the references to route numbering should be removed. In practice, there is a fairly high degree of correlation between route numbering and road function, but it is definitely not 100%. In those cases where a US highway serves the function of a minor highway because it travels along a narrow street with traffic lights and driveways, or where a state highway serves the function of a major highway because it has few intersections and permits high-speed through travel, the road's function should take precedence over its numbering.
Agreed, but this is an area where different DOTs may treat things differently, so it's worth looking at this in more detail. Some may lower the functional classification of a road such as US-XX through a lower-speed, full-access urban stretch while others (including Michigan) typically do not. We have some state highways at mH and plain city-controlled roads as MH in numerous cases when applying FC. Politics, funding, etc. may come into play with a designation too as sketch mentioned.
dbraughlr wrote:I would like to see the rationale documented for the exception for ramps to be used for at-grade connectors.
I believe that dbraughlr may be referencing the bit about jughandles and Michigan lefts specifically. In the case of Michigan Lefts, sketch tested and tweaked the exception for a signed but unnumbered at-grade exit from a roadway. It has to meet specific signage criteria and be at an actual major intersection, not just a standard median crossover. By the way, as GizmoGuy411 and I built that section of the Michigan wiki explaining Michigan Lefts (a colloquial term), we settled on the term "Median U-Turn Intersection" as the best documented naming convention, especially as these are employed under numerous names throughout the US, and they are increasing. If the exception part stays on the revised Road Types page, I believe it should go toward the more or less "official" name for these styles of intersections. Drop "Michigan Left" in favor of MUTI... It should be an at-grade exception in more than a few people's opinions. I think this is mostly because an instruction like "to Telegraph Rd S / US-24 S / to Grand River Ave W / M-16 W" is a bit much to see on a 10-15m segment and pollutes the visual. "Ramps" don't have street names--they carry instructions. The same goes for jughandles and MUTIs.
dbraughlr wrote:I believe that primary street should be used for the main road linking two rural towns (and presumably thus the main street through the town) when no higher classification applies (which is often the case). This could well require local knowledge of the editor rather than a published document. Functionally the street is the primary route even though there isn't much traffic.
Perhaps this page does not go into enough detail about how to apply FC in certain circumstances, or perhaps that should be somewhere else, but the guideline as adopted in Michigan when we went FC statewide was to never downgrade a road type just to match functional classification, but it would be okay to maintain or upgrade based on local editor knowledge. Also, we had another one such as what to do with dirt roads, particularly since a number of minor collectors in our state are dirt.
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