Road Types (USA) – comprehensive overhaul of drivable roads

[HavanaDay]

Business, City, and Loop routes should have the minimum type one type lower than their parents.

So my assumption is that the note about business loops meeting freeway criteria then is going to go away?

[HavanaDay]

But whether you like it or not it is what we came up with as a nation. I call it the grand compromise. I would like to see us go the route of straight FC as well but that is not what we agreed upon as a group. So the whole reason for the compromise was to be consistent throughout the states.

Edited: So at the very least it is the experiment. At the worst you are thumbing your noses at the rest of us. Your choice.

[HavanaDay]

That being said, I think it would be a good idea to include in the US road types wiki page that even though a nation wide standard of practice for FC implementation is the route we want to go, every state has a different way on how they implement the FC's. An addition to the wiki would be a link of sometype to the location on how each state classifies its roadways and how it translates that into Waze. The links could direct editors to a specific forum, state DOT page, or social media site that editors are using as a central place of contact and discussion on local editing.

Why? I am not talking about a single exception because the road is screwing up routing somehow. That I get. But why isn't it being done to national standards?

[herrchin]

This suggestion is incorporated in the above proposal. However, it would appear to remove some support for those regions that currently mark certain unpaved roads as Street type or higher. Those regions regularly use Dirt Road / 4X4 Trail for roads of poorer quality than unpaved alternatives.

I have probably tens of thousands of miles of gravel road that are Primary Street or Street types with no paved alternatives. All the additional language is risking making the deference to State-based standards almost a footnote. I would propose moving references to State standards towards the beginning, and then saying "in the absence of State-specific guidance, (here are general guidelines)."

The larger problem is the inability to decouple the (FC+) type from the road surface. Dirt Road would almost be better as an optional attribute to the road, and then a welcome second option would be a "gravel" tag. Lumping them together as "unpaved" would be troublesome, as an unmaintained dirt road is a radically different driving experience than a county-maintained gravel Primary Street. Then everyone with good vehicle paint jobs could check "avoid gravel roads" in their app to be sent a little out of their way to stay on pavement. I digress, but hopefully that helps support the importance of directing editors to the State standards and not defaulting to "unpaved == Dirt Road".

[herrchin]

As I am in the (unfortunate? ) position to advocate for rural areas where crushed rock ("macadam", while accurate, is a bit obscure) road is a fact of life, and are a far cry from the real unimproved/primitive dirt roads, and I must watch out for new editors who may go crazy with Dirt Road when it should in fact be rare, I have a few additional, minor wording proposals to help those learning:

The Dirt Road / 4X4 Trail type has the unique property that Waze users may ask not to be routed over it. Users may ask to avoid it for all through routing with the settings option "Dirt roads - Don't allow", or to avoid it for through routing longer than 300 m (984 ft) with the option "Dirt roads - Avoid long ones".

Because of this property, this type typically represents supplementary roads that some fraction of local drivers habitually avoid due to surface quality. In dense regions, this generally means unpaved (dirt, gravel, crushed rock) roads, or roads in uncommonly poor condition by local standards. Elsewhere, ("however" removed here) improved unpaved roads (and possibly certain dirt roads) are essential routes and may be set to other types as if they were paved.

Check your state page for details on whether your state follows unique guidelines for dirt roads, or contact your regional coordinator for further guidance.

[herrchin]

I don't think I've heard the term "supplementary road" (offered in place of "side road")...I could find very little use of it in a brief web search. The only clear example I did find was from Missouri. Perhaps it is a regional term? Is there a more general US term for less important or side roads that would do? If not, no worries, the meaning of "supplementary road" is I think clear enough and I'm OK keeping it.

I chose a generic term intentionally . I browsed the thesaurus for a word that indicated non-primary, without any obvious conflict with a term with a "Waze" definition, that also wasn't so specific as "side road" (didn't want to imply that unpaved was always last-mile). "Secondary road" hinted far too much of an official definition that people would go looking for. "Supplementary" seemed to work well. If there's a better wording I'm all for it.

[herrchin]

Officially, that would be Local Road. A road with the lowest volume of traffic and lowest speed limit.

Right, but in rural areas there are parts where it is 10 miles of primary street collector over crushed rock. Why I wanted to change "side road" to something else.

[herrchin]

Ah, yep, sent myself in a mental loop with type vs. road surface. I have an idea to straighten this out with a reordering of the final content and explicit examples:

The Dirt Road / 4X4 Trail type has the unique property that Waze users may ask not to be routed over it. Users may ask to avoid it for all through routing with the settings option "Dirt roads - Don't allow", or to avoid it for through routing longer than 300 m (984 ft) with the option "Dirt roads - Avoid long ones".

Because of this property, this type typically represents side roads that some fraction of local drivers habitually avoid due to surface quality. In dense regions, this generally means unpaved (dirt, gravel, crushed rock) roads, or roads in uncommonly poor condition by local standards. In other areas, roads with unpaved surfaces may be essential routes and thus necessarily set to other types such as "Street", "Primary Street", or even higher, as if they were paved.

Check your state page for details on whether your state follows unique guidelines for dirt roads, or contact your regional coordinator for further guidance.

[herrchin]

Halfway was reported and confirmed as a bug, but whether the fix is live yet I don't know. https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 0#p1264512

[herrchin]

The term is "crushed stone" not "crushed rock."

My FC maps say "gravel or crushed rock" for the road surface composition, and I've never heard a human say "crushed stone," so I can't endorse that change proposal

I've never heard of macadam until this thread.

Hence "crushed rock" instead I suspect macadam is very regional in its use (and apparently regional in commonly-understood definition).