Feathers44 wrote:I'd agree with that. Some A roads qualify as Major (A3 through SW London is three lane but 50mph with access via ramps) but I also think most others are Minor (A309 - lots of roundabouts but still two lanes each way).

Are they both the same speedlimit?

Feathers44 wrote:

robin1979 wrote:

Feathers44 wrote:I'd agree with that. Some A roads qualify as Major (A3 through SW London is three lane but 50mph with access via ramps) but I also think most others are Minor (A309 - lots of roundabouts but still two lanes each way).

Are they both the same speedlimit?

That's a good question. I don't know. But then the A3 itself isn't the same speed limit along its entire length. The London section is 50mph but further out it goes back up to 70.

Yeah, it even turns into a motorway close to Portsmouth (A3(M)).
If the base speed is around 50mph I certainly would map them as a major highway.

A-roads should certainly not be "Primary Streets", at least not outside of cities. "Primary Street" is pretty much for in-town roads with speed limits probably around 30-40 mph, faster than residential side streets and maybe more than one lane but not very high speed.

zzyzxuk wrote:I've been putting the A and B roads in as 'primary streets' if it's in a built-up area where the speed limit is going to be 30 mph. Outside the built up areas, I would be in complete agreement that A roads should be "major highways" and B-roads "minor highways" - but in the middle of London, A-roads are little better than most side roads...surely?

That sounds reasonable, yes. There are segments of U.S. highways in cities that are pretty much the same as other surface streets, so it becomes a formality alone.

I'm pretty sure the only real difference between the types, aside from "avoid highways" routing and (obviously) visual differences, is the speed at which waze begins to autodetect traffic, so that would be appropriate.

What is the requirement for ramps, anyway? I don't think it's true that you need a ramp in order to enter a "Freeway"... Before I bridged the interstate system, Waze would tell me to turn directly onto Freeway-type roads all the time.

However, I still think A-roads should be labeled as "Major Highway", because of the UK's system of limited licences that prohibit you from using the motorway system. I might call them "Minor Highway" inside city limits... I'm not sure. I have heard that road type at least partially determines the speed at which traffic alerts are placed. I guess I'd need clarification from the dev team.

Ramps are just another type of segment. I have a ramp going from a minor highway to another minor highway, it works just fine. All this talk about "needing ramps to get onto freeways" is, in my experience, blatantly false. You need ramps to get onto freeways because it is the only type of road you should be making to get onto a freeway. If it's a ramp, call it a ramp.

Regarding road naming schemes, it seems the best way to go would be to call A-roads "major highway" when outside of a city and "minor highway" when inside a city, and to call B-roads "minor highway" outside of a city and "primary street" inside of the city. Just because it says "highway" doesn't necessarily mean it has to be one--people don't look at larger lines on GPS maps in a city and think "highway", they think "this is one of the main drags that'll get me there with fewer stops and slightly higher speeds".

robferrer wrote:While we're on the topic, should the W/E or N/S carriageways be labelled as such, or should both sides have the same road name?

Label them as such. Helps greatly with routing and especially with traffic reports, and waze will automatically switch them when you press "Other direction" on a report (e.g., if you're driving south on the M1 and see a traffic jam on the other side, the report will show "Traffic jam - M1 N").

Feathers44 wrote:The problem is that Minor Highways have certain attributes of display that are unhelpful e.g. they won't display a separator line if the box is ticked. They seem to be setup to assume single carriageway use so where you have an ordinary road with a central barrier, you can't show that on the map with anything grander than a Primary Street. The highway are also incredibly thickly drawn for centre of town use.

I haven't tried yet but do Blvd. and the other US suffix selections make any difference to the display that we could use? That would be really helpful...

Don't bother with suffixes. They just add text that we can better add ourselves by typing, and apparently it has problems of its own.

And the separator line only shows in Cartouche anyway. It does not show in the client. "Separating line" affects routing despite the kind of road to which it's attached--if it is checked, the client won't tell you to go in the opposite direction until you get to an intersection.

Dual carriageways can be done with one road provided that it is possible to cross and make U-turns at every intersection. Otherwise, I would recommend that for accuracy of routing two parallel roads are used. Editing is more difficult, but the end result is worth it.

Otherwise, either for dual carriageways as described above or for single carriageways on which left turns and u-turns are only allowed at intersections, "separating line" will work regardless of whether it shows on the map. There is no visual difference outside of Cartouche.

And I don't think it's all that thick for inner-city use, in my experience. I can post some examples from the client if you like.

We devised a lot of the US road labeling system ourselves...

It does indeed look a bit cluttered on the map having "I- 10 E" and "I- 10 W" displayed at random intervals, but it's worth it. Is there no accepted convention for abbreviating clockwise and anticlockwise? My only experience is "CW" and "CCW" from some video game that took place on a motorway loop.

I would definitely retain the distinction simply for alerts. They really do become rather useless without the direction. If I see "Traffic jam on I-10" at 5 pm, I'm going to assume it's the westbound rush hour traffic. But if the jam is actually eastbound, I would have no way of knowing.

Ultimately, it would be nice if Waze would automatically remove directions when labelling the map. It'd be a lot cleaner that way.