Functional Classification
In recent years, Waze maps in North American have moved to use functional classification, which classifies roads by their characteristics. The benefit in Waze is maps that look more appropriate and better routing for trips over 100 km.
In Quebec, we use the provincial master plan as our primary source for determining the functional classification of a road. Unfortunately, there is no simple tool for determining the classification of all roads by category. We do have a PDF presentation (in French) of the data sources and tools you can use for this. Please look at it and be inspired.
Functional Classification for the Highway Network
Autoroute
Autoroutes, or limited-access highways, such as the 20, 40, 55 or any *20, *30, *40, etc. are considered freeways. This are drawn in yellow with a red outline on the province's official road map (select Réseau routier).
There are exceptions to this rule. Rte 125 between Aut 440 and the Island of Montreal is a freeway in all but name and so is one in Waze. When Aut 720 became Rte 136, we retained its autoroute status in Waze. Aut 50 is also still a freeway, even though some small parts of it are not limited access and some are only two lanes with no divider. Aut 20 is not a freeway in Vaudreuil-Dorion because there are traffic lights on it there.
Major Highway - Route Majeure
Major highways are classified as ''Route nationale''.
Minor Highway - Route Mineure
Minor highways are classified as ''Route régionale'' and ''Collectrice de transit''.
A very general rule of thumb is that 100-series highways are major while 200 and 300-series highways are minor. This is not completely accurate, however, so look at the road map.
Functional Classification for Municipal Roads
IMPORTANT: Before classifying roads inside an agglomeration, please contact phil-mtl or Webs101.
We don't use the government official road map to classify roads owned and maintained by a municipality. They often have their own classification, so we use it. The only thing is that it is sometimes hard to get it, so you can try to contact the municipality, or do a research on their website. They often call it ''Hiérarchie du réseau routier''.
Major Highway - Route Majeure Use for major arterial roads
Minor Highway - Route Mineure Use for minor arterial roads. If the city has only one type of arterial roads, use this one.
Primary Street - Rue Primaire Use for collector roads.
Montréal
Of course, the Montréal area is distinct. You may read more detail on the Montréal Area page. For convenience, some of the information is repeated here.
Road and Name Abbreviations
The English Waze TTS reads French abbreviations such as "Ch" as "chemin" and "Aut" as "autoroute" so we can use them freely. Remember not to use periods, per the Waze guidelines.
The list of abbreviations that we use is identical to the list provided by Canada Post. It is mostly common sense, but Montée (no abbreviation) and Ruelle (Rle) are tricky.
We can freely use "St-" for "Saint" and "Ste-" for "Sainte", but they must have the hyphen. Without a hyphen, they will be pronounced "street" and "suite" (possibly). If you see the long form in a street name, please shorten it. Don't forget also to shorten it in all the place points and areas that have that street in their address fields.
Highways and Ramps
Quebec has numbered autoroutes and routes. We use the standard Rte abbreviation for routes and the Aut abbreviation for autoroutes.
Although some highways may have names, these names are rarely if ever listed on the on-ramp signs so we leave them out. We don't mark Aut 40 as the Trans-Canada in the primary field. Visitors who don't know that the 40 is the T-Can could get confused, and that's the opposite of what Waze is striving for. So we just call it Aut 40. The alternate street names field works well for adding additional routes etc.
Contrary to Waze practice we do not use "to" or "vers" on highway ramps. The French TTS doesn't handle "to" and the English one doesn't omit "vers". We just deal with it.
Est/Ouest/Nord/Sud
We use Est and Ouest because a) that's what the signs mention and b) English Waze clients have no idea what O stands for. Same for Nord and Sud.
The English TTS pronounces translates the cardinal directions into English pronunciation.
Names
Nearly every compound street name and city name uses a hyphen even if it's the name of a person:
- Boul René-Lévesque Est
- Ch de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine
- Salaberry-de-Valleyfield
Unless the last name is composed of two words: Av Pierre-De Coubertin or Rue Cavalier-De La Salle. (This is why Dollard-Des Ormeaux is spelled that way.)
It pays to know your history when deciding which French articles and prepositions to capitalize. For a made-up example, look at Rue De/de La/la Roche.
- If named after a person named Pierre de la Roche, the street would be Rue De La Roche.
- If name after Pierre La Roche or after a place in France called La Roche, the street would be Rue de La Roche.
- If it is not named for anyone or anything and is just supposed to be Rock Rd, it would be Rue de la Roche.
For real examples, take Rue De La Gauchetière (named after Joseph-Daniel Migeon, sieur de la Gauchetière) or Boul De La Vérendrye (for Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye). Note that the different street signs often use different capitalizations for the very same street!
Sometimes, roads named after English places: Rue Duff Court. In general, Quebec will not hyphenate English place names but will hyphenate a person's English name, although the pattern is not foolproof. Use Street View to figure it out by looking at the street signs.
If in doubt, consult the Commission de toponymie du Québec search page.
We do not use Town/Municipality/Village/Ville/City of/de to name municipal entities. There are only two exceptional cases. One is Ville Mont-Royal, which is how everyone refers to it. The other is when two municipalities share a name but differ in kind of municipality, like Hatley and Canton de Hatley.
We do not list the separate boroughs of agglomerated cities with the exception of Montreal because of the city's numerous duplicated street names. Boroughs are identified in brackets like "Montréal (Verdun)". We always use the French form of a city name.
A few separate municipalities in different regions use the same name. In that case, we distinguish them by region like this: Saint-Isidore (Montérégie) and Saint-Isidore (Roussillon).
In all other cases, this document takes precedence over what is currently on the Waze map for the province.
Addresses
Quebec provides a wonderful resource for finding street addresses: this official map of Quebec.
"Circulation locale seulement"
In Quebec, a road sign that indicates that use of a road is reserved for local circulation is enforceable by law, according to the SPVM (Montreal police): "That rule is enforceable and can lead to a ticket being issued as per article 310 of the Highway Safety Code."
The best way to limit routing to local drivers only is to use private roads, which incur a time penalty to discourage routing on them. In practice, this means that a properly formatted private road will only allow routing along it of the destination is on it. For more detail, please read the US Wazeopedia entry for Private Road.
Complex installations and neighbourhoods (such as Kahnawake) with only local circulation are isolated from regular routing by using private roads on every road segment that leads into them. For single roads rather than areas, such as Montreal's rues familiales and actives, we must use little stubs of standard road at every intersection to make sure we force the routing penalty between segments. That way, drivers will only be routed to the segment of private road on which their destination sits. As long as the end points of any segment of private road only attach to non-private and non-parking roads, the penalty will be applied.
So:
Stubs should be 6 metres in length. Note that editors who prefer symmetry may choose to put stubs on both sides of an intersection, although that is not strictly necessary.