Editing/Roads

This part of the wiki page is under construction.

Roads Without roads, no navigation. Drawing all roads in our map and connect them well is the first concern. On this page you learn several aspects of roads that add to a good navigation.

Adding roads

Indian cities have been growing rapidly, with lots of roads being made and connected to existing roads. If you notice any roads on the satellite layer that has not been added to the base map, please first confirm that they exist before adding them. Do NOT add any roads without either:

1. Clear GPS tracks following the aerial when the GPS Points layer is turned on.
2. Seeing the road in the Street View feature, where that's available.
3. Local knowledge, or confirmation by a local host.

If you doubt an existing road is drivable, please DON'T delete them without prior discussion with the local area manager or one of the champs. And if you're extending an existing road, please ensure that you always verify that the road has been completed and properly connected before extending it.

If you turn on the GPS layer(link to explanation), you can see if the road has been driven on. If the layer doesn’t show any GPS arrows, it’s possible that the road hasn’t been opened for the public, or is just a road that has not been driven on by a Wazer yet.

On the left side of the image, running alongside the Yamuna Expressway, there is a service lane that hasn’t been driven on. Leave it like this. If you live in the region, pay the location a visit to see if the road is open and drivable.

How to add roads is described in the Quick Start Guide.

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Road Types

• The main roads in a district or town should at least be set to primary.
• If segments will be used for through-going traffic or for longer distances connecting districts or towns, they should at least be mH (minor Highway)
• Main interconnecting roads with fast traffic should ar least be MH (major Highway)

The following convention should be followed where possible, although it is acknowledged that you may need to deviate from it in some circumstances.

Road Type	Explanation
Drivable
Freeway	National Highways that are referenced in the map below (move map from Road types in Quick Start and in the end to the page on highways) Highways appointed by local champs to enable long routes
Major Highway (MH)	Other National Highways (exception: inner roads within Indian Metro Cities) Ring Roads around large cities
Minor Highway (mH)	All State Highways Arterial Roads, and inner highway roads within Indian Metro Cities Roads used for through-going traffic or for longer distances connecting towns or villages
Primary Street (PS)	Busy Roads within Cities, and/or Feeder Roads to Arterial Roads
Street	Normal roads, publicly accessible
Unpaved	Unpaved Roads. Don't mix this up with the Unpaved attribute (link to be added)
Parking Lot Road	Used for Petrol Stations, Car Parks
Private Road	Residential Roads, access is limited to a specific group of people. Private Road will not be use for thru-going traffic
• • • • Ferry • • • •
Non-drivable
Walking Trail	Avoid using -- can cause strange routing effects. Please discuss first
Pedestrian Boardwalk	Not usually necessary
Stairway	Not usually necessary
|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| Railroad |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|	Elevation level as is. DO connect to drivable roads if they actually cross, and disallow turns to and from drivable roads
Runway/Taxiway	---

  custom style  

India Freeway network

Always make sure a road is at least connected to a same level of road type or higher. Thus, Waze should be able to route from primary to primary (or higher), from minor to minor (or higher), from major to major (or higher), and from Freeway to Freeway. Another way of explaining this, is that you should be able to continuously drive on the same or higher type of segments for the routing engine to use that road type in the calculations.

This means we sometimes need to make small roads mH, for the possibility of calculating long distance routing. Please discuss with the management if anything is unclear.

Concerning Non-Drivable roads: Most aren't worth adding, as Waze is an app aimed at commuters who drive. If you think they are necessary for navigation (like to orientate yourself), DO NOT connect these roads to drivable roads. Waze has been known to route people along walking trails and the like! There are few exceptions, please discuss with the management. Also Rail Roads should be connected, with turns to and from the drivable roads restricted (red). Elevation levels should be conform they are in reality.(>to separate page on non-drivables)

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Road attributes

Directly under the road type are check boxes where you can specify some extra attributes.

Locking Standard

As the map of India still needs a lot of improvement, we don't want to lock too much that could block starting editors. However, to ensure routing, especially over larger distances, we do use locks for some roads according to the table below. Roads that need more protection because of special situations (construction, complicated design, frequent editing errors) may be locked higher. Make sure to thoroughly check the routing in the live map, before you lock the roads.

If you need to edit a road above your lock level, ask an unlock or ask a higher level editor in one of the communication platforms to do the edit for you.

Road type	Lock level
Freeway	5
Ramp	5
Major Highway	4
Minor Highway	3
Primary Street	2
Street	Auto (1)
Parking Lot Road	Auto (1)
|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| Railroad |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|	2
• • • • Ferry • • • •	5

A stubbed road

In areas that still need a lot of work, try to make stubs to the roads: making a short low-level segment for each exit that a low-level editor can attach to.

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Road Naming

The naming of the roads in India is quite a challenge. Many roads don't have a name or are referred to as the "Road from A to B". And if there are specific names, they are often duplicates, even withing one city. On top of that, there are many different languages/dialects in use.

Several aspects are important:

• availbility
• searchability
• visibility/readability in the app
• continuous routing
• distinguishing unique addresses

All primary names should be in English, as one of the official languages in India. It makes Waze usable for all Indian people and tourists as well.

The following convention should be followed where possible, although it is acknowledged that you may need to deviate from it in some circumstance. In case of doubt, please consult with your Community.

Street naming

• Enter official streetnames in the Primary name field.
• Primary names should be in English
• Use the abbreviations as stated in the table below
• If a street has two or more names, we choose the shortest as the Primary name, and the other one goes in alternate name.

naming of highways:

• highways are indicated by their number, if available, in the primary name field
• Names are written as NH-XX, SH-XX, and AH-XX
• all other necessary numbers go in alternate name
• we use the numbers as they are on the map
• we only use new road numbers if it is requested via UR. We then put the old number as alternate name
• names indicating destinations go in alternate name (e.g., Mumbai Pune Highway), if a road number is available
• only when a highway has a specific name in urban areas that is used in addresses, it can be in the primary name

In case of doubt, please consult with your Community.

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Abbreviations

The following abbreviations should be used where possible to conserve screen space.

Road Name	Abbreviation	TTS Expansion?
Avenue	Ave	Yes
Boulevard	Blvd	Yes
Drive	Dr	Yes
Junction	J	Yes
Lane	Ln	Yes
Place	Pl	Yes
Road	Rd	Yes
Street	St	Yes
National Highway	NH	requested
State Highway	SH	Yes
Asian Highway	AH	requested

Notes:

1. TTS = Text To Speech, used for the navigation voice

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City naming

The City field should be used to specify the city, town or village for all the streets in urban areas. Rural roads that are in-between towns should be left without a city name.

Where possible, the simplest unique name should be used.

For very large cities with suburbs, then the neighbourhood should be used in the city name (-is this correct??). This is particularly important for generating useful traffic reports, especially when there are long arterial or ring roads that go through several parts of the city.

In short:

• only in urban areas
• use the simplest unique name (??)
• add/change the city name only when you are absolutely sure of the name
• otherwise, leave as is, or check the _None_ box

In case of doubt, please consult with your Community.

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City Smudges

The editor will display the error message "The highlighted road is too far from the city it was added to" when attempting to add a duplicate name. This is to prevent smudges and means that a different name will need to be chosen for that town or village.

For problems with smudged cities, we are currently gathering several solutions and workarounds.

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Junction Naming

Major junctions, particularly on Highways, should be labelled with a Place. Under no circumstances should the road name or city name fields of a segment be used for naming of a junction. Detailed information and examples have been moved to the Wiki page about Places.

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