Roads

Introduction

This page should be read in conjunction with the page about Best Map Editing Practice, which covers the editing principles common to Waze map editing in all parts of the world. The purpose of this page is to describe standard practice in Ireland and how it differs from standard practice in other countries.

In case of any questions about road naming in Ireland, please start or join a discussion in the Ireland section of the forum. For any questions about map editing in general, first study the wiki, then search the Map Editing section of the forum, and then, if necessary, ask questions in that section of the forum.

Conventions used in this document

• The word “city” is used in the Waze context: it may be an actual city, it may be a town of any size, or it may be a small village that just has a pub/shop/post office/school and a couple of houses.
• When describing road naming:
  • A capital letter followed by a number of ‘x’ characters implies that letter followed by the number of digits corresponding to the number of ‘x’ characters shown. For example, Rxxx implies an ‘R’ followed by exactly three digits.
  • "[thing]" means that something should be included if it is known. For example, "[Lxxx] Main Rd" means that the name "Main Rd" should be preceded with its L-road number if that L-road number is known.
  • A slash (‘/’) separating two parts of the road name description implies just one of the elements separated by ‘/’ characters. For example, N/S/E/W implies an ‘N’ or an ‘S’ or an ‘E’ or a ‘W’.
  • “<name>” implies that the name of something (such as a street name) should form part of the road name at this position.
  • Spaces in the road name description should be inserted into the road name verbatim.

Un-named roads

Please do not mark a road as having no name — leave it completely unnamed (and red in WME) in case you don't know the name (or don't have time to name it). This makes it much more obvious to a future editor that the road needs to be named. Red roads can still be routed, so they are better than no roads at all. There are some limited cases where it's valid to mark a road as having no name, such as short segments where different instructions are needed depending on the user's direction of travel.

Road Types

Waze Road Type	Naming	Lock	Irish Road Type
Freeway (FW)	"Mx/Mxx N/S/E/W" (note that the cardinal direction is not enclosed in parentheses)	L3	Motorways. Example: "M18 S": Signs referring to motorways are blue. Most motorways have two lanes in each direction (some have three or four lanes). Some motorways terminate in a roundabout(!) Most interchanges are grade-separated. Default speed limit is 120km/h, unless signs say otherwise. The cardinal direction is not necessarily the same as the geographical direction on the map, but is determined by the road planners. Always use the cardinal direction from road signs.
Major Highway (MH)	"Nx/Nxx N/S/E/W” for dual carriageways “Nxx” or “Nxx <name>” for two-way roads.	L2	National primary & national secondary roads. Examples: "N72", "N11 N" and "N4 Main St". Signs referring to N-roads are green. Major Highways can be dual carriageway or two-way. May form part of a normal street in a city. Most dual carriageways have two lanes in either direction (some have three lanes). Default speed limit is 100km/h, unless signs say otherwise, dropping to 60km/h on the approach to cities and usually 50km/h within cities. The cardinal direction is not necessarily the same as the geographical direction on the map, but is determined by the road planners. Always use the cardinal direction from road signs.
Minor Highway (mH)	“Rxxx N/S/E/W” for dual carriageways, “Rxxx” or “Rxxx <name>” for two-way roads.	L2	Regional roads link towns to each other, and feed to national roads or motorways. Examples: "R772", "R772 E" and "R234 Main St". Signs referring to regional roads are white with black text or occasionally yellow with black text. Usually two-way roads and sometimes dual carriageways, especially in larger cities. Some very busy junctions may be grade-separated. May form part of a normal street in a city. Default speed limit is 80km/h, unless signs say otherwise, dropping to 60km/h on the approach to cities and usually 50km/h within cities. Occasionally, where the road was formerly part of an N-road that was replaced by a motorway, speed limit will still be 100km/h and older signs will suggest that the R-road has the number of the N-road that was replaced by a nearby motorway.
Ramp	Exit ramps: “Jxx <road number (and name, if shown) on the sign> > <City names listed on the sign separated by comma>“ — for example: “J3 R125 > Ashbourne, Swords” Entry ramps: “to <road name>” - for example: “to M50 N”		Entrance and exit roads of motorways and dual carriageways. Examples: "J8 > R124", "J8 R134 > Athy, Cork", "J8a" and "to M50 N". Can be referred to as either “junction” or “exit”. Junctions are usually numbered on motorways and N-roads. Speed limit typically shifts once part way on the ramp. For example: 120↔60. Speed limit sometimes shifts twice when there’s a very tight curve (as part of a partial cloverleaf interchange). For example: 50→30→100.
Primary Street (PS)	“Lxxxx/Lxxxxx” where the L-number (local road number) is known and is shown on a sign at the end of the road, “Lxxxx <name>” or just “<name>” where the name is known. Where no other name is known, named after the townland through which it passes (see “Townlands” in the section about naming).		"Main" streets in towns and cities as well as rural roads (other than R roads) that are important connectors with a high traffic volume. Two cars must be able to pass without having to slow down. The road should not be a cul-de-sac. Examples: "L4321 Joseph Rd", "L5432 Ballingarry", "L6789", "Joseph Rd" and "Ballingarry". Usually two-way roads (no matter how narrow) and occasionally dual-carriageway. Default speed limit is 80km/h outside cities, dropping to 60km/h on the approach to cities and usually 50km/h within cities. Many cities are increasing their use of 30km/h in some areas, especially city centres and residential estates.
Street	“Lxxxx/Lxxxxx” where the L-number (local road number) is known and is shown on a sign at the end of the road, “Lxxxx <name>” or just “<name>” where the name is known. Where no other name is known, named after the townland through which it passes (see “Townlands” in the section about naming).		Default road type for most segments. Most streets and rural roads. Examples: "L4321 Joseph Rd", "L5432 Ballingarry", "L6789", "Joseph Rd" and "Ballingarry". Usually two-way roads (no matter how narrow) and occasionally dual-carriageways. Default speed limit is 80km/h outside cities, dropping to 60km/h on the approach to cities and usually 50km/h within cities. Many cities are increasing their use of 30km/h in some areas, especially city centres and residential estates.
Narrow Street			DO NOT USE — This road type is currently not deemed useful for mapping in Ireland.
Off-road			Roads that are not suitable for normal cars; to be used extremely rarely. Use a regular Street road type with the Unpaved attribute checked.
Private Road (PR)			Roads that are not open to the general public. For example: college campuses, large businesses, golf clubs and gated developments.
Parking Lot Road (PLR)			Roads of car parks and petrol stations. Note: not every lane of a car park should be mapped, but only entrances, exits and main routes within the car park. Map the minimal amount of segments required to allow navigation into and out of the car park. Name the entry segments with the name of the parking lot so that TTS will give a useful message, for example: “turn left into Lidl”. This policy changed in June 2020. PLRs should not be named (tick "none" for street name).

Summary: motorways are Freeways, N-roads are Major Highways, R-roads are Minor Highways, major local roads are Primary Streets, all other surfaced local roads are Streets (except for special roads like Private Roads, Parking Lot Roads, and Narrow Streets).

Naming explanation: Anything in [square brackets] should be included if it is known and appropriate. Anything in <angle brackets> must be included.

Towns, cities and villages

Roads that do not form part of a town, city or village should have no city specified. Roads that do form part of a town, city or village (or run past its edge) should have the name of that settlement specified. Larger cities (such as Cork and Dublin) use the names of their suburbs as the city name for roads in those suburbs.

Waze only allows one town, city or village with the same name in each country. For duplicate city names, the county name can be appended in brackets after the city name. For example, there is a "Blackwater" in Co Clare, but a "Blackwater (Wexford)" in Co. Wexford. Ideally the larger city should be the one without brackets, but sometimes it will be simpler for it to be the city that was named first, because renaming cities is not easy.

Road Names for Numbered Roads

If you are adding a local name to a numbered road then the number should be first and separated from the name by a space, for example: "R126 Hearse Rd"

Rural local roads that don't have any specific name of their own should be named after the townland they run through. If a road has an L-number sign at its end, then that road's L-number can be added to the road name. For example: "L8859 Ballytarsna". Even though L-road numbers aren't unique, having the number be part of the road name is useful to Waze users to verify that they're turning onto the right road.

Motorways and Dual Carriageways

Whenever possible, on split roads, name carriageways with the nominal direction of travel. This should be in line with the signs (do not use the direction the road goes in). Insert the nominal direction at the end of the road name, separated by a space; for example:

• M1 N
• M50 S
• N11 S

This makes traffic and incident reports much more useful and helps with navigation. Note that the direction of travel applied for the entire motorway and does not change as the motorway bends. For example, the M50 in Dublin just has an "M50 N" and an "M50 S", even though parts of it travel east-west. This applies to most other long motorways too.

Ramps

Entry ramps (On-ramps)

“to <road name>” - for example:

• to M50 N
• to M7 S

Exit ramps (Off-ramps)

“Jxx <road number (and name, if shown) on the sign> > <City names listed on the sign separated by comma>“ - for example:

• J3 R125 > Ashbourne, Swords
• J7 R132
• J9 > Drogheda, Donore

Exceptions apply where we don't have a Junction number. Use "to" instead of ">". For example:

• to L1042 > Kilquade
• to Lusk Services

Housing Estate Roads

Many estates have streets named as "The Green" or "The Park" and this induces a difficulty when users search for their destination. The results are often vague, and sometimes in the wrong estate and/or the wrong city.

The naming convention for these housing estates is "[estate name] Green", "[estate name] Pk", etc. For the above examples, if the estate is called Beechwood, the streets should be named "Beechwood Green", "Beechwood Pk", etc.

Also add the equivalent [street name], [estate name] as an alternative street name. E.g: The Green, Beechwood

Name the first segment as the estate name except if there are house numbers on it.

Abbreviations

Waze convention is to use suffix abbreviations in street names. In Ireland, only the entries in the table below should be abbreviated.

Notes

1. Abbreviate only suffixes:
   • "North Road Business Park" should not be abbreviated.
   • "Park West Road" is abbreviated "Park West Rd", not "Pk W Rd".
   • "The Avenue", "The Green", etc. should not be abbreviated.
2. Abbreviations do not contain any punctuation, such as "." (full-stops) or "-" (hyphens) except "Saint" abbreviated "St.".
3. Cardinals "North", "East", "South", "West" are always abbreviated after road numbers in divided dual carriageways or after street names:
   • M50 N
   • N92 N Park West Rd
   • R811 South Circular Rd ("South" is part of the street name)
   • R132 Parnell Sq E
   • R138 St. Stephen's Green E ("Green" is not in the abbreviation table)
4. "Lower" and "Upper" are always abbreviated:
   • R114 Camden St Lwr
   • Upr Kimmage Rd
5. If your question is not answered here, please ask in forums.

Legend

Road name	Abbreviation
Avenue	Ave
Close	Cl
Court	Ct
Crescent	Cres
Drive	Dr
East	E
Junction	J
Lane	Ln
Lower	Lwr
North	N
Park	Pk
Place	Pl
Road	Rd
Saint	St
South	S
Square	Sq
Street	St
Terrace	Tce
Upper	Upr
West	W