Indian Reservation Roads

Summary & Background

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USA Indian Reservations

There are a large number of roads, particularly in the western half of the United States, that are located on American Indian Reservations. There are about 310 such reservations as reviewed by the United States Department of the Interior's (DOI) Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

This page provides some guidance on editing roads on these reservations as we seek to achieve these things in Waze editing:

• Common or standardized naming of roads
• Preventing routing through private roads
• Functional classification of roads to Waze road types.

These roads may be a mix of US government, public, tribal, and some private roads. Because most tribal lands are considered independent government entities, coordination and uniformity are not always clear. Public roads provide access to and within Indian reservations, Indian trust land, restricted Indian land, and Alaska native villages. Approximately 29,000 miles are under the jurisdiction of BIA and tribes and another 73,000 miles are under State and local ownership.

References

Indian Reservation Road (IRR) Program

Details about the BIA's Indian Reservation Roads (IRR) Program can be found at their website. Utility of this information is that it provides access to a list of roads, although obscure, that might be useful in Waze editing.

The IRR Inventory is a database of all transportation facilities eligible for IRR Program funding and therefore will indicate ownership, the route number, may indicate that a BIA-xxx name is appropriate for a road, and identify the classification. The database is full of other information not relevant to Waze editing such as bridge numbers, traffic volumes, and maintenance responsibility.