Traffic data

This is all very informed, and I have probably got most of it wrong, or out of context.

Do not use the information found here to make any decisions about Waze editing.

Over time, I will refine this information by asking questions of those who know more than I do. When the information is closer to correct, I will change the disclaimer at the top.

This article is about how editing roads affects the stored traffic data and Waze routing. For information on what Waze does with your personal information and how that can affect you, please read the Waze privacy policy and a community-created discussion of how this can affect you for more information on your privacy while using waze.

What Waze Map Editors Need to know about how traffic data is stored

The Waze map editor's motto is "usability, simplicity, retention". What we want to retain is the traffic data the Waze servers use for determining the best routes. In order to develop useful guidelines and best practices, we must understand what information is stored and what happens to it when we junction,disconnect, cut, merge, shrink, stretch, add or remove geometry nodes, change the direction (unknown, one way, reverse direction, two-way). Of course, Waze chooses to keep some details about its routing algorithms (and the data those algorithms use) secret, so you won't find those details here.

Glossary

• Junction transition speed
• Junction transition time

What information is stored

• segment traversal
  • What is stored?
    • time to traverse + length of segment? or calculated average speed of traversal?
    • Are some large number of recent traversals stored? some max # or going back a certain # of days? With actual time stamps?
    • ... or is it some kind of running average information? er hour, or down to the second?
    • For different times of day? Different days of the week? Different times of year? Does it know which days are holidays?
• stopping what if the car stops
  • waze is still running (as in a traffic jam)
  • ... for a long time (bad traffic jam or wazer has parked the car on the shoulder)
  • wazer hits pause
  • wazer turns waze off
  • waze crashes
• exiting and re-entering the same segment
  • drives through an unmapped area such as a parking lot, then rejoins the same segment before finishing the traversal
• reverses direction in the middle of a segment
  • by leaving the segment and reentering it
  • but making a u-turn or 3-point turn in the middle of the segment.
• segment non-traversal -- a wazer leaves the segment where there is no junction.
  • Stops nearby, and turns off waze
  • turns off waze while driving
  • pauses waze while driving
  • waze crashes while in use
  • connection to waze servers lost while in use (phone/cell/internet issues)
  • drives through an unmapped area and eventually joins another segment.
• What is "straight-through" and what is "turn", or does it matter?
• Does waze keep separate stats for A-B and turn s1, A-B turn s2, A-B turn s, and so on?
• what is junction transition speed, junction transition time?

what happens when you make changes to the roads

• Make a segment shorter or longer (for example, but shifting a junction without disconnecting it)
• change the direction of the road
  • From "unknown" to something known
  • from 2-way to one-way
  • from A->B to B->A or vice-versa.
• Add geometry nodes, without changing the shape of the road
• change the shape of the road without changing the length (bending without stretching at a geometry node)
• cut a segment into two smaller segments -- two completely new segment ids are created. What data do the two "child" segments inherit?
• join two segments into one longer segment -- a completely new segment id is created.
• disconnect a segment from a junction
  • just long enough to facilitate fixing something like segment overlap.
  • long enough that a tile upload happens while it is disconnected.
  • for a few days, weeks, or months -- as a way to close a road during construction.
• Connect a segment to a junction
  • a former "dead-end" node of an existing segment
• Snap two junctions together, creating one junction where there were formerly 2 junctions, without disconnecting any of the segments from either of the junctions (one of the junction ids is retained, while the other is lost)

Things I've heard about traffic data

A segment stores average traverse speed to each of the connected segments, for each available time slot. When split , that speed is split by ??? percentage wise and applied to both new segments, same when stretched, the speed is kept proportionated to the original.

??? Kept proportional to original, or speed is copied to the newly -created segments?

If [I] understand things correctly, the speed data for a segment is not exactly portable. It's very junction dependent. In other words, it's not just the time lapse of traversing the segment in a particular direction, but what happens as a particular segment transitions to another particular segment. Once you detach and connect to another junction, Waze no longer knows comparative times to turn left, right, or continue. For this reason, there can be strategic decisions in terms of which ends of segments to leave connected and which to move around.

[Are you going to ]lose turn data by disconnecting and reconnecting to the same junction
by disconnecting and reconnecting to the same junction? I doubt that very much or at least sorta much

portability of speed data, ... [has Waze said?] in so many words that it is not, and that that is why it is VERY much discouraged for us to disconnect things if we ever plan to reconnect them.

thats different ... disconnecting through hte course of tile builds

if you are splitting a road properly, you will not save with anything disconnected, let alone allow it through a tile build ... suppose it's more important for transition speeds

There are methods of closing roads that don't require any data loss.