Canada

Complete Guide to Waze in Canada

(Under Development)

• Since the USA and Canada share the same Waze server, please refer to USA link in the left menu bar for additional information.
• This page should also available in French. See "Use your language skills" below.

About Waze

Getting Started

Help Improve Waze

Map Editing

• Please follow the Canada Post street type abbreviation to reduce map clutter by not using long road type name.

 e.g. John St, Bayview Ave, Don Valley Pky, Slick Dr, Main Blvd

See http://www.canadapost.ca/tools/pg/manual/PGaddress-e.asp#1423617 for full details in English and French.

• Canada Post also published the abbreviations for provinces and territories [1]

 e.g. Whitehorse, YT   Toronto, ON   Charlottetown PE

• For wide roads (at least 3 lanes on each direction) with two directions of traffic, consider the best map editing practice for North America so that a GPS lock will be made correctly. Note: standard lane width is about 3.5m, typical GPS accuracy is about 10-20m. Generally, splitting a road is not desirable.

Area/Country Managers

If you are an Area Manager that covers the Country of Canada, or a Canadian Country Manager that does a lot of work in Canada, please add yourself to this list. See comments via an "Edit" of this section to add yourself.

Username	Areas Managed	Comments	Forum PM
doctorkb	Western Canada (Alberta & BC)	AM for Edmonton, Prince George, Kamloops, Kelowna, Jasper, Leduc, and various places in between. Largely working on abbreviating street names to match CanadaPost list	PM
EECGeek	Ontario / Quebec, Canada	CM / AM for Ottawa, Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec.	PM
james8970	Western/Central Canada	CM	PM
joe01romano	Eastern Canada	CM / AM for Ontario, Quebec and Northern New York.	PM
Webs101	Just Quebec for now...	CM	PM

Use your language skills

Problems and Issues

Canadian highways are defined differently than their US counterparts, please have a look at the discussion page and comment.

The Montreal Area has unique issues of its own.

Development Plans for definitions

Naming

Towns, cities villages etc... To save space just put in the name of the city, example "Toronto" not "City of Toronto", or for smaller places use "Springfield" not "Town of Springfield" or "Village of Springfield"

Also unique to Canada is we don't have state or province fields available to us when editing, please avoid the use of the province after the place. For example don't put in "Springfield, Qc" or "Springfield, On" because it is known to make two towns in the same place, and is almost impossible to eradicate. Many towns have "Springfield" and "Springfield, Qc" in the same area which confuses things which we're trying to avoid.

Trans-Canada Highway

Road type: Freeway
Primary name: Hwy 1
Alternate: Trans-Canada Hwy

There are parts of Hwy 1 that travel through some National/Provincial parks with frequent stops, reduced speed and undivided portions. These segments should be reduced to a Major highway until the speed increases, stops are minimized and the highway is divided again.

Quebec Roads

Autoroutes, or limited access highways, such as the 20/40/55 or any *40 are considered freeways

http://www.waze.com/wiki/images/4/41/RoadBlue.png

The big exception to this rule is Autoroute 50 which is still a freeway, even though some small parts of it are not limited access and some are only two lane with no divider.

The official road map of Quebec should be consulted to determine the status of provincial routes. The map is available in French and English.

Major highways on the map are in depicted in red and should be red in Waze:

http://www.waze.com/wiki/images/2/28/Majorhighwayseg.png

Minor highways in yellow-orange on the map should be in yellow:

http://www.waze.com/wiki/images/3/37/RoadYell.png

A very general rule of thumb is that 100-series highways are in red while 200 and 300-series highways are in yellow. This is not completely accurate, however, so please consult the official map.

Ontario Roads

all 400 series highways are in blue as they are limited access freeways. Also other highways for example the 174 just east of Ottawa are also in blue as they are limited access.

http://www.waze.com/wiki/images/4/41/RoadBlue.png

Certain Major highways are two lane but are still in red because they collect the minor highways, and many county roads and we need to distinguish them, examples are the 174 east of Ottawa/Orleans, the 17, the 138, 38 the 7 in eastern Ontario.

http://www.waze.com/wiki/images/2/28/Majorhighwayseg.png

County roads will be in yellow as they have higher speed limits them most main roads.

http://www.waze.com/wiki/images/3/37/RoadYell.png

Alberta Roads

Minor/Major Highways should be named:
Hwy # (H is capitalized, the 'wy' in lower case, followed by a number) e.g. Hwy 216
Not 'Highway #' or 'HWY # (all caps)'.

Very few roads should be named a freeway in Canada. Currently, only ring roads (perimeter roads around a city), Hwy 1 (including the highways Hwy 1 splits into*), Hwy 2 and any highways with limited access (e.g. highways with no street lights and access is exclusive to ramps entrances) .

When considering the road type, use the rules for the US as a guideline, with the idea that a Canadian "Freeway" may lack one of the criteria used in the US (e.g. Whitemud Freeway in Edmonton is 80 km/h, but meets all other criteria; Hwy 16 W of Edmonton doesn't have ramps for every junction, but meets all other criteria)

Technical Information