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Tim's PA Road Characterizing Tips
Step-by-step
THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS - LINKS TO WIKI AND FORUM WILL BE ADDED LATER.
When you go to a new area that has not been touched by a Waze editor, here are some tips.
- Decide whether to keep the road (or delete it)
- Decide the whether to promote it (or demote it)
- If the road is essentially straight between start and end nodes, remove the minor nodes.
- Adjust the end nodes (do this after straightening)
- Set the road direction (one way vs. two way)
- Set/unset turn restrictions
Deleting roads
You'll find many roads on the map that really don't belong there. Many of these were added in the original Waze base maps. Unfortunately, many should be deleted instead of cleaned up, and some editors erroneously spend time trying to fix them. Here are some things to consider when deleting a road. When in doubt, be cautious and keep the roads around (and ask the opinion of more experienced Waze editors via chat, forum, etc).
Characteristics of roads to delete:
- often have the state listed as "New York" even though they're in Pennsylvania
- road direction is "unknown"
- the start and end nodes do not match anything on the satellite picture, or are significantly shifted
- no road name
- sometimes the roads are just a squiggle leaving a main road and going into the woods
- the road only connects to one house (ie, a short or long driveway)
- the road would not help Waze users to "get somewhere"
Characteristics of roads to fix:
- a road that was recently added by a Level 1 Editor
- the road ultimately connects two different roads
- the road is a dead-end, but the road is shared by two or more dwellings
- the road would support the Waze mission of getting drivers somewhere
For example, a road that leads to a theme park could help a lot of Waze users get somewhere, even though it doesn't fit the first two categories. Conversely, most people do not need Waze to navigate up their driveway.
Note that Waze standards discourage driveways from being mapped. However, if a beginning editor adds their home driveway and it's not too short, I generally fix them and leave them (rather than delete and discourage a budding editor). If a new editor starts adding all the driveways in the neighborhood, then we need to delete them!
Demoting Roads
If you find an alley or a road that goes to one dwelling (ie, a driveway), the road should be changed from default "Street" to type "Private Road". Alley's are often found in the center of big cities and the older sections of towns. In many cases, you'll find that the city streets are laid out in rectangles with narrow alleys providing internal access in the block to garages at the rear of the dwellings. Use Street View (drag the magnifying glass under the zoom bar to the place of interest) to see what the road really looks like.
The easiest way to find the alleys in a city is to turn off the Waze roads (Shift-R) so that you can see the widths of the roads. Look for the rectangular grid of major roads in the city or town and see if there are narrow roads leading to the interiors.
Characteristics of alleys:
- should be narrower than the normal adjacent roads
- generally not have the fronts of houses facing them
- often have garages on both sides
- often wide enough for one car width only
- might have a road name ending "Alley"
Ask yourself, "would you want Waze to send you someplace via this road, or the next major road over?" If the road is narrow, you'd do better to discourage the Waze router from sending people over this road (this is a complaint about Waze in some public forums and it starts with not categorizing roads correctly).
With the road visibility turned off in the editor, you can still click on the alleys and demote them (ie, retype them as "Private Road" instead of "Street") by selecting them with the cursor (the underlying road gets focus) and then changing the road type from Street to Private Road.
One of the best ways to see how alley's are setup in Waze is to install the Color Highlighter and set road type colorize to "Private Road". You'll then see purple lines for all Private Roads. Try finding some nearby cities (even if you can't edit them) and see how others have decided which roads to label as Private Roads.
PA Federal Classification vs. Waze
Waze is in the process of implementing the Functional Classification types in Waze. This means that waze editors need to label PA roads according to the following:
- The PA Functional Classification category as found on the PA FC maps here
- The PA State Road maps here
- Specific rules on PA road classification on the PA Wiki Standards here
- Local knowledge and other information described on the USA Wiki Standards here
When there is a difference in information, you will generally pick the higher highway category (ie, the bigger and faster type). For example, if the PA State map shows a road is 4-digit State Route, but it's not shown in the PA Functional Classification map, it would still be shown as a Primary Street (per PA Wiki Standards). On the other hand, the PA FC map will often promote roads beyond Primary Street based on the road's use.
Notes on FCU state vs. Waze
The color codes used on the PA FC maps use a different color code compared to those used in the Waze Map Editor. The following table is for reference with map FC name followed by Waze name:
- State Route 4 digit (not special in FC) (orange) - Primary Street (orange)
- Minor Collector (yellow) - Primary Street (orange)
- Major Collector (purple) - Primary Street (orange)
- Minor Arterial (green) - Minor Highway (yellow)
- Principle Arterial (red) - Major Highway (red)
- Other Freeways (cinnamon) - Freeway (blue) or Highway (red)
- Interstate (cyan) - Freeway (blue)
Determining Road Directions
Many times you will find that the Waze map has incorrect road directions. In some cases, these are roads with unknown directions, or roads that the Waze routing engine has only observed people traveling in one direction (so far) and labeled them as one-way. A Waze editor can often determine the roads actual direction restrictions from clues.
From satellite images:
- might have road markings showing turn arrows in both lanes, or other road restrictions
- might show visible cars only moving in one direction
- might show cars parked on the left side of the road parked in the "wrong" direction
From Waze Map Editor:
- turning on the GPS arrows (upper right pulldown) shows cars only moving in one direction suggests it's one-way
From Street View:
- "One Way" and "Do Not Enter" signs visible while traversing the road
- cars parked on the left side facing the "wrong way"
- street signs (like parking signs) on the left side facing the "wrong way"
- stop signs (can confirm that traffic *is* allowed in a particular direction and the road is not one-way)
External sources:
- from PA City Maps (only reliable for confirming a one-way street, but very incomplete for showing *all* one-way streets in a city).
Note that a dead end street (cul-de-sac) will generally always be two way (unless it's a road from a factory that produces cars or a junk yard that consumes them!)
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