South Africa MapRaid

Waze implements Throttling of edits when mass editing occurs. If you mass edit: You will not get credited for your edits. You will not get any points for your edits. You WILL be removed from the MapRaid immediately. Possibly banned from editing altogether. Please think quality not quantity.

Welcome to the Wiki for the South African MapRaid

Focus

Our primary focus is verifying and Updating Speed Limits (SL). If you find other issues while working on SLs that need attention, feel free to give it. Remember, the main goal is Speed Limits.

Areas and Groups

South Africa has nine provinces - each of these provinces will be a raid area. As some provinces are less developed than others you will have access to some of the others. Please keep to your province until you are satisfied there is nothing more to do there. Lesotho and Swaziland are not part of South Africa. Please do not edit there.

1. Western Cape
2. Eastern Cape
3. Northern Cape
4. Free State
5. Kwa-Zulu Natal
6. North West
7. Gauteng
8. Mpumalanga
9. Limpopo

Left-click your group area to open WME

Changing to ROW Server

For our US and Canadian visitors, South Africa falls under the World Server. In the upper right hand corner of the editor, where it says US & Canada, you can click it for a dropdown menu. To edit in South Africa, change to the World server, commonly known as the ROW (Rest of the World) server. The US & Canada server is commonly known as the NA Server.

Note: This option is not visible if you are in fullscreen.

Make sure you are set to Metric units under settings.

Local Hosts

Editor	Timezone
elphix (PM)	SAST (GMT +2)
LeighGr (PM)	SAST (GMT +2)
Kuhlkatz (PM)	SAST (GMT +2)

Speed Limits

South Africa uses the metric system (km/h), we drive on the left hand side of the road. The following is a ​general​ breakdown of what to expect with regards to speed limits in South Africa. These are by no means definitive - limits should be verified by streetview.

• Freeways - 120km/h
• Major Highways - 100km/h, sometimes 120km/h
• Minor Highways - 80km/h or 100km/h
• Primary Streets - 60km/h or 80km/h
• Streets - 60km/h

Sometimes the municipal authorities try to get creative and have a speed limit in between the norm, 70km/h for example. We do not use 5 in our limits, they are extremely rare (i.e. 65km/h). Don’t trust average speeds for segments - South Africans like to speed.

Road Signs

Waze currently only allows setting and verifying the maximum speed limits. Minimum speed limits or temporary speed limits do not apply and the signs were only included below to show the difference between them. Minimum speed limits apply mostly to high speed lanes like Freeways for safety reasons. Temporary road signs are used during construction or apply to specific weather conditions only, like fog. These should not be used for setting Waze segment speeds.

Maximum Speed Limits

Maximum Speed limit signs are a red circle with the limitation in black on a white background. These are the only signs that should be used to determine speed limits. Combination signs combine a speed limit sign, a specific road/danger condition, e.g. winding roads and would typically include a distance in Km that applies.
South Africa does not make use of a "return to usual speed" sign.

Sign	Limit / Notes
	Maximum 100km/h
	Combination sign Winding Road Maximum 60km/h Valid limit for the next 8 Km
	Maximum 100 Km/h These are very old Speed Limit signs. A Red Circle with White Text on a Blue background Not to be mistaken for Minimum Speed Limit signs which have a WHITE BORDER.

Minimum Speed Limits

Minimum speed limit signs are a white circle border with the limitation in white on a blue background. Minimum speed limits should not be used for Waze segment speeds.

Sign	Meaning
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a1/SADC_road_sign_R101.svg/120px-SADC_road_sign_R101.svg.png	Minimum 50km/h (DO NOT USE)

Possible confusion signs

A selection of irrelevant speed limit signs and other signs that could be confused with speed limit signage.

Sign	Meaning
https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/images/b/bd/SADC_road_sign_TR201-100.svg.png	Temporary Speed Limit - Ignore these
https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/images/f/f3/Ignored_Speed_Limit_Other_Vehicles.png	Specific vehicle type restrictions - Ignore these
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/SADC_road_sign_R532.svg/120px-SADC_road_sign_R532.svg.png	Vehicles exceeding 16 tonnes GVM prohibited
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/SADC_road_sign_R540.svg/120px-SADC_road_sign_R540.svg.png	Maximum number of spaces in a parking reservation
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/SADC_road_sign_R202.svg/120px-SADC_road_sign_R202.svg.png	Vehicles exceeding 12 tonnes GVM prohibited

Languages

South Africa has eleven official languages. Within Waze we keep it to English but you may get a response to a UR in another language. If this happens please try steer the conversation to English or ask elphix, LeighGr or Kuhlkatz to step in. All abbreviations are in English - please see the ​Acceptable suffix abbreviations​ in the ​South African Waze Wiki​ and change as required. I.e. change “Mahlomola Street” to “Mahlomola St”. Not many of the existing suffixes should be non-english, but if they are, the correct one can easily be looked up in the Acceptable suffix abbreviations​ table.

Locking Policy

Anything locked at L5 - please consult with a local champ before changing restrictions or geometry.

Road Type	Lock Level
Freeway	5
Major Highway	4
Minor Highway	3
Primary Street	2
Streets	1

Communication

The preferred method of communication for the MapRaid is via Slack. If you aren't already a member of the Waze Map Raid Slack then please submit your information on this form: http://bit.ly/Slack_invite

Scripts and Addons

The normals scripts and addons used in other countries work in South Africa. Some notable examples inclue WME Toolbox and WME Color Highlights.

As the main focus for this raid is speedlimits we suggest you add the following:

• WME Speedhelper
  • Has the most common speed limits
• WME Speeds
• WME Toolbox
• South Africa specific validator
  • Made by our very own LeighGr
  • Install via Tampermonkey on Chrome
• WME Streetview Availability
  • Shows whether there is streetview available or not

Other Things

• In an effort to standardise our road names please change hyphens, commas and other to parentheses.
• The standard is ROAD NAME (ROAD NUMBER CARDINAL DIRECTION)
  • “Curie Ave - R706” should be “Curie Ave (R706)”,
  • “M5 Southbound, Kromboom Pkwy” should be "Kromboom Pkwy (M5 S)"
• Gas Station are to be locked at L4 or higher. If you’re not yet at L4, lock it as high as you can.
• We find that sometimes junior editors add duplicate gas stations as points on an area place, this is incorrect. The point should be removed or converted to an area.
• We are still in the process of changing our cardinal directions - if you see any please abbreviate them
  • E.g “N1 South” should be “N1 S”.
• Many highway exits are missing their exit numbers, add them if you see them.
  • E.g “Exit 34: Harrismith”
• Please do NOT edit the coastlines.
• Our traffic lights are called “robots” - I don’t know why.

Do's and Don'ts

• Do change to ROW server and metric system
• Do read the wiki
• Do contact the local champs if you’re unsure of something.
• Do edit the road names to match local standards.

• Don’t mass edit
• Don't use temporary (amber) or minimum (blue) signs for the speed limits.
• Don’t edit the coastline
• Don’t stress about all the missing townships – add them if you’re feeling adventurous.
• Don't edit in the neighbouring countries - this includes Lesotho and Swaziland.

And

• Do have fun!

Reference Links

• South Africa Waze Wiki
  • Information and guidelines on local editing
  • Local Freeway and Major / Minor Highway naming conventions
• Surveyor General South Africa
  • Official data source
  • Click on "View Spatial Data" to access. Street names will be visible at close zoom levels.
• Local Road Naming suffixes
  • Only the English convention is acceptable
  • If a suffix is non-English, you can look it up and change it e.g. "Str" or "Straat" (Afrikaans) should be changed to "St" for Street.
• Waze MapRaid Wiki
  • General information about MapRaids
• Learn to create and edit street segments
  • How to add speed limits
• Generic Responses to User Reports
• Road signs in South Africa