Minnesota/Cities and towns/Main

Minnesota bases cities and towns on standard city line boundaries and not USPS standards. Where the city limits end, another city or township will begin.

Minnesota does show townships throughout the state. Keep in mind that many of these are named incorrectly. All township names should be [Township] Twp. It should not end in the full word Township or be called Greater [Township] Area.

If we see an error with a city, town, or township name, DO NOT correct the issue in the map itself. Correcting it in the map either will give you errors when you attempt or it will smudge cities. Even if you update every street in the township, the incorrect city name will still exist and will show both names on the live map.

If you see an issue, post it Here and we will submit a report to fix the city name. Keep in mind that this is a very time-consuming process and averagely takes 2-3 months to show correctly on the editing map and another 1-2 months after that before the live map will see it.

We currently are running an experiment with adding residential addressing as a place point using the USPS city as opposed to the township or city it is actually located. We are verifying the negative implications of this and seeing if the positives outweigh the negatives. If you see this on the map, please do not delete it or follow suit as this is an isolated test.

Lock Standards

In Minnesota we have a set minimum standard for locking roads based on segment type. Any road of a certain segment type must be locked at least to the rank (level) in the chart below. Roads may be locked higher for protection and special situations (areas with construction, tricky design, frequent mistakes, imaging inaccuracies, and the like), but should not be locked lower.

A great time to implement these locks is while bringing the road types of an area into compliance with the current US road type standards (FC and highway systems). Lock the roads based on type after they've been set to current US road type standards.

Minnesota Minimum Locking Rank Standard

Segment Type	Statewide
Freeway	4
Ramp	Highest rank of connected segments
Major Highway	3
Minor Highway	3
Primary Street	2
Street	1
• • • • Ferry • • • •	5
|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| Railroad |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|	2

Note: Before locking these roads to these standards, you must verify that the name of the road, direction of the road, and turn functionality is correct. If this information is not correct, it should not be locked unless we are having issues with editors in the area. The only exception here is Freeways due to the routing priority. Refer to Unlock Requests if you need a section of road altered or unlocked to correct an issue.

Additional:

Functional Class

You will hear the phrase Functional Class or FC a lot when it comes to the standard for road types. According to the US Federal Highway Administration, The concept of functional classification defines the role that a particular roadway segment plays in serving the flow of traffic through the network. Waze has its own interpretation of this system, but it utilizes the state's functional class map to help determine the road type to use.

Check out our Mapping Resources for knowledge on how to use the state's map system to find Functional Classifications Standards in Minnesota. From that knowledge, use this chart to determine how the road should be classified using the Waze Standard. Minnesota follows this chart completely aside from dirt or gravel roads in rural areas. This exception will be changed as soon as an unpaved road option exists in Waze.

If you have any questions about Functional Class, please use our Community Resourses to reach out to gain further information.