Ideally, a freeway or highway should be a continuous roadway, with junctions only appearing when ramps enter and exit the roadway. Unfortunately, when the Tiger maps were loaded, the Waze 'admin' user placed junctions at EVERY place where 2 roads appeared to cross. Since an overpass may 'appear' to intersect with a freeway, at least to a computer program, waze put a lot of junctions on the map. I've seen junctions with crossing bike paths, rivers, walking paths, etc. But, to have a junctioning map for automobile navigation, we need to remove unnecessary junctions.
- Unnecessary junctions defined Easy. If the real road does not really join to the other road at a Waze junction, then take the junction out. This includes junctions that are in the middle of a freeway. In other words, a freeway segment that only connects to another freeway segment of the same freeway (with no ramp involved) has a junction that should be removed so it becomes one longer freeway segment. Also, junctions in the middle of a field, etc are useless so take them off too
- How to find Unnecessary junctions If they are on top, you can easily find junctions by clicking on (highlighting) a freeway segment and then check each end of the segment, if it ends before the junction for a ramp, then it is an unneeded junction. Sometimes the junctions are not so easy to see because they are buried under a road. Usually, you stumble upon hidden junctions when your navigation on some route goes haywire. You may need to pull the map apart and examine the road segment you were traveling. You also may need to temporarily move a road segment out of the way, so you can look for junctions underneath. Then move the road back.
- How best to remove a junction
- If you're lucky, just click Remove Junction on the Edit Panel. The word Remove Junction becomes bold to show it is activated. Click on the junction. Say Yes to the confirming dialog box and, in a few seconds, (if successsful, you'll see Node Removed. If not and an error message is shown, you'll need to untangle something first.
- It could be that you are removing a junction from streets that will have conflicts. If you will have a 1 way running directly into an opposite 1 way Waze will block you from removing the junction. Similarly, if you have a segment at the junction that has a Direction of No Entrance, then Wazy won't let you remove the junction.
- Reconnecting the road into one continuous segement This can be tricky. You may need to move one set up roads above the other. I often find that Waze produces two separate road segments, when you remove a junction. To successfully -rejoin the two segments into one continuous segment, without having Waze add a new junction, you need to do the following. Be sure both segment Edit Road Details are identical. Same Type, State, City but most of all the segments will need identical settings for Direction, Level, Separating Line, Locked settings. Use Edit Road Geometry junction to move the end of one segment over the other. Then, considering the proper flow, link one segment to the other by clicking the 1st road segment as if you were driving and then control-click the 2nd road segment so both are highlighted. Then click Connect Roads by order of selection from the Edit panel. You should now have re-connected the previously joined road segments into one continuous road segment.