Places/Car Parks

These are the updated UK guidelines for mapping car parks in Waze, as of February 2017.

When to Map a Car Park

If there is a distinctly-marked area where cars can park, separated from the road and with it's own driveable segments, it should be mapped. If the car parking spaces are accessed directly from the road, this is on-street parking and should not be mapped, whether or not there are car park signs. On-street parking will be a future phase of the Parking Project.

How to Map a Car Park

Mapping

All mapped car parks must be areas, editors can only create car parks as an Area polygon within the WME. Car parks should be mapped to the edge of the drivable tarmac. Note: Car parks imported by Waze or created via the App are shown as Points, these will then be highlighted by Map Problems after being detected by automatic systems and should be converted to Areas.

Underground car parks

Underground car parks should be mapped as an area that matches your best estimate of the underground parking area. However, the boundaries of the polygon should reach to the point where entrance/exits road pass underground, so as to be able to capture Wazers entering/exiting the car park.

Naming

Name the car park using a sensible name that indicates it's a car park, eg. Queen Street Car Park, Oxford Park & Ride, etc, if it run by a company add this to the start, eg. NCP Tanner Row Car Park. This is particularly important when car parks include the name of a venue or location to ensure it is distinguishable in the search results. Do not use the [P] prefix.

Internal segments

Parking Lot Road segments should be added, but only the minimal amount required to allow navigation into and out of the car park.

• Do not draw every single row within the car park - these will be deleted!
• Parking roads should not be named, as it looks better to have a label on the landmark
• Parking roads should not be marked as a "Toll Road"

Navigation point

Set the navigation point at the entrance, on the first segment, of the car park, not the road outside. This will enable Waze to navigate to the car park, including the turn into it, and then announce you have arrived, leaving the user to find a space without further instruction. The WME does not currently support multiple entry points, this may change in future.

Car park type

Set the Car Park Type, this is important as Waze should not offer Restricted nor Private car park types to users when nearing their destination.

• Public: Unrestricted access. If you can park and then go where you please it is classed as Public, the majority of Council managed car parks are Public. Where a car park is associated with several businesses you should use your best judgement.
• Restricted: Public access with some restrictions (customers, visitors, partons, etc). Frequently car parks associated with supermarkets, retail parks and other businesses have notices displayed stating that the car park is for customer use only, these are classed as Restricted.
• Private: Limited access (residents, employees, etc) Car Parks that are clearly signed as staff / residents only are classed as Private, these types of car parks often have barriers or gates across the access.

You may wish to use the WME Color Highlights script to help visualise car parks of different types.

Operator

The Operator field is to remain blank. This would be populated by a list of all known car park owners supplied by the UK Admins, this list would be far too long to be a comprehensive list.

Cost

The Cost field should be set to Free for car parks that do not charge, for those that require payment it should remain blank. Without the ability to enter actual prices the options available are subjective and based on the judgement of the editor, for example, visitors to London would find all prices Expensive but comparing prices within a limited area the cheapest prices would be classed as Low.

Opening hours

Opening hours should be set based on the ability to access the car park and not when parking charges apply.

Imported Car Parks

At the start of the Parking Project Waze imported car park places from an external supplier. They were all imported as points, probably due to the nature of the available import data, and have consequently all generated Map Problems. There appears to have been no effort to match imported car parks to existing Waze places, so there are many duplicates. The location of the points seems to be mostly at car park entrances, which will help with determining that location.

• Some imported points are nothing more than on-street parking with a Pay & Display meter. These should be deleted and the MP marked Not identified.
• If the car park should be mapped and the point is not a duplicate of an existing car park, convert it to an area and map it as above. Close the MP as Solved.
• If the imported point duplicates an existing Waze place, make sure any useful information is copied to the existing Waze place. Then delete the import and close the MP as Solved.
• If you notice any issues with the imported car parks, please submit them to Waze via this form.