Road types/en

We are currently updating the pages to include all regionally different guidelines. If you find inconsistencies, please refer to the English page. Thank you!

Road Types

For every segment in the Waze Map Editor (WME), you can choose the type of road. The importance of proper labeling is in two aspects:

1. When planning a route, major roads will get priority over minor roads.
2. When viewing the map, the 'bigger' roads should appear at the far zoom levels. With proper types, the 'zoomed out' display gives a basic impression of the road network.
   

Road type overview

Highways

Highways
Road Type	Description	Lock
Freeway	The highest functional class of road. Meant for high speed traffic and long distances. read more	5
Major Highway	Main interconnecting roads for longer distances and/or with fast traffic. Major Highway is often shortened to MH in discussions. read more	4
Minor Highway	Roads used for medium distances or for through-going traffic, connecting towns. Minor Highway is often shortened to mH in discussions. read more	3
Ramp	Entrance and Exit connection. read more	lock from highest connection

Streets

Streets
Road Type	Description	Lock
Primary Street	Main streets in local area and feeder roads to the highway network, often referred to as PS. read more	2
Street	Regular streets. read more	1 (2 in special cases)
Narrow Street	Hard to access by car, fine for motorcycles. read more	4

Other drivable roads

Other drivable roads
Road Type	Description	Lock
Off-road / Not maintained	Unpaved roads only drivable by a 4x4. For unpaved roads that are suitable for regular cars, better use another street type and check the unpaved box. read more	1
Parking Lot Road	Streets on Parkings and through Gas stations, abbreviated in discussions to PLR. read more	1
Private road	Partially accessible. read more	1
• • • • Ferry • • • •	Ferry routes over water are taken into routing. read more	3-5
Below type is not default in the left menu, but taken from the menu Roads in the top bar
= = Roundabout = =	The roundabout has special functions, and can be used in combination with all drivable road types. The road type to use is the highest type of the connected segments. read more	lock from highest connection

Non-drivable roads

Non-drivable roads
Road Type	Description	Lock
|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| Railroad |-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|	railway lines, metros tracks and tramways. read more	3
─═─═─═─═─ Runway/Taxiway ─═─═─═─═─	Roads designated for airplanes (Airports). read more	5
Below types are not in the left menu, but taken from the menu Roads > Walking Trail in the top bar
|   |   |   |   | Walking Trail |   |   |   |   |	Non driveable, with possible destination. read more	1-3
|  |  |  | Pedestrian Boardwalk |  |  |  |	Non driveable, without possible destination. read more	1 - 3 (5)
| | | | | Stairway | | | | |	Non driveable, without possible destination. read more	1 - 3 (5)

How to map special streets

Some roads are not directly covered with Waze's road types. We hope some will be added in the future. In the mean time we can use following guidelines to map them:

Public transport

Rail road, metro and tram ways are mapped with railroad type. Bus lanes are mapped with Pedestrian Boardwalk if needed for visual orientation or to prevent GPS contamination. If taxi's are allowed as well, map it as such.

Taxis

If a road is dedicated to taxis only, it should be mapped with the road type of the segments it connects to, and a restriction based on vehicle type.

Restricted roads

Depending on the kind of restrictions valid:

Link	Sign	Description	Road type	SL
F12a		Road in residential area. If a large area is restricted, only make the entrances and exits private.	publicly accessible: Street only residents allowed: Private road (partially)
F99c		This sign is used in a number of variants. The road is allowed for the type of traffic displayed on the sign. Emergency vehicles and local traffic are always allowed.	With or leading to destinations: Private road Without destinations: Non-drivable roads (no SL)
F111		Road dedicated to bicycle traffic	Street
barrier or lock		When a part of the road is locked by a barrier or an elevation in the road, making it impossible to drive thru with a regular car. Applied among others for tractor and bus locks. Several signs often with a sub sign are used to indicate the kind of restriction. Note that there might be partial restrictions allowing local traffic and/or motorcycles, which needs a different solution	full locks: map the part of the road with the lock using a Non-drivable roads segment partial locks: use Private road and/or restrictions.	--
closed		temporarily closed road, e.g., due to construction work or an accident	set a closure	--
restricted		structurally/recurrent closed road at certain times/periods or for certain vehicles.	set a restriction	--
one-way		One-way driving direction of the road	Select the road and mark the driving direction in the left menu A→B or B→A	--

Road types and routing

Road types are important for the display and routing. Waze road types may differ from the actual road type. In general, road types function best in networks.

Road type network

The higher the road type, the more important it is to connect them within a network. Waze should be able to route from primary to primary (or higher type), from minor to minor (or higher), from Major to Major (or higher), and from Freeway to Freeway. Another way of explaining this, is that you should be able to continuously drive on the same or higher type of segments for the routing engine to use that road type in the calculations. This means we sometimes need to make small roads a higher road type than they are in real, to create a good network of Waze road type segments.

Note that changing road types may change and even break Routing. Please read next paragraph about functional classification before changing them. Best is to discuss with the community at Belux Slack if you think a highway road type need to be changed.

Functional classification

The choice of the Waze road type is affected by many things, such as the physical attributes of the road, city size, traffic density, travel efficiency, regional conventions, routing continuity and of course the typical functions of the Waze road type. This can lead to quite different classifications for roads that appear similar, or similar road types for very different kind of roads. For example, a Primary Street serves as major road on short distances, and as feeder roads to the highway network. In practice, this means a primary street in a large city may have two or more lanes in each direction on a divided road, while in rural areas unpaved roads could be set as primary street or even a highway in WME, if necessary for routing. We call this Functional Classification. The various regions use different ways of classification, which will be described in detail on the road type specific page. An overview of the classification system is listed in the table below.

Regional guidelines for functional classification
Flanders	Brussels	Wallonia	Luxembourg
Working on a new classification system Please contact the region or country manager before changing anything	Uses the categories provided by the Brussels Regional Authority. For a detailed description, check the regional info.	Uses the road numbers for highway classification	Uses the road numbers for highway classification

Routing preference

Road types can have a routing preference set by level 4+ editors, to behave like a higher or lower level road type, while keeping the appearance of the chosen road type. Used for routing continuity, or detour prevention, check the page on Routing. Template:BackToc/en

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