Background
For the purposes of Waze, we define the Montreal Area as:
- Île-Montréal
- Île-Jesus (Laval)
- Île-Bizard
- Île-Perrot
- All smaller islands
- Châteauguay
- Saint-Constant
- Delson
- Candiac
- La Prairie
- Brossard
- Saint-Lambert
- Longueuil
- Boucherville
- Varennes
- Repentigny
- Lachenaie
- Mascouche
- Terrebonne
- Lorraine
- Blainville
- Mirabel
- Rosemère
- Saint-Thérèse
- Boisbriand
- Saint-Eustache
- Deux-Montagnes
- Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac
- Pointe-Calumet
- Oka
- Hudson
- Saint-Lazare
- Vaudreuil-sur-le-Lac
- Vaudreuil-Dorion
- Les Cèdres
- Pointe-des-Cascades
Naming Municipal Roads
The Waze priority for naming roads is what the road signs say, but in the Montreal Area, road signs vary by age and municipality/borough.
The Quebec government mandates that only French be used on a road sign, although there are some officially bilingual municipalities that may use both English and French road types on a sign. The bilingual municipalities in the Montreal Area are:
- Baie-D'Urfé
- Beaconsfield
- Côte-Saint-Luc
- Dollard-Des Ormeaux
- Dorval
- Hampstead
- Hudson
- Kirkland
- L'Île-Dorval
- Montréal-Ouest
- Mont-Royal
- Pincourt
- Pointe-Claire
- Rosemère
- Senneville
- Westmount
- Greenfield Park (Longueuil borough)
- Pierrefonds-Roxboro (Montreal borough)
Some of the bilingual municipalities only use French road designations. We should follow that practice in Waze, since that is the primary rule: follow what the street signs say. Dorval and Pointe-Claire do use only French, for example.
However, many bilingual municipalities use both French and English on the road signs. For example, signs in the city of Côte-Saint-Luc say "Chemin de la Côte-Saint-Luc Road" for that road. In the above municipalities, it would be in accordance with Waze practices to put both French and English road designations, but this can get long and cumbersome with, for example, "Ch de la Côte-Saint-Luc Rd". Ville-Mont-Royal and Hampstead also do the bilingual signs, among others.
Other bilingual municipalities avoid putting any road designations on their road signs. Dollard-Des Ormeaux writes only "Westminster", for example.
To avoid clutter in Waze's app interface, we omit bilingual road designations - we should only write simply "Côte-Saint-Luc" for that road in Côte-Saint-Luc, for example (but write "Ch de la Côte-Saint-Luc" in the city of Montreal).
In conclusion, the following municipalities should not have street types on the Waze map as of 2019:
- Baie-D'Urfé
- Beaconsfield
- Côte-Saint-Luc
- Dollard-Des Ormeaux
- Hampstead
- Montreal-Ouest
- Senneville
- Ville Mont-Royal
- Westmount
Kahnawake other other aboriginal territories are independent of Quebec laws. If they use only English on their signs (Kahnawake does use only English), so should Waze.
In the rest of the Montreal Area (and the rest of all of Quebec), streets should be identified by the French designation only.
Road and Name Abbreviations
The English Waze TTS reads French abbreviations such as "Ch" as "chemin" and "Aut" as "autoroute" so we can use them freely. Remember not to use periods, per the Waze guidelines.
The list of abbreviations that we use is identical to the list provided by Canada Post. It is mostly common sense, but Montée (no abbreviation) and Ruelle (Rle) are a but tricky.
We can freely use "St-" for "Saint" and "Ste-" for "Sainte", but they must have the hyphen. Without a hyphen, they will be pronounced "street" and "suite" (possibly). In practice, we keep spelling those out as of 2019 but there is no real reason not to use the abbreviations.
Highways and Ramps
Quebec has numbered autoroutes and routes. We use the standard Rte abbreviation for routes. The Aut abbreviation does not yet work in Waze TTS, but we use it anyway.
Although some highways may have names, these names are rarely if ever listed on the on-ramp signs so we leave them out. We don't mark Aut 40 as the Trans-Canada. Visitors who don't know that the 40 is the T-Can could get confused, and that's the opposite of what Waze is striving for. So we just call it Aut 40. The alternate street names field works well for adding additional routes etc.
Contrary to Waze practice we do not use "to" or "vers" on highway ramps. The French TTS doesn't handle "to" and the English one doesn't omit "vers". We just deal with it.
Est/Ouest/Nord/Sud
We use Est and Ouest because a) that's what the signs mention and b) English Waze clients have no idea what O stands for. Same for Nord and Sud.
The English TTS pronounces translates the cardinal directions into English.
Names
Nearly every compound street name and city name uses a hyphen even if it's the name of a person:
- Boul Réné-Levesque Est
- Chemin de la Côte-Saint-Catherine
- Pointe-Claire
Unless the last name is composed of two words: Av Pierre-De Coubertin or Rue Cavalier-De La Salle. (This is why Dollard-Des Ormeaux is spelled that way.)
It pays to know your history when deciding which French articles and prepositions to capitalize. For a made-up example, look at Rue De/de La/la Roche.
- If named after a person named Pierre de la Roche, the street would be Rue De La Roche.
- If name after Pierre La Roche or after a place in France called La Roche, the street would be Rue de La Roche.
- If it is not named for anyone or anything and is just supposed to be Rock Rd, it would be Rue de la Roche.
For a real examples, take Rue De La Gauchetière (named after Joseph-Daniel Migeon, sieur de la Gauchetière) or Boul De La Vérendrye (for Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye). Note that the different street signs often use different capitalizations for the very same street!
Sometimes, roads named after English places: Rue Duff Court. In general, Quebec will not hyphenate place names but will hyphenate a person's name, although the pattern is not foolproof. Use Streetview to figure it out by looking at the street signs.
If in doubt, consult the Quebec Toponymy Commission's search page.
We do not use Town/Municipality/Village/Ville/City of/de to name political entities. There are only two exceptional cases. One is Ville Mont-Royal, which is how everyone refers to it. The other is when two municipalities share a name but differ in kind of municipality, like Hatley and Canton de Hatley.
We do not list the separate boroughs of agglomerated cities with the exception of Montreal because of the city's numerous duplicated street names. Boroughs are identified in brackets like "Montréal (Verdun)". We always use the French form of a city name.
A few separate municipalities in different regions use the same name. In that case, we distinguish them by region like this: Saint-Isidore (Montérégie) and Saint-Isidore (Roussillon).
In all other cases, this document takes precedence over what is currently on the Waze map for this region.
Functional Classification
Please refer to the official classification provided by the City when updating segment types. The following concordance table must be followed when doing so:
| Géobase class | corresponding road type in waze |
|---|---|
| Classe 0 - Rue local | Local Street |
| Classe 5 - Collectrice | Primary Street |
| Classe 6 - Artère secondaire | Minor Highway |
| Classe 7 - Artère primaire | Major Highway |
| Classe 8 - Autoroutes | Freeway |
In case of doubt, please refer to a local champ for guidance.