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Elevation Proposal
The Road Elevation should be changed where one road passes over another. By default, the Elevation of a segment is Ground (zero). When two segments overlap but do not actually connect in the real world, the value of Elevation for each segment must be different. This ensures that the Waze problem detection system doesn't flag the spot where two segments overlap as a location where a junction might be needed.
The visual representation of the relative Road Elevation is different when viewed in the Waze Map Editor (WME) and the Client application.
1. The Client App displays segment elevation based on the road type only, meaning Freeways are always on top, Major Highways are next, followed by Minor Highways, Ramps next, Primary Streets below all those, and finally Streets are at the bottom. This is the same order seen when setting the road type in the editor.
2. The WME uses the Road Elevation setting to display the relative elevation of the road. It displays the road with the highest "elevation" number at the top of the visual stack and works its way down as would be expected.
Although the client application does not currently benefit from the Road Elevation setting, it is recommended to set the Road Elevation relative to the physical mapping in the real world to enable possible future Client application updates to show the same visual representation as the WME.
3. Please refer to your local (State/Country/Provence/Regional/etc.) Wiki page for local guidance since there are some occasional variations. The main guidance is: Lowest Road that sees the sky is "ground" and then raise the elevation for the subsequent road segments up as required. Roads that go under buildings or a body of water would be tunnels and have negative elevation (and marked as tunnel appropriately). This is sometimes called the seagull approach.
4. Excessive nodes should be avoided just for elevation since it takes up computing power for route generation but map making is part art and part science. Having one section that is elevated to level one that crosses two parallel roads is ok instead of having a small bridge at elevation +1 then a ground for a few blocks and then another small bridge; that should just be one elevation +1 segment. Whereas having a Freeway segment that is miles long should not be Elevation +2 since that often causes problems. Prudence to check the entire length of the segment is required since the built in validation/error checker may not catch problems that are off the screen.
5. At the end of 2015, WME changed the way non-driveable roads are treated. Now non-drivable roads should follow the guidance above. You may encounter Elevation -5 is used for older non-drivable roads; this was to help ensure that the routing engine did not try to connect or route drivers from roads onto non-roads by mistake. This is no longer required. Please follow the road segment elevation guidance for non-driveable roads.