:!: [b]These guidelines are superseded by the Wazeopedia page on [url=https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/UnitedKingdom/Places/Car_Parks]Car Parks[/url][/b] since 11 Nov 2017.
Last year, Waze unleashed the “Parking Project” on us. After 5 months, Waze have finally released support for private/restricted car parks. With this originally missing, we were forced to issue guidelines to delete/not map such car parks. As a result, many will have been deleted. Now they can be properly mapped.
Examples and more detailed explanations are hidden behind the Show buttons.
Which car parks to map
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 them
All mapped car parks must be areas. Because of how the Parking Project is supposed to work with the client, Waze needs to be able to “capture” the event of a driver entering a car park, and that won’t work with point places.
Parking Lot Road segments should be added, but only the minimal amount as detailed in the Wiki here and here.
Mark the car park as Public, Restricted or Private. This is important, as Waze will soon stop offering Restricted and Private car parks to app users when nearing a destination.
[hide]* If you can park there and when go where you please, use Public. Where a car park is associated with several business (eg a retail park) use your best judgement. Some have signs indicating you should only park there for the associated business. But if you can park there and then “go around the corner”, then they can be Public.
If the car park is for public use with restrictions on it (eg customers/visitors only), it should be Restricted.
Private is for car parks where only a specified group can use it (eg staff parking, delivery vehicles). In other words, only drivers with specific permission can park there.[/hide]
The navigation point should be correctly set at the entrance to the car park.
[hide]This should be on the start of the first segment of the car park - ie NOT on the road outside. In this way, Waze will direct you to the car park, including any last turn into the entrance. Then it will announce you have arrived, shut up & let you find somewhere to park.[/hide]
The car park should have a meaningful name and must include the text that indicates it is a car park: e.g. " Westgate Car Park", “Oxford Park & Ride”.
[hide]This is because car parks will show up in the client search along with other places. If they are named for a venue or location, without “car park”, users will not know which result is the venue and which is the car park.[/hide]
Leave the “operator” field blank.
[hide]The “operator” field is unclear. Waze asked for lists of operators, but there are so many that such a list could never be comprehensive - and an nearly comprehensive list would be too long to find anything in. Imported car parks appear to show an operator name in the app when searching for parking near a destination, but right now the dropdown is empty, so we CAN’T fill it in.[/hide]
“Cost” should be set to “free” for free car parks. For all paid car parks, leave it blank.
[hide]The cost field is a real problem. With only a choice of low/moderate/expensive, there’s no way to determine an objective value and a subjective judgement can only be achieved with extensive comparison with all local variations. At this time, our advice is to leave this field blank for all paid car parks.[/hide]
All the other fields are fairly obvious and should be filled out wherever possible - especially linking to Google places and street names.
Whilst mapping/updating a car park, please take the time to review and create/update any associated places (eg the business to which a car park belongs).
If you encounter any car park edited by a user whose name begins with ign_, please review it carefully.
[hide]IGN editors are low-paid editors working for Waze. Their editing quality is generally appalling, but Waze draft them in wherever they think there is a backlog of work. Any place edited by IGN is likely to have serious mistakes - and they’ve certainly been messing with car parks in the UK. :x[/hide]
Imported places
Any imported private car parks that haven’t already been deleted can now be dealt with.
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.
[hide]The imported car park places come 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. This is probably a good thing, as it draws our attention to something that needs doing. 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.[/hide]
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Waze have told us that, “in a few weeks”, they will set the Public/Restricted/Private property to Public for any car park where it has not been set. We are asking for the generation of Map Problems for all car parks where the value is not set - this will help us make sure this important value is set correctly.
There may be further changes to these guidelines as the Parking Project progresses, but we are not expecting any more changes soon. Some of the likely changes in the future are:
Multiple entry points.
Linking of car parks to existing Waze places.
There was briefly an option to enter actual costs. We don’t know if that will return, or if it will be flexible enough to be used sensibly.
Additional Notes 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.
Things may be different elsewhere in the UK, but in and around London it’s rare to find car parking associated with a retail park that isn’t clearly signed as being for customers of those businesses only, and therefore most such car parks should not be mapped out in Waze.
With that in mind, if these three categories are going to remain, then can I suggest a slight tweak to the guidance for this type of car park, as the current version is written in a way which seems to imply that the default behaviour would be to map them out unless you’ve established that they shouldn’t be. However, if the majority of this type of car park across the whole country really are for customer use only, then our default behaviour ought to be to not map them out unless it’s established that they should be.
Having said that, regardless of whether a “private” car park is part of a multi-business location or specific to a single business, it’s either going to be a true private car park for customer/visitor/etc use only or it’s really just a privately operated public car park. So could we not alternatively adopt a KISS approach and have a single rule (along the lines of category 1) such as:
“A car park should only be included in the Waze map data if someone can park there without needing to have a relationship (customer/visitor/employee/etc) with a specific destination.”
I was about to sort out some issues from my drive in europe only to find a raft of issues re parking.
What do I find?
Car Parks that had previously been correctly mapped as areas deleted by “WazeParking1(staff)” and replaced by points.
Raising a map issue saying "Car Parks should be input as area polygon.
Can we get a little guidance on underground car parks. Mapping their actual layout is almost impossible and will likely cover any above ground Places. Can I suggest an arbitrary square / rectangle over the entrance and partially ‘underground’.
Are you certain the existing CP places have been deleted as part of this new data import? I only ask because initially when I’d made a start on tidying up the Maidenhead area (before Iain suggested we all leave things alone until the guidance had been published), having put in a lot of time mapping out all the car parks correctly during the map raid, I was fairly certain one of the ones I’d added back then was no longer present, but a) I couldn’t be 100% certain that I had added it and b) even if I had added it then I had no way of telling when or by who it’d been deleted.
However, if it’s not just me who’s started wondering “where the hell did that car park go, I’m pretty sure I mapped it out ages ago and no-one’s complained about it being missing since then” as a result of this data import causing us to review the CP locations in our areas, that’d be rather interesting…
On the one hand, the probable intention from Waze to modify how car park polygons are rendered in the app (i.e. the “Altered appearance in the client” note in Iain’s post) means that, in theory, this shouldn’t be an issue once the parking project gets fully under way.
On the other hand, given the less than stellar performance of GPS devices under cover, is there any need to map the whole car park area anyway, or as you suggest would it just be sufficient to meet the requirements of the parking project to map out enough of the entry area so that any vehicle entering the car park is still within the bounds of the place poly when they lose GPS.
Indeed, from my understanding of the parking lot area project, in theory, underground parking lots really should be mapped. When the functionality comes out where there can be multiple stop points, then what is important is that one of the entrances of the underground parking lot has been hit and therefore will serve its purpose.
In terms of car parks mapped out for specific businesses from how I see it in the map, I don’t necessarily see the conflict. If there is a location that is only meant for patrons of a specific locality, then it makes sense to map it as such from how I see things in the app. Though the whole operator showing as the name currently is really rather annoying.
Whether to map private car parks
The problem is that we have two competing requirements.
Waze want every car park mapped for the Parking Project to work properly. This is reasonable except:
They have released it without functionality to make car parks private. This means a very poor experience for users and our inclination is to delete them all.
We have to try & find some kind of balance. If we don’t issue guidelines now, these imported points will be handled inconsistently by different editors. If we delete them all, the long-term functionality will suffer. If we map them all the users will suffer.
The guideline on this is not precise - and cannot be made so. You’ll just have to use your best judgement. There are car parks marked for one/several businesses only where you can safely park and go elsewhere. Nothing but local knowledge will tell you this. I could easily post examples, but it’s simply a massive grey area with no way to tell you what to do. If you have any suspicion that a user might face trouble using a car park (a ticket or clamping), then delete it. If you know, from your own experience that it’s OK, then map it. I wish I could supply a better answer, but HQs wilful stupidity on this matter means I don’t have one.
It doesn’t make sense to map it now, because these car parks are being offered to Waze users now. Users are being offered car parks at which they can not park. They may park there and be penalised. Or they may get there and discover they can’t park there. Had HQ allowed a “private” flag or similar functionality this could have been avoided. Instead the few replies they have provided indicate they simply don’t have a clue what they’re doing. We’ve waited long enough for answers. Now we have to deal with these problems. Certainly not in the way HQ want - but they have given us no choice.
Changes to pre-existing Waze places
My understanding is that any Waze place that had more than one category set, including Parking Lot, was split into multiple places. There should have been no further interference with places connected to the Parking Project - but I’m not sure how true that is. I have seen at least one area car park that appears to have been created by WazeParking1(staff).
Underground car parks
These should be mapped as an area that - to the best of your knowledge - covers the area of the underground car park including up to where the entrance(s)/exit(s) leave ground level. If anything, this makes more sense than other car parks being areas. If the client captures a user entering such an area place, the data will be there indicating it’s an underground structure.
In future versions of the app, this could lead to matched functionality where the app takes into account that GPS signals can no longer be expected. It might stop trying to fix your location and tell you you’ve arrived. When leaving, it might simply provide a route from the exit, rather than trying to fix your position and maybe snapping to an external road which you aren’t on.
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Earlier today, Dave2084 pointed out that we will have to refine these guidelines “as Waze are bound to move the goalposts”. That’s certainly true. I see it more as a situation where there are half a dozen goalposts and Waze can’t tell us which pair we should be using. The temptation is to turn round and kick the ball straight at the ref’s head. :twisted:
Look like Chris has been a very naughty boy. Waze has reopened some, many, most, all (*delete as appropriate) of my closed MPs relating to Car Parks as a Point. I have once again closed them so I expect I’ll be called to the head master’s office shortly.
All of the map updates I’ve Solved and Not Identified a few days ago have come back, even the ones I’ve converted to areas. Makes me wonder if using a different name to the one created by WazeParking1 is making the map problems reappear.
To be honest had enough with car parks for now so I’ve hidden the map updates layer. I’ll come back to it when they’ve stopped re-appearing, maybe.
Sorry all. I’ve seen many reports of MPs re-appearing. Since most of you seem surprised, I guess they must have been in the restricted forums where Global Champs can be very exclusively ignored by Waze - as opposed to the non-restricted forums where everybody is ignored.
To be honest the complaints seemed to have died down, so I assumed the problem was resolved. Silly me - it’s just GCs running out of the energy to keep complaining.
In Portsmouth at least, Waze has reopened all of my closed MPs relating to Car Parks as a Point. :roll:
One of the really annoying things about this exercise is the impact on the UR-MP Tracker script which now takes an age to run for the UK and is struggling to cope with the 20,000 reports it finds. :evil:
Mine in Morecambe have all been reopened after I carefully checked and improved each one.
If Waze are not going to either trust us or give us direction about what they want then they really should not have released the Parking Project until it was all ready to go.
It makes them look fools and means it will actually take longer for them to achieve the desired product improvements.
I’m sure Country Admins and Global Champs have told them this, I wonder if there is any way to get them to listen!
And my drives for the middle of August still aren’t registered. Come on Waze, sort it out!
At least the speed limit reports mostly serve a useful purpose. Even the users who are currently reporting transient speed limits will eventually learn that Waze doesn’t cater for variable and temporary limits if we keep sending them polite helpful replies.
Whereas re-created car park points and MP’s are just an unmitigated pain in the arse. I’ve taken to closing the recreated ones “not identified” rather than “solved”, in the hope that Waze will eventually stop adding them. (“Solved” implies that a useful map enhancement has resulted, which will only encourage them).
