Seasonal Roads
In almost every climate, there is some time of seasonal weather condition that closes roads at least temporarily during a season.
For example, in the winter, some municipalities will not plow certain roads where the roads are not servicing any addresses. These roads are legally open, but may not be passable by most vehicles except during periods of melt or the end of the season melt. In other areas, seasonal rains or snowmelt mean that dirt roads are impassible to most vehicles several days at a time due to mud, but are usable in drier spells during that season. Because these are based on weather conditions, it is not always possible for editors to enter RTCs or provide BOTG to check on the status.
The use of the off-road / 4x4 / not-maintained road type is not appropriate for these roads most of the year when they are perfectly passable, legal roads. Having a way to mark these roads as seasonal roads, in a similar manner to the unpaved checkbox, and allowing users to select "avoid seasonal roads" in navigation would allow the routing server to ignore these roads part of the year (even if a bit passable) without changing the road type certain times of year.
Where I edit, we get URs in the winter where cars suddenly have to u-turn at the unplowed portion of the road - it would be great to have this option where they would not have been routed down that seasonal road in the first place between the set dates it is not maintained (in this case, many of them are signed Dec 1 - Apr 1). I have seen municipalities use the reporting tool to mark these roads seasonally and they get some thanks thumbs up - so I do believe it is something that would help users.
whoaitspete
shared this idea
Great timing! We’re currently working on your suggestion about avoiding seasonal roads. Keep an eye out for updates on the WME.
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Bob McCormick commented
We have quite a bit of this in Vermont US - one editor has a spreadsheet of segments and we also put map comments over segments that are closed in the winter time. This takes a significant amount of time each year to maintain - it would be ideal if something could be integral in WME to manage this, and beyond just the ability to put recurring closures on segments. (For example, sometimes opening dates may have to be extended if snow has not been removed - we need to see a list of these types of closures.)
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CuttySpark commented
Good idea! Many mountain roads should display a warning in the app when they are included in a route in winter even if they are not closed. The probability of a closure is much higher than ordinary roads. The segments could be open in summer, display a warning spring and autumn and be closed in winter. Start and end of each period set with dates.