Users claim no road...but it's there!

[jasonh300]

Jason, you will not see those penalties added to the ETA. They are used for internal evaluation in the router only, the ETA reflects the speeds/durations without penalties.

I was always under the impression that Waze added 5 seconds to the ETA per junction, because it's a realistic average of how much time a junction is going to add...for example, every fifth junction you cross has a stop sign, and you get delayed 25 seconds for a stop sign.

Either way, we'll find out how routing reacts to this.

[jasonh300]

There's another effect of extra nodes mid- road.

If you decide to turn off the Waze route - for example because you want to go a different way - Waze will direct you to do a u-turn at every node until you've gone far enough along the new route that it agrees with you.

Waze should never instruct a U-turn at any node on a two-way street. When it does, it should be reported to support, as something is severely wrong.

[jasonh300]

There's another effect of extra nodes mid- road.

If you decide to turn off the Waze route - for example because you want to go a different way - Waze will direct you to do a u-turn at every node until you've gone far enough along the new route that it agrees with you.

I didn't think that Waze directed a u-turn at a node. I thought that it only directed two left turns at the intersections of separated highways.

Waze doesn't actually ever direct a U-Turn. It will direct a "left and a left" on a split road. Waze is never supposed to reverse direction on a two-way road.

[jasonh300]

Well yeah but there's no routing penalty for them.

I suspect there still is, but I've set up a test rig to find out for once and for all. Regardless of the outcome, stray junctions need to be removed because the animation of the map pauses for a couple of seconds at each one of them, so it makes the client display look choppy. Also, we all have some degree of OCD, so if one person doesn't move them, someone else is bound to.

Permalink.

I take a route on a regular basis that takes two minutes and covers this block. I've added 84 junctions. I'll be able to see if it takes me a different way, or if it increases the time (by 7 minutes if there's a 5 second penalty).

I'll get back to you in a month or so.

Well, my test rig with all the junctions has made the livemap and now Waze avoids that block like the plague.

http://www.waze.com/livemap/?zoom=15&lo ... g=20943200

[jasonh300]

Well, my test rig with all the junctions has made the livemap and now Waze avoids that block like the plague.

http://www.waze.com/livemap/?zoom=15&lo ... g=20943200

Pretty damn good evidence if you ask me.

About to go take a ride and see what it does IRL. Stay tuned.

[jasonh300]

Won't route there unless you're going to an address on the street. Also, once I drove it and got Waze to recalculate, it gave me a time of 2 minutes to get to the end of the block, so I think it IS adding time to the route due to all of the junctions. Actual time should be about 45 seconds.

[jasonh300]

I drove it again last night with the map zoomed out a bit and the car chugged along pausing at each junction. The junctions aren't visible, but once I got the routing to recalculate, I noticed that the purple line had a zig-zag look to it.

I guess I can go ahead and remove that now.

[jasonh300]

Haven't had a chance to get rid of it yet. I'll get a screen shot though.

[jasonh300]

This is great investigative work. Quick question though. We tend to segment our long highways into 1km sections or shorter in order to have traffic congestion appear earlier and more accurately show the highway section that's affected.
Would the advantages of this editing practice outweigh the disadvantages (i.e the effect on routing ETA)?

The general consensus is that a traffic jam between an entrance and an exit on a highway is a traffic jam, regardless of where on that segment it is and how long it is. Once you've gotten on that onramp, you're trapped. Navigation should avoid it either way if there's an alternate route, but I'd much rather see the road red at end of an onramp (navigation off), and decide to take another route than to get on the freeway and discover a red segment a mile (or 5 miles) later and be stuck in traffic.

[jasonh300]

Now that I've driven over the route several times, the routing doesn't seem to be an issue anymore. I guess it has gathered more speed data.

However, it still has a bad effect on the display on the client. The little car chugs along pausing at each junction. And with routing, still the zigzag display.