Show streets speeds all the time

[AlanOfTheBerg]

As long as we have Wazers driving through at (nearly) all hours of the day, Waze knows what the speeds could/should be. If it isn't taking the actual max road speed when calculating a jam notification, it should be.

[AlanOfTheBerg]

Thats a problem then. We should be able to set the max speed of the road. With jams, people driving so slow and lot of data that corresponds to wrong road speed, that average will never go up.

It's not a problem. The averages are not for the entire day, but rather some smaller amount of time, however Waze hasn't said how small.

But the point still stands: just because traffic moves at 1/2 the speed limit for two-hours on specific segments during the evening doesn't mean, IMO, that Waze should consider that normal and not report a slowdown.

[AlanOfTheBerg]

IMHO, it should consider that normal and should not report a slowdown. I find the Google traffic maps that have all highways here marked red during the rush to be most unhelpful. What's the point of alerting me to a fact I already know, that the traffic is slow when it always slow during the rush.

I'm not sure I agree, actually. But beyond that, if it considers that a road is running at its normal speed which is 1/2 the speed limit, is this affecting traffic avoidance? As I type this, I'm thinking "it shouldn't" and "I hope not" because traffic avoidance should still be based on transit times compared to alternate routes.

[bgodette]

Thats a problem then. We should be able to set the max speed of the road. With jams, people driving so slow and lot of data that corresponds to wrong road speed, that average will never go up.

It's not a problem. The averages are not for the entire day, but rather some smaller amount of time, however Waze hasn't said how small.

[bgodette]

The hardest one we already have that its the average aquired by the client. Adding a Max speed in database is simple since it will be done by the editor and is just another data field that you will add to waze road registers. I dont know how is waze algorithm but instead of comparing just with the average, using existing methods "and" maxspeed shouldnt be difficult.

That horse is already dead. Please don't try to resurrect it. Any attempt to add a "speed limit" to segments is doomed to be wrong often enough to be effectively worthless, does zero to help traffic avoidance, and just heaps more work onto the community editors.

[CBenson]

But the point still stands: just because traffic moves at 1/2 the speed limit for two-hours on specific segments during the evening doesn't mean, IMO, that Waze should consider that normal and not report a slowdown.

IMHO, it should consider that normal and should not report a slowdown. I find the Google traffic maps that have all highways here marked red during the rush to be most unhelpful. What's the point of alerting me to a fact I already know, that the traffic is slow when it always slow during the rush.

[CBenson]

If the speed average in rush time is 30kmh why not plot red in map ?

If you do that in Washington, DC, where I commute, every major road from the beltway in would be plotted in red from 6:00 - 9:30 AM and 3:00 - 6:30 PM. How would that be helpful? I already know that the roads are going to be slower during the rush. What is more helpful to me is to see which roads are slower than than their normal rush hour delay (and an indication of those that are going faster than their normal rush hour speed).

[gettingthere]

Waze absolutely does show the traffic jam speed with their automated traffic jam algorithms. When a Wazer is in traffic their actual speed is being sent back to Waze. After Waze processes the data and the client updates the data, the jam will show on the display and that data will be used for other Wazers who are on-route and calculating routes in the vicinity.

Yes, there are also false traffic jams generated by Wazers who are running the application and not travelling with the other cars on the road that they are snapped to (stopped for gas, drive-thru, etc). Yes, Waze should filter this data out better. In the meantime, turn off Waze when you are not driving with traffic to avoid your Waze client sending false data back to Waze.

The manual traffic reporting helps Waze to ensure that an automated jam is generated on the segment. But the manual report itself does not include the data that is needed to update the speed of the traffic jam and the manual report itself is not considered for routing purposes. So yes, report traffic via a report so that Waze knows that there is traffic there and will create a jam on that segment shortly afterwards.

Waze has no idea how long the traffic jam is until a Wazer drives through it. The Waze traffic jam data is community generated by Wazers driving. No Wazers = no traffic jams in the client.

As you noticed, Waze currently does not have a visual display for no traffic (green) like some other solutions have. They only show the slow downs. So it is difficult to know if a road with no jam is actually jam free or whether Waze just doesn't have up to date data. The more Wazers in your area = more accurate jams. I do not think that Waze should add a green traffic indicator on the roads unless the data is current. A suggestion would be to show the road as green if a Wazer has driven the segment less than maybe 10 minutes ago. Otherwise the segment should not have any traffic color coded indicator. Many of the other navigation solutions that show the roads as green are either tied into the in-road sensors which offer constant up to date information or have many more data points to update their traffic displays.

Per Waze - their solution can show traffic on any road, not only freeways, highways and primary roads. But you are correct, there is a lot of false jam data being generated on these lower class roads - or any road with POI's to stop at.

I have offered several suggestions in the forums for Waze to better filter out false jams. But is seems that they are not yet concerned with it. So the only reasonable option at this time is to educate other Wazers to turn Waze off when they are stopped at a POI.

Waze has offered up other solutions to this issue such as mapping Parking Lot Roads and Parking Lot Landmarks which suppress jams when a Wazer is within these map elements. But it is unreasonable for the map editors to landmark every single square inch of POI's and Parking Lots that adjoin every road world-wide. Stupid actually.... Waze needs to improve their logic and fix this problem in other ways.

[gettingthere]

"Drive what you see" unfortunately is not the best method to use with this product.

Very good point! Since many competitors do not support re-routing when traffic changes when on a route, the user is accustomed to scanning the map, and manually adjusting the route. Most humans cannot accurately calculate the fastest route in this way since there are so many variables.

This is really the power and benefit of Waze. If it's working as designed, you should set a route and trust that Waze is taking you the fastest (or shortest depending on your client setting) way which factors in traffic. You should not have to be concerned with having to manually adjust your route based on the traffic jam speeds or color coding.

[gettingthere]

There's a road not close to where live always have indication of slow traffic but more than 90% of the time there is no traffic. I wonder if it's caused by someone have it running without driving...

Very common. They could be in a drive thru, walking around their office building, etc..