Problems I encountered using Waze while driving across US

[douglasr007]

What you experienced is map quality issue.

To keep waze free to us end users (no application cost... no update costs), they have went with a base map import from a free government source, instead of buying mature maps from some of the big mapping companies.

To be more specific, it's from TIGER or Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing system which is used by the US Census.

[gettingthere]

Keep in mind that Waze is still marketed as a commuter's GPS application. So routing on long trips is still a weak point.

[IlPapu]

I have been using Waze for about a month now and I really like it's alternate route feature, most of all the ability to see potential speed traps.

With this in mind I figured that Waze would be an excellent tool to use for my drive across the US. Plus, I'm not going to lie, I kind of wanted to show it off to my wife. It worked great for our drive from San Diego to Phoenix, but once we left Phoenix, heading up towards Four Corners, that's when the issues began. Waze had not cached our route and once we got to the mountains, Waze lost signal and therefore our route. Shortly thereafter it would lose GPS signal (even though Google maps had GPS lock and A-GPS). This was the first major problem. I would have to fall back on using Google Navigation, since it had cached our route and wouldn't lose GPS lock. The second major problem I found was that when I was in Colorado Springs, I had set our destination to St. Louis, MO and it routed me up to Denver! Two hours north (not in the direction we were going). This turned out to be a fortunate route change, because instead of taking I-70 like Waze wanted, we routed through I-80 missed some storms and got to see a part of the country my wife and I had not visited.

One of the other features that is not crucial, but I think very necessary in Waze is a compass heading. When I drive I like to know what direction I am going and which direction is north. Another more of a safety request is to have a quick button or voice activated way to make reports. As I see the need for all steps to remain the same, a more driver friendly interface is needed.

To summarize, cache your routes/maps, give me a compass, and improve the reporting process.

I hope this helps the development team. I would be happy to provide any more information should you need it!

Papu

[IlPapu]

Thanks for the replies! I just recently upgraded to the 3.0 for android. I am looking forward to the updates.

One other thing that I thought would be cool would be to have a current weather icon. Maybe just the outside temp. This I think could be easily pulled from free web sources.

[jenncard]

The second major problem I found was that when I was in Colorado Springs, I had set our destination to St. Louis, MO and it routed me up to Denver! Two hours north (not in the direction we were going).

Hi Papu,
Having first used Waze to try and route myself California-Colorado, I can attest to how frustrating it is out in the "wide open spaces" There is a small but fairly active group of editors in Colorado Springs, however, their primary focus is on getting the map of the city itself cleaned up. Beyond that, there are a few megamappers who have hit the interstates, but the US Highways are often lost in the gap between city & interstate.

Fortunate that you missed the bad weather, but I'd be happy to try and fix this up. It looks like google maps suggests US-24 from Colorado Springs to Limon, and then I-70 the rest of the way; is this what you were expecting?

Thanks,
Jenni

[jenncard]

Interesting.

The route from CoSp to Limon on US-24 is valid and presented as a route all the way across MOST of Kansas, up to Kansas at I-70 Exit 260
But it is no longer a valid route when routing to the next Exit 266

Difference? Perhaps via I-70 to exit 260 < 500 miles and via I-70 to exit 266 > 500 miles?

[RallyChris]

What you experienced is map quality issue.

To keep waze free to us end users (no application cost... no update costs), they have went with a base map import from a free government source, instead of buying mature maps from some of the big mapping companies.

These imports do have issues... either with roads levels that are not up to date, and just the issue of stitching together that much data, sometimes doesn't work perfectly.

So... waze is great for "short" commute style routes, as the community is more likely to ferret out any issues that affect their routes daily. But for long routes, it takes someone either that drives that route often, or an area manager with rights to the area, to work down the whole interstate/highway, correcting every little issue that will cause a long route to fail.

As far as gps lock, I presume you are on an android device, as that is the one I hear more complaints about this from. And I would guess you are not on the current beta, as I also see reports that the issue happens a lot less in the beta. Waze will cache "some" of the route (we've been told for performance reasons, waze will not normally cache the whole route, but grab parts as it goes), but you have to use navigation to get this pre-caching, or view the area in question at the zoom levels you want visible (pan and scan to get them to load).

[UnfortunateBystander]

So... waze is great for "short" commute style routes, as the community is more likely to ferret out any issues that affect their routes daily. But for long routes, it takes someone either that drives that route often, or an area manager with rights to the area, to work down the whole interstate/highway, correcting every little issue that will cause a long route to fail.

Like the original author of this thread I too have been a Waze user for about 1 month. I've used Waze every time I've driven to or from work. I've never taken the route suggested by Waze preferring instead to keep driving the way I've come to know over the years.

My commute (using my preferred route) is 38.9 miles (according to Google Maps). I've seen no evidence of Waze picking up on this route but instead offering me the same suggestion every day. Further the route Waze picks is different depending on whether I'm coming or going. That's maybe understandable given differences in the map, etc. The problem is that even though Waze knows where I live the route from work to home ends on a dead end street several miles from my house. This happens on the live map on the website as well as with the client. Tonight I took the suggested route just for fun. When I got to the dead end I made a U-turn and Waze immediately routed me to my house via a driveable route.

I think Waze has great promise. For me, in my daily use, the biggest asset is the real-time traffic updates (ok, I like to know where the cops are). For this to be really useful lots of people need to use Waze and stick with it. Even though the nav errors can often be fixed by editting the map I don't think most casual users will jump through the hurdles to do that. If I relied on Waze for Nav alone I would have given up after the first week. And I suspect many people do.

I've done a little map editting and some things on my commute have improved. Waze still wants me to take a side trip through a neighborhood every morning ( see post here: http://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15202#p132650 ).

Thanks for reading my ramble...