Road Closed - Waze becomes useless

[petervdveen]

Haha, I know that.
I'm driving in belgium very often..

I was talking about the rest of the world and refering to the normal situation in the netherlands

[realc4ever]

if waze would implement a simple detour button like all the other gps apps the problem would be solved.

with my magellan or copilot on my phone if a road is closed, i hit detour, 1 mile, 2, miles, etc and i get an alternative route on the fly.

waze should also implement this because wednesday, it warned me of an accident ahead. i thought it'd reroute me but it didn't. if they had a detour button, i could have just hit detour.

in the mean time, i'll keep doing what i have which is waze running and my magellan running when waze acts up

[DerekFrance]

Unfortunately I am doing precisely the same thing as realc4ever. I use Waze as much as posisble. But when I hit a limitation (can't avoid a road or part of a route - or using it outside my home country) I have to pull my TomTom out of my glove compartment.

Most GPS apps have a "detour" or "avoid part of route" option. This is precisely what is needed in Waze as well...

Thanks.

[lakeyboy]

I think Road Closures should be able to be added on the website. My idea would be for the Map Editor to have a new Road Closure tab or option where you can highlight road segments which are going to be closed, and set the local time of when the road will close and re-open. This information would get transmitted to the app separately from map tiles so it's available to Waze users ASAP.

For example, in my city a couple of weeks ago a whole 40km freeway was shut down so they could hold a cycling event. It would have been nice to go into the editor, highlight the whole freeway, set the closure times and for Waze to not route you onto that road. And the app should give you a warning when it detects a closed road, for example when that freeway is normally the fastest route, so you know why Waze won't route you down that freeway at a particular time.

I can't see this being implemented well in the app itself as you can't put a road closed icon on a road you can't drive on. Perhaps a "road closure in area" option in the app and you can type what the closure is.

[AndyPoms]

I think Road Closures should be able to be added on the website. My idea would be for the Map Editor to have a new Road Closure tab or option where you can highlight road segments which are going to be closed, and set the local time of when the road will close and re-open. This information would get transmitted to the app separately from map tiles so it's available to Waze users ASAP.

For example, in my city a couple of weeks ago a whole 40km freeway was shut down so they could hold a cycling event. It would have been nice to go into the editor, highlight the whole freeway, set the closure times and for Waze to not route you onto that road. And the app should give you a warning when it detects a closed road, for example when that freeway is normally the fastest route, so you know why Waze won't route you down that freeway at a particular time.

I can't see this being implemented well in the app itself as you can't put a road closed icon on a road you can't drive on. Perhaps a "road closure in area" option in the app and you can type what the closure is.

This is being worked on... http://www.waze.com/blog/waze-wishes-bo ... -closures/ If you search the forum for "marathon", there are some more details... Despite the UK Area & Country Managers practically begging for this system for use in the last Olympics, it was not used.

[jonnyhuk2]

+1 for a (short term) road closed / avoid feature.

This morning, there was a major accident on a main trunk road on my way to work. A 10 mile stretch of dual-carriageway was closed by the police in both directions. There is no time for the police to put up detour signs. I got there just as the road was being closed. Meanwhile on Waze, there is no way to report that the road is closed, either to get Waze to re-route for yourself or to inform others (and you can't report the accident as you can't report incidents (or potentially road closures) not in your current exact location).

Luckily I know the local roads and knew where to go but for the first 3 miles of the detour, Waze was insisting I turn around and go back to the (closed) main road. If I didn't know the area, I'd be lost and blindly following traffic hoping they're going where I want to go.

Recently due to our bad weather, there have been a number of roads closed due to flooding or snow. Some are major roads, some minor. But if you come across one, maybe it's late in the evening, there are no diversion signs to follow, there's no traffic to follow, if you don't know the area you have to find somewhere to stop and examine the map and manually navigate as Waze just tries to send you back to the closed road. We need some way of not just reporting a closed road so Waze will warn you / re-route you before you even get close to the road, but also need to say how long it is for... no point reporting a road closed if your report will clear off Waze after only an hour, you might want to inform the system it will be there all morning, or the next 24 hours or maybe overnight roadworks...

[davipt]

I heard (and there's already a link) that there will be a feature for wazers to report a closed road and after several reports have the road out of scope for routing.

Besides that I have literally ¢2:

1. for short routes it's typical for waze to not provide any alternative, making it impossible to get a route that avoids that closed road. I would like waze client to try hard and *always* provide three routes, even if the 2nd and 3rd are, from the client perspective, way worse than the first one. It's a pain to see the closed road and have waze still trying to go back there even when driving around it.

2. I've already suggested a feature similar to the one being in the works, but for private use. My suggestion was basically to replicate the favorites concept (copy/paste the code and screens) on the client as a "blacklist" list. The user can pick up segments and just add them to a blacklist and then have the client route around them. This way I can pick a dozen points in the map that I want to avoid, for whatever reason: closed roads (I'll remove from the blacklist when it's open again), roads I want to avoid for security reasons, roads I want to avoid so I can go somewhere else to have some fun, etc. The idea is that *I* want to avoid the road and I have *my reasons*, but the road is perfectly valid as a route for other people. Of course if the road is to be avoided for everyone I'd set it accordingly on the editor. I do this today with a lot of favorites "via xyz" and using the stop points, but that's a pain to setup every time I start driving.

[DG567]

+1 For 'Road blocked' and 'waypoint' functions.

Personally I don't think Waze will really be taken seriously without them. I love Waze but always have another satnav available for these contingencies.

[davipt]

+1 For 'Road blocked' and 'waypoint' functions.

Personally I don't think Waze will really be taken seriously without them. I love Waze but always have another satnav available for these contingencies.

Why? I'd rather use the stop point hack to detour when needed and wait for the proper feature than use broken and outdated navigation systems (I'm looking at you google) that here in Portugal is full of major mistakes sending me to one way streets, bus only ramps (with heavy fines if the police is around), new major streets not existing for months or even years for lesser streets, and ridiculous names on certain freeways. There is a freeway south of Lisbon that ends at the bridge and north of the bridge is another type of highway and different name, but google decided to call the same name everywhere. Sad.

[DG567]

Why? You ask. Because when you are driving, it's dangerous to be fiddling about trying to plan a route using the stop hack. A big 'road blocked' button that forces a sensible re-route is safer. If I'm on a freeway and the sign says it's blocked after next junction, I can't stop to re-route.