Waze not learning my preferred route and can't save Alt Rte

[Wytch13]

I have been using Waze for over a year and I take my "preferred route" everyday, yet Waze still tries to direct me the long way around. It has never learned my route. Also, when I take an alternative route (not necessarily turn-by-turn as Waze advised, but workarounds in some segments of the route I may have found on my own), I would like to be able to save that route. Sometimes it's so complicated to get around known bottlenecks in my area, I can't remember what I did from one week to the next. Is there any way to save an Alternate Route that worked out particularly well??

[AlanOfTheBerg]

Please read the FAQ concerning waze not learning routes. Waze does not learn routes.

[witfits]

Waze will learn where you're going on a regular basis. For instance, if you leave for work everyday and start the trip by entering "work" as your destination, Waze will offer that as a destination. Perhaps if the application offered an option to remember your destination rather than your route might help with user-comprehension.

I try to trust Waze's judgement. It's not that I don't know how to get where I'm going all of time, it's that I would like to get there the quickest. That's what Waze is trying to do.
Further, think about the required logic that would have to be baked in to accommodate crossing a double-lane roadway, with no light, at a sharp curve, and a hill blocking the view.

Even when I just simply don't want to go the route Waze is telling me to go I just go the way I want. Again, it's all about routing you "around" delays (providing that is your choice, i.e. "fastest", "shortest").
So, experiment; see how the destination-time changes once Waze recalculates when you don't follow the suggested route. The algorithm can't be perfect for every situation, but it's the best that I've found.

When I suggest people try Waze, they always tell me that they know how to get where they're going most of the time. I insist that the genius is the real-time routing more so than the "how do I get there" part.

For more fun, listen to the Text-To-Speech (TTS) then go look at the map to see why/how it does what it does.

[CBenson]

Waze will learn where you're going on a regular basis. For instance, if you leave for work everyday and start the trip by entering "work" as your destination, Waze will offer that as a destination. Perhaps if the application offered an option to remember your destination rather than your route might help with user-comprehension.

Just to clarify a bit, you need to have the setting "Auto-learn routes to frequent destinations" in the advanced setting menu ticked for Waze to learn your frequent destinations. So it seems to me that Waze does offer the option as you suggest.

Waze used to market a different feature regarding actually learning routes. This feature never worked well and does not currently work at all. However vestiges its description remain in the app and the marketing materials. For example, on the alternate routes screen I get this:

Learning.jpg (27.3 KiB) Viewed 1082 times

The problem is you can't currently teach Waze your preferred route by simply driving them several times. So what really needs to happen is for Waze to either implement the feature or eliminate references to it in the app and the marketing materials.

[AlanOfTheBerg]

All of that is pretty concisely covered in the FAQ...

[witfits]

Thanks, Auto-learn routes... to me, says, I will figure out which route you'd like to take based on the routes you take over time. For what it offers, I wish the function-label was something like... "Remember destinations?" But you can see how that would go. How many destinations? On which days? Which one to chose first? etc.

On another note, you could take the undesired route and poke along enough times to force the routing algorithm to chose a more favorable route. Ha, I started to erase that based on the likelihood that somebody would go to all that trouble.
Wit

[AlanOfTheBerg]

Thanks, Auto-learn routes... to me, says, I will figure out which route you'd like to take based on the routes you take over time. For what it offers, I wish the function-label was something like... "Remember destinations?" But you can see how that would go. How many destinations? On which days? Which one to chose first? etc.

I find that it does remember days and times. Like on weekday mornings, I get the "to work?" problem but on other days, I have received the prompt to go to my local coffee shop I meet with friends on Friday morning. Or on Sunday mornings, to drive to church.

[crazed_out]

I think it really learns routes. I have a favorite route between home and work that isn't the fastest but the traffic is so much lighter that it doesn't matter it takes a couple of minutes more than Waze's two favorite routes. After a couple of days it automatically displays personal favorite as the second route alternative. Something tells me that since I drove this route repeatedly I tought Waze it exists and that it should be among the routes displayed. Either that or it actually sometimes is the faster second alternative.

/Anders

[Cueball8]

I have been using Waze for over a year and I take my "preferred route" everyday, yet Waze still tries to direct me the long way around. It has never learned my route. Also, when I take an alternative route (not necessarily turn-by-turn as Waze advised, but workarounds in some segments of the route I may have found on my own), I would like to be able to save that route. Sometimes it's so complicated to get around known bottlenecks in my area, I can't remember what I did from one week to the next. Is there any way to save an Alternate Route that worked out particularly well??

I think this entry is the closest to the problem I am experiencing. on my way to work in the morning Waze tries to get me to drive the long way, approximately 9.2 miles, instead of the 6.7 mile route that I like to drive. Now in all fairness both routes take approximately the same time, 14 minutes. The longer route gets me to the highway sooner, so even though the length of the drive is longer it takes the same time as the shorter route I like to drive. In addition, in the afternoon when driving home, during rush hour traffic most of the time, I still like to take the same route home that I take to work. However Waze tries to suggest two other routes; one is further up the highway, first offered, and the other is along my preferred route yet slightly longer, second offered and approximately 6.9 miles long, and again approximately 14 minutes. Now I think that I have a couple of issues; Waze does not seem to be 'learning' MY route and Waze is offering routes that may/may not be better routes. What I would like to know is can I force or save my preferred route in Waze? When I find a route that does not seem to be the best route because of one reason or another is there a way to help Waze learn to pick a better route? My thoughts are that my preferred route has less lights and stops than the Waze suggested route which would more often than not take longer.

Thanks in advance.

[witfits]

Yea, this is what we were talking about. Waze "learns" your destinations. Not necessarily your routes.

I also found that it seems to remember where you go on which days and offers that as a destination when Waze starts up. But again, it does not learn the route(s) you take most frequently, but it does learn the destinations.

When talking to my brother-in-law I said he should try Waze. He said he pretty much knows where he's going and how to get there. To that end, Waze is supposed to find the fastest or shortest route to get you to your destination. Among other variables, it calculates the fastest/shortest, based on current traffic and other conditions, and past timing for those routes, etc.

The beauty here is that instead of instructing you to take the route you always take and pushing you into a giant traffic mess (say there is some extraordinary circumstance) it suggests you take an alternate. I've learned to take the route Waze suggests. Albeit, how big of a difference can multiple routes of a 5-mile trip make? Well, yesterday I didn't listen, and drove myself right into a giant jam. Instead of 4 minutes early, I was 3 minutes late.

The segments within any given route, and how they're configured, can effect the choices Waze makes too.

This means that a given route may not have been configured in the most optimal fashion based on Waze's routing algorithm.

So, take a look at the map based on the multiple routes. Again, the beauty of being able to edit the map is that you're actually on the ground, frequently. Allowing you to enable the system to provide the most efficient route. Then you let Waze calculate the other conditions. Now you have a very effective navigation application.


From the FAQ...
Why doesn't Waze learn my routes?

The setting within the Waze app, "Auto-learn routes to frequent destinations" is misleading. Waze only learns your favorite destinations, but does not learn or store actual routes. It will pop-up with the "Are going home?" or "going to work?" messages for these frequented destinations.

Waze should always pick what it believes is, mathematically, the fastest or shortest route, depending on your settings. If, in your estimation, it doesn't, that means that there could be an error in the map somewhere along your preferred route, or there is a lack of correct speed/traffic data for that route, or lack or correct speed/traffic data on the route it is trying to send you on. If it isn't too far out of your way, take the suggested route a few times and Waze will collect and start to use that data in its routing decisions.

The reason just driving the expected or preferred route won't work automatically is because Waze could have incorrect speed data on the segments it wants you to take. If Waze thinks another road is 2x as fast as your preferred road, no amount of driving on your preferred road can change the data for the other road. Waze needs accurate data for all neighboring segments and routes in order to always compute the fastest (or shortest, depending on your app setting) route.