Traffic avoidance by lane

[ke4roh]

On my commute, there are a few places where traffic backs up going a particular direction, but it's tolerable in lanes going other directions. Waze occasionally routes me through one of these backups even though an alternate way is clear, perhaps taking the higher speed of traffic to be the correct one. I would like Waze to take into consideration the varying speeds of traffic approaching an interchange depending on which way previous drivers have just gone.

[AlanOfTheBerg]

On my commute, there are a few places where traffic backs up going a particular direction, but it's tolerable in lanes going other directions. Waze occasionally routes me through one of these backups even though an alternate way is clear, perhaps taking the higher speed of traffic to be the correct one. I would like Waze to take into consideration the varying speeds of traffic approaching an interchange depending on which way previous drivers have just gone.

Waze does exactly that. Depending on the route, going several blocks out of the way may not necessarily end up being faster. We often try to get ourselves around traffic because we feel better moving, but we end up losing more time despite our efforts. That all being said, Waze isn't perfect and, for reasons we don't yet understand, doesn't route around traffic jams all the time. Of course, for Waze to know there is a jam, one or more Wazers must be stuck in it. Sometimes I get the feeling Waze operates like a traffic load balancer and either routes Wazers on different routes to even out the per-road load, or purposely routes some drivers into jam areas just to make sure the jam is still there, or to find out it's speeding up...

[Error79]

Hi AlanOfTheBerg

I see comments about routing algorithm guesses re-appearing over and over again.
I think it would be very nice if we could get some details about it from Waze directly.
Maybe someone from the mother-ship is reading this and would like to enlighten us.

About traffic distribution.
That is indeed an interesting approach.
But as far as I know most routing providers (Waze, TomTom, Navigon, Garmin etc...) have a more simple approach.
There is however a project ongoing taking exactly this into account: "Greenway" >> https://greenway2012.wordpress.com/
It would certainly be an excellent addition to build such intelligence into the WAZE algorithm.

Kind regards,
Marcel

[ke4roh]

I have to wonder if Waze can see the specific quirks on my commute. For example, I will be here:

https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=3&lat ... s=35844043

It's a tossup most days whether I should go straight or take I-40 E, and more often than I think prudent, Waze suggests I take I-40 E. This is because to get to that road, I have to either wait in line with the folks backed up for I-40 W or punch through their queue from a lane to the left. What I have found is that, even when there's a bad backup going to I-40 W, I can go straight in the left lane without much difficulty, but it might add 2 minutes to get from that segment to this one:

https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=5&lat ... s=35836439

And from there I go pretty fast.

There's another example of that exact same problem going the other way. From here:

https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=3&lat ... s=35834039

traffic backs up trying to turn left onto E Williams St. Traffic can back up through the entirety of this segment to make that turn, but generally the left lane of the highway is flowing while the right lane is stop and go. I need to turn right on E Williams, so when I get to the wide ramp, I can zip right up to the light and make the turn, but not until I've waited with all the folks wanting to turn left onto a congested road.