[SUPPORT] Traffic Avoidance Failure

[foxitrot]

I hope Ori will explain that soon, so we will know if we could start testing the fix right now or have to wait.

Likely we won't get another response until next week. I am 99% sure the fix is not yet installed on the routing servers.

A hour ago I've checked our usual "Friday evening city-wide traffic jam" (INTL servers) - apparently no fix applied yet.

[foxitrot]

It´s strange that the third route suggestion varies in time since there is no automatic traffic jam identified.

How can you be sure there was no traffic jam marked at the third street

If you remember, this and few other threads are full of screenshots, where the manual report pins were displayed on the routes' overview, but the red jam markings were missing. This might eventually be the same case.

BTW, at the times (08:30 at workdays) the Rožňavská street is usually full as well.

[foxitrot]

The same location, light red traffic jam 29 km/h on D1 freeway between Senec and mid Bratislava. I've first requested a route (at around 8:35 UTC) with client exactly over the jam length, equaling this one http://world.waze.com/livemap/?zoom=7&l ... g=60197491 My ETA was 16 min./21 km, although the traffic jam was 29 km over its whole length. I've taken a few screenshots along the jam, but did not look for wazers.

At around 8:42 UTC I've taken a screenshot from LiveMap - the jam was already a bit shorter (18.5 km) and faster and (at least on one small part of it) was rated "Heavy traffic, From Velky Biel to Ivanka pri Dunaji on D1. Avg. Speed: 32 km/h, Duration: 23 minutes, 5 minutes ago" -> it is not pssible to make 18 or even 21 km in 16 or less minutes, if such traffic is en toute. To document the jam area, I've requested a route along it http://world.waze.com/livemap/?zoom=7&l ... g=60239014 with resulting ETA 13 min/18.5 km.

As the jam seemed to be getting shorter again, I've requested one more route over the shortened length at 08:45 UTC (8 min/10 km) http://world.waze.com/livemap/?zoom=7&l ... g=60239014 while a reddish rectangle on my screenshot, pointing to the first part of my route, says "Heavy traffic, From Chorvatsky Grob to Ivanka pri Dunaji on D1. Avg. Speed: 20 km/h, Duration: 13 minutes, 8 minutes ago" - Again an impossible combination of ETA and jam speed and length, at one and the same screenshot.

Later I was taking more and more screenshots and routes, but still with impossibly small ETA. I'm convinced to confirm that txe fixes are either not live yet, or did not apply to this problem The ETA seemed to take just historical traffic into account. I've not calculated my expected ETA times, but with the jam speeds I'd assume 2x - 3x more.

Even now at 09:30 UTC, as the freeway jam is only "Moderate traffic, On D1 in Bratislava, Avg. Speed 40 km/h, Duration 8 minutes, 3 minutes ago" I'm getting a route http://world.waze.com/livemap/?zoom=7&l ... g=58968331 with just 4 min. ETA.

All these examples were along a lot of segments (I'm noting this, as I've discovered a couple of days ago, that if one jam happens on one long, solid freeway segment, the resulting ETA along it was always 0 minutes, regardless of the jam length and speed).

[foxitrot]

Today the usual morning' traffic jam in the city (Bratislava, Slovakia). There was a 14 km/h red traffic on a D1 freeway through the city. Initially I've got an 13 min/8.8 km ETA for a route along the jam, which still seemed too optimistic for me. At further look I've noticed that the client tried to route me through all possible side streets to drive around a part of the jam - even less possible ETA for the given route and the time of day.

So I've requested also the alternate routes - OMG the route directly through the traffic jam was recommended as an alternative one, with way much better ETA!! Did one routing subprocess calculate a list of optimal routes and another one has attached wrong ETA's to the list?

Scr000720-22_.jpg (74.06 KiB) Viewed 691 times

Hey, devs, come on! The chaos is getting worse

[foxitrot]

Yesterday morning (8:45 UTC+2) Waze seemed to start taking colored traffic jams into account for correct ETA calculation, thus was able to route around a major traffic jam (like 256 min./32 km with tens of wazers stuck inside). Consistently over multiple alternates' requests. (As the reported speed was maybe 4 km/h, the ETA possibly made sense.) But some hour later the jams were ignored again.

This morning (8:15-8:45 UTC+2) the same happened, first and alternative routes were approx. 25-30 min. for 11-15 km. BUT one more alternative, along 23 km around city, should have taken 202 minutes, although there was just one larger 40 km/h orange jam along some 1/3 of the length - some major overshoot. Again consistently, multiple times. I've then tried to request a route just along this jam (it fell down to 35 km/h in between) and the ETA was around 2 hours for much less than 10 km! A 1/4 hour later this incident was over, but I could not check anymore, whether the jams are still taken into account, or not anymore.

[foxitrot]

I'm continuously checking color-coded traffic jams in my area. Mostly they are handled correctly, but I'm daily able to find some, which ETA's are miscalculated, from slightly to considerably. I'm reporting them just in our local forum section.

[gettingthere]

Maybe I just don't understand but isn't the ETA in the screen shots the same for both routes?

[gettingthere]

I got a pop-up today on my commute 'Waze has rerouted you - time savings 3 minutes'. So it seems to be working, at least on the US/Canada server.

Waze is not going to route you around all traffic. It takes traffic into account and sends you via the best option at the time. If the traffic changes when you are on-route and the ETA becomes more than 3-5 minutes longer than a valid alternative route, it should re-route you.

There may be other setting that affect how this works. Avoid Highways, Minimize Turns, and Goodie/Cookie munching.

Although we did hear at the Waze Palo Alto Meet Up that it doesn't matter how you set Minimize Turns and that option is always 'ON' in regards to routing. I don't recall if they said that they were planning to remove this option.

Waze did agree to remove the Goodie/Cookie munching option since that option is causing problem with routes and causing Wazers to submit Update Requests for bad routing that is the fault of this option being on. No ETA on when this option will be removed.

[gettingthere]

I'm not convinced all is fine on the NA routing server. I got a pop-up today saying there was a faster route, but my route didn't actually change.
Prior to about the time I started using the Android 2.9 betas (not implying a connection, just establishing a time) my commuting routes would vary daily. Since about the time I've been using the Android 2.9 betas, my communting routes have been almost static. From where I sit it looks like something was changed and not for the better.

If you think there is something wrong with traffic re-routing in the Android Beta, be sure to post any relevant info in the Android Beta thread.

[gettingthere]

I also had a similar situation yesterday in San Diego, California. It was raining and since the residents here don't know how to drive in the rain (yes, shameful) traffic was significantly worse than normal on the afternoon/evening drive on Feb 27, 2012.

It appeared that Waze not not functioning properly in regards to traffic avoidance. Waze was working so poorly I actually paid $2.99 for a month of Tom Tom HD traffic and used that instead.... Waze fail.

Here are the issues that I noticed:

* ETA was not taking into account many of the traffic jams
* The route preview screen upon initial route set and alternative routes was not showing all of the jams on the available routes.
* I was constantly getting 'traffic is building - 4 minutes longer', 'traffic has improved - 3 minutes saved' - within seconds of each other. Totally bogus.
* ETA ended up being more than 15 minutes off due to traffic on-route, that was showing as jams, that was not being factored into the ETA.
* I have no idea if I was actually on the fastest route since the jams were not being accounted for properly.

This is not the first time that I have seen this issue. I just brushed it off as some glitch. But now that I am seeing this issue on several times and other Wazers around the world are reporting the same problems it's not a glitch it's a problem.

So basically the main function of Waze does not seem to be working reliably. This needs to be of extremely high priority to fix. I don't trust that Waze is sending me via the fastest route and I am quickly losing confidence in Waze.