[SUPPORT] Traffic Avoidance Failure

[gettingthere]

On other times, surprisingly everything seems to match the reality:

• ETA is nearly perfect, and stays so, since the departure till the arrival, even though driving through dark-colored traffic,
• Alternate routes' preview contains all events' pins and all color-coded traffic lines, at their exact positions,
• wazers get rerouted around the displayed traffic,
• etc.

I wonder if it is working properly if:

* Major jam / dark red is not involved
* Light server load
* Just works randomly, some random bugs

Let's hope it's not just some random bugs that are going to be difficult to isolate and fix.

[gettingthere]

Until Waze resolves this issue with the traffic not being properly factored into the routing, the usability of Waze is highly compromised. Traffic avoidance is the primary function of Waze.

[gettingthere]

Hi guys,

The problem was isolated and fixed.
We will update our server soon and we hope this will greatly improve the ETA that Waze gives, along with better routing and traffic avoidance.

Nowadays we're working on improving our servers in NA and world wide.

Thanks,

Ori

Please let us know when the fixed code is actually installed and operational. It's great that it is fixed, but useless to Wazers if it's not yet installed... How soon will it be installed? Today, tomorrow, in 3 weeks, 6 months????

[gettingthere]

Maybe with the Tile Update? So perhaps another few months . . .

It's code in the routing servers. Independent from the map tiles. Many routing servers to update world-wide.

[gettingthere]

As I understand, the fix is already applied, but they are also implementing some new routing code that will improve ETA predictions and re-routing. Anyway it would be good to know when it will be up and running

As I understand the developers have isolated and fixed the problem but not yet installed it in the routing servers. The comment about improving the ETA and routing is really fixing what should have already been working - not enhancements. The whole reason why this thread started - the traffic and ETA was not working properly in some cases - especially when there was very slow traffic jams.

[gettingthere]

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. Unfortunately this means wait...

[gettingthere]

Unfortunately, they were the useless kind where it changed the ETA to later and earlier by the same amount within seconds. Once, the popup for the reverse-ETA change came immediately after I dismissed the first.

Waze should never give ETA change message that have traffic buildup and time saved messages within seconds. This is a bug.

Waze needs to build in some type of filter to limit how often these messages can appear. Especially the incidents where it's just bogus data. The is no possible way that traffic can build 4 minutes, ease up 3 minutes, build 4 minutes, ease up 3 minutes in a matter of 30 seconds... Especially when you are looking at reports on route and there are no jam before or after seeing these messages!

Regarding re-routing. Wazers don't want to be routed and re-routed multiple times quickly. There needs to be some minimum threshhold of time savings. If another route is maybe 5 minutes faster (or some other similar amount) then re-route it. Waze should not then send you back on the original route 1 minute later. No one wants to be switching lanes back and forth to change routes over and over due to the feature not working properly.

[gettingthere]

2) I also get annoyed when I'm rerouted to a different turn at an intersection when I'm already so close to the intersection that I have had to commit to the previous route. I just can't think of nice things when waze essentially tells me "if you were in the right lane you could take this exit and save some time, but you're not as I was telling you to turn left in another block."

Great point. It is useless to get rerouted to avoid traffic unless there is sufficient advance notice. On a highway, likely Waze should not try to reroute you to an exit that is 100 feet way - 4 lanes over. I know that Waze has not concept of what lane you are in or how many lanes there are. So likely they should not try to send you off of an exit or to another highway if it any less than say 1/2 of a mile away.

Another issue I have noticed in regard to this is that Waze will tell you it has rerouted you to save time, and THEN actually calculate the new route vs. prior to the notice. So if you happen to lose data connection, the routing server times out, etc - you don't actually get a new route!

[gettingthere]

That could explain the issue with the rotating messages, traffic buildup - traffic freed up. If the routing servers don't have their data in sync the client could be getting different data for each server.

Waze, is this a possible problem?

[gettingthere]

I just wanted to mention that there was another accident on New York Ave this morning similiar to the one I discussed above. The routes waze provided clearly took the traffic into account and tried to use roads with less traffic. (The routes didn't work out so well due to map problems, time based turn restrictions, waze's inability to handle closed roads and some other issues completely beyond waze's control, but the issues didn't appear to be not taking the traffic into account.)

So maybe Waze now has the fix they described several posts above deployed to the routing servers? Or maybe there are additional issues with routing servers not having the same traffic info across all of the relevant routing servers and our Waze applications get inconsistent routing and traffic data due to the discrepancy? Or maybe that is the issue that Waze has identified and is going to patch?

We know that Waze added additional routing servers in sometime after August 2011 to make the routing infrastructure redundant to help avoid the route timed out errors. Maybe these traffic avoidance, ETA, and route recalculation issues started to occur after the redundant routing servers were deployed?