Does Waze consider smaller roads into it's routing?

[Mirarkitty]

Copied this from the automatic answer:

Code: Select all

Long Distances:
0-15 km - All road types are allows for routing.
15-20 km - All road types except Streets.
20-30 km - All road types except Streets and Primary streets.
30-200 km - Only Minor, Major, and Freeways.
more than 200 km - only Freeways.


Really? Well, that explains a lot...
Why not use all the roads all the time?

I regularly go over 20km (Stockholm) and regularly gets routed on to bad roads (>Primary). This is stupid...?!?

[Mirarkitty]

if there is sufficient historical speed data, why even consider the road type?

Scalability is why. If I am trying to find a route from NYC to LA across all of the US, it would take infinite resources to check every possible route. So we reduce the calculations required and only examine a subset of road types.

This is not true. You can start with the long roads (Freeway). Then do checks on the closer roads if there's a possibility for it to be faster. As soon as it's not faster, you can skip that entire path.

Besides, I'm sure my phone is happy to lend you a lot of computrons if you lack them on the server. I'm 100% sure the map of the nearest roads in a 1000km radius fits on my phone.

[AlanOfTheBerg]

Really? Well, that explains a lot...
Why not use all the roads all the time?

Possibly the computational complexity of considering all roads all the time would cause routing requests to take too long. Also, when routing long distances, it is highly unlikely you would choose to drive on a 2-lane dirt road or side-street next to the freeway rather than the freeway itself. It's rather common sense.

Now, how Waze (re)considers street type when extreme slowdowns/accidents occur is another topic perhaps, but that's just me musing.

[Mirarkitty]

Really? Well, that explains a lot...
Why not use all the roads all the time?

Now, how Waze (re)considers street type when extreme slowdowns/accidents occur is another topic perhaps, but that's just me musing.

Well, I thought that was exactly the topic - that it only picks Freeways anyway, even though it takes 6 hours longer than the Minor next to it (2 vs 8 hours)?

It would make much more sense that it only used roads going faster than say 50km/h at all times the last month when searching the roadgrid than going on the road type.

[Mirarkitty]

For myself, I've seen this: When driving to work from home, it avoids a service road shortcut (~1 minute). When driving to work from the nearby post office, it uses that shortcut. When driving home from work it's using that shortcut...

(I don't think I can recreate it: the grid has changed now.)

[kotatsu]

This is very much still a problem unfortunately. My route home includes a motorway which can often be badly congested, especially on Friday evenings. There are alternate routes available, at least 3 of them, and two of those are not on urban roads, but on A and B roads through the countryside.

Waze doesn't even know these roads exist as potential routes, and interesting tries desperately to route me back onto the motorway if I take them. (Even when it knows the motorway is a giant car park) These routes can be much quicker if the motorway is badly congested.

So when the traffic is bad, I'm still using Co-Pilot, as it simply knows more routes. I also find that Co-Pilot is much more realistic with its estimated time of arrival when the traffic is bad.

[Mirarkitty]

This is very much still a problem unfortunately.
...
So when the traffic is bad, I'm still using Co-Pilot, as it simply knows more routes. I also find that Co-Pilot is much more realistic with its estimated time of arrival when the traffic is bad.

I completely agree that this is a huge problem. If you can't trust Waze to give you a decent route, then there's no point in using it.

I can only suggest that you take the correct route as suggested by Co-Pilot but let waze run at the same time, to maybe, possibly, learn something. And try to fix or at least report map problems.

On the other hand, it can't be as simple as ignoring road types, I realized. When I were driving Krems-Graz in Austria (a trip for a few hours), it happily suggested an overland road as a shortcut - can't have been more than a Minor. Maybe it's gotten more stupid since August?

[bgodette]

Copied this from the automatic answer:

Code: Select all

Long Distances:
0-15 km - All road types are allows for routing.
15-20 km - All road types except Streets.
20-30 km - All road types except Streets and Primary streets.
30-200 km - Only Minor, Major, and Freeways.
more than 200 km - only Freeways.


Really? Well, that explains a lot...
Why not use all the roads all the time?

I regularly go over 20km (Stockholm) and regularly gets routed on to bad roads (>Primary). This is stupid...?!?

Yes lets completely ignore the rest of the thread after that list and go on a trip of hyperbole. That list has been proved to be in disagreement with how routing actually works with a well edited map with sufficient user density.

[Mirarkitty]

Yes lets completely ignore the rest of the thread after that list and go on a trip of hyperbole. That list has been proved to be in disagreement with how routing actually works with a well edited map with sufficient user density.

If you read all the posts, you might also note that I personally also had evidence that it's not that simple:

On the other hand, it can't be as simple as ignoring road types, I realized. When I were driving Krems-Graz in Austria (a trip for a few hours), it happily suggested an overland road as a shortcut - can't have been more than a Minor.

But then again, maybe you were serious. I think you mean tangent though?

I find it a little disappointing that there seems to be so many very sure statements about how Waze works, that doesn't seem to come from any developer, and are rather naïve ideas on how these kind of systems work - they don't make complete sense, and are debated. It would be nice if the devs could pipe in and explain how it works rather than have it debated here.

[kotatsu]

Last Friday afternoon when I reached the point in my journey when I need to decide if I'm going to take my chances on the motorway, or use an alternate route, I hit the 'routes' button in Waze to see what it could offer.

As usual, just one route, on the heavily congested motorway.

This seems to me to be a really serious problem. It shows Waze isn't automatically preferring motorways even when alternatives exist, it shows Waze can't find any alternatives at all.

For a GPS app to be unable to route, is pretty much the most serious bug possible.