All proposed routes longer than the easiest road

I have recently started commuting to London and I have found that Waze will choose different routes in different days.
That’s great but as I have also noticed that for the sake of 1 minute savings it will route through bendy B roads instead of the motorway, which is not a great idea at 6 am.
Today however I have lost trust in route planning abilities. Waze decided to take me off the motorway to drive back road. I have noticed early exit so I decided to check it. All 3 routes proposed by Waze were off the motorway. Google and TomTom however didn’t show any problems on the motorway and planned route on the motorway, so I restarted Waze. After replanning it showed the same back road, but I decided to follow the motorway.
To my amazement, when I ignored routes proposed by Waze and continued on the motorway, Waze rerouted and stated that this route is 5 minutes shorter than those proposed by Waze!
Original router is from RG22 area to KT130NY.
Normal and usually fastest route is M3 and leave at J2 to M25 and take the first exit.
Waze often ask to leave M3 at J3, but today it asked to leave at J4 or 5 which would take longer than the fastest route.
Could I please ask to shed some light on this problem?

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The time of day you mention - 6am - gives me a clue to one possibility. There are currently many overnight closures for the M3 in this area. Tonight, for example, it is closed. I saw the signs on my way to Portsmouth and Waze has a closure set from 8pm to (currently 5:32am).

What actually happens is that the Highways Agency publish a live feed of closure information for roads under their control (which includes the M3). We have then set up an automated system that analyses this feed and automatically applies the closures - including lifting them early if they end early.

Unfortunately, that depends on the feed data being accurate. If there’s a 20-mile stretch being closed, HA may not report it as open until the last cone is removed. But it you are entering the other end of the section at that time, it will appear to you that the road is completely open. We’re also dependent on the HA giving accurate information.

Whilst I understand that this is possibly causing you inconvenience, we have to strike a balance. By automatically closing the road when it’s reported, we do improve routing for a lot of users.

You can check if the M3 is closed by panning the map along your route: the closure shows up as a red/white candy-striped section.

If a closure isn’t the problem, there are other, less likely explanations, but I don’t think they’ll apply here based on the route you gave.

Thanks. I don’t recall any info about the closure displayed on the map, but this is possible.
Do you not use the same data as Google and TT? Those aps were showing correct route at the same time.
I would also thought that your system would analyse that other wazers have already used this stretch of the road.
Also could you please let me know why does Waze prefer B roads to “save” 3 minutes instead of using the motorway?
Google has similar glitches on the way back from London (like today) when it analyse very slow traffic on M25 and it asks to use very small B roads instead, but I must say that waze does it more often.
Good thing about Waze is that it does plan shorter routes which I would normally use based on my knowledge of the area, whereas G Maps will push on the main road even if this ads extra miles.

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Every new daily commute route need some tweaking. Even there are a lot of other wazers drive different parts of your route. This can take a few weeks. And what ian is mentioned is also true. Waze can send you strange routes. Exp. It will send you a long route if you leave to eary for the ferry(still closed) and the bridge takes a much longer drive. It gives you a scenic tour till it opens.

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I’m not sure who you mean by TT. Waze does take a limited amount of traffic speed data from Google, but only for roads where Waze isn’t getting enough data from Waze users and Google does have decent information. Although Google bought Waze a couple of years ago, Waze is still run as an independent company and the relationship between the two is more of a limited partnership where the two share some information.

The routing servers can take account of Waze users driving through closures. If several users are seen doing this, the routing servers will start routing through the closure, until it either ends or a period with no wazers is seen. It does take a few Wazers to enable routing through a closure.

But consider this: nearly all Waze users will be using routing (as opposed to just driving with Waze running) and Waze will be directing them around the closure. And most of them will believe Waze and take the diversion! And since Waze may well pick a diversion route that leaves the M3 much earlier than the “official” diversion route (which may be choked by traffic), they won’t get close enough to see that the closure has ended early.

As for using smaller B roads - yes Waze does have a tendency to do this more than people might think. Although Waze will give preference to “higher” road types, this isn’t done in a simple manner. For any route, the beginning & end of the route will consider all road types. The middle of the route will prefer higher road types - and the longer the route, the more strict this is. So for a (say) 200 mile route, most of the route will very strongly prefer motorways.

Now if you’re on the motorway and Waze sees a significant delay building up, it will see if it can re-route you. Since this is effectively a new route, it will now consider smaller roads at the start of it - so may take you off via smaller roads to get to the next junction because it looks quicker. Exactly this happened to me last week. I was heading west on the A12, expecting to turn onto the M25 and take the Dartford Crossing. About 3 miles from the M25, traffic was at a standstill and Waze re-routed, telling me to go past the M25. The jam was entirely caused by a tailback of traffic trying to turn left onto the M25. Instead, Waze took me further into London on the A12, then south through residential streets to the A127, then back out of London to the M25, where I was able to join and head towards Dartford - and all without stopping for anything except traffic lights.

The last thing I will mention about the Waze routing is “predictability”. Despite the app offering a “fastest” route option, that isn’t quite true. Traffic speeds can sometimes be very variable and if Waze always chose just the fastest segments, arrival times would change too much and wouldn’t be so reliable. So Waze also has a minor preference for predictable routes: things like fewer turns or less variation in traffic speed. If the motorway is starting to show sudden, unexpected slowdowns, then a minor route on which traffic is moving smoothly may be preferred - even if the time saving appears small.

I think that’s TomTom.

Yes, that’s TomTom.
After trying Waze for a bit longer I have noticed that it will use shorter route even if this will add few minutes to the trip. Knowing the area I can easily tell that two proposed routes are shorter, but those take far longer than Waze estimate due to very slow moving traffic, so it’s in my opinion leaning to much to shorter routes.

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After further tests I can say that Waze prefer shorter routes if time is similar, often directing to small B roads which take even longer than main roads. It’s even more annoying when waze shaves minute or two when I decide to take faster route.
It’s quite opposite to Google maps, but Waze should be more intelligent to consider that at 6 am a bendy B road is not better than a motorway or that a mile shorter route through a single county lane takes longer and it’s more dangerous than a wide a road.

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