I’m pretty new to Waze and brand new to the forum, so please accept my apologies if these topics have been discussed at length. I didn’t notice them if they have.
Avoid Tolls - Where I live, Waze tries to get me to take the toll roads constantly. I’d rather take an extra 5 minutes to get where I’m going and save the $3+ in tolls. Obviously to implement this would mean being able to mark the road as a toll, which doesn’t seem to be an option yet. I’d love to see this implemented.
Hybrid/Economy Route - I drive a hybrid and get insanely good mileage on surface streets despite stop lights and traffic. I’d like to see an option for routing that blends a bit of shortest route vs. fastest route for hypermilers like myself that are looking to be super efficient with the gasoline, but still don’t want to waste too much time.
Permanent Settings - I have noticed that when I restart Waze on my iPhone that my Navigation Settings always revert back to “Fastest”, “Minimize turns: On”, and “Avoid highways: Off”. It would be nice if these settings would stay permanent between launches of the app.
I think the idea behind Waze is brilliant and look forward to making it even better with the rest of you!
1: Agreed on the way to mark a road as Toll, so that users can choose to avoid or not Avoid Toll roads. I’ve labeled the one Toll road in my area with a Parenthetical (TOLL), but that does nothing to help avoid the road in the first place.
2: You know that Hybrids get the best mileage in areas with traffic lights and heavy stop and go? Their mileage drops on the open highway rather than the other way around. So your best option is to set the Avoid Freeways option as that’s where you will get the worst mileage.
3: Haven’t noticed that problem in the Android version (or maybe I just haven’t set any of those settings that keep reverting back on you,) so I can’t say much to this one.
It seems a natural progression to mark a road as toll. In my area we have a few “freeways” that are toll roads and then causeways to the beach that have tolls as well. I’m thinking that a simple checkbox would be the perfect option since the kind of streets would run the gamut.
Since my original post, I’ve been playing around with the “Shortest Route” option and have noticed that it is more of a blend with “Fastest Route” than I originally thought. I gathered this from it wanting to keep me on a Major Highway so badly that it tried to get me make a U-turn to get back to it despite my way on a normal street being significantly shorter. Once it “gave up” on getting me to turn around, it reported my distance left as much shorter, but my time to arrival as longer. This tells me that time is still a factor on “Shortest Route”. Does anyone know the details on this? Please link if you do.
Re: Avoid Freeways… this would be a nice option, but on my phone it actually says “Avoid Highways”. I have no desire to avoid Major and/or Minor Highways as they tend to be perfect roads for my car in this area with travel speeds no more than 55 mph. Does anyone have any familiarity with using this option? I imagine after this posting I will start running my own experiments on it.
Since my original posting, my Navigation Type has finally agreed to let me stay on “Shortest” between launches of the app, but “Minimize turns” and “Avoid highways” always revert. Perhaps if I selected them over and over and over like I did with “Shortest route” they would also default.
I have played around with “Minimize turns” and it has never changed a routing for me. I agree with CBenson that it likely doesn’t change the routing algorithm.
Ok, first testing of “Avoid highways”. (Shortest Route, Minimize Turns, Avoid Highways) It avoided ALL Freeways, Major Highways, and Minor Highways as predicted. In fact, it avoided them entirely! It took a 40-50 min drive and turned it into an hour and a half.
Second testing of “Avoid highways”. (Fastest Route, Minimize Turns, Avoid Highways) It began to avoid highways, but then halfway to destination seemed to freak out and start taking a very bizarre route that included I-95, I-595, Florida’s Tpk, and I-95 again (all designated Freeways). It took a 40-50 min drive and turned it into about an hour and 20 minutes. The distance was ridiculously longer than normal (about 40 miles instead of 22). This is the worst possible routing. It is very long, not fast, and doesn’t even avoid Freeways like I would imagine “Avoid highways” would suggest it should do. No benefit to this routing combination whatsoever. I’m beginning to think that “Avoid highways” simply avoids Major and Minor Highways and NOT Freeways. Tell me this makes any sense.
The funny thing is, it took many Primary Streets that are essentially equivalent to the Minor Highways of the region but just don’t have a SR-# designation.
This is a completely useless feature. I think “Avoid Freeways” would be infinitely more useful.
I do not. But upon further thought, I have a guess. My understanding is that waze only looks at regular streets for routing during a certain distance from the ends of the route. In other words to make the routing decisions manageable, waze doesn’t route over streets in the middle of a long route. I would guess that waze is simply substituting distance data instead of time data for each segment when we select shortest route instead of fastest route. However, if the routine still doesn’t look at streets in the middle of long routes, then you won’t get the absolute shortest route if that route has streets in the middle.
You may be right. The route in question involved a long “Street”. I have since upgraded it to a “Primary Street”, but it has yet to update to the client. I wonder if this will have an impact.
I think that primary routes are also excluded, but from a longer distance from the ends of the route than regular streets. Thus, depending on how long the route is switching to primary might have an effect.
That would make sense. My area is a complete disaster. Many huge thoroughfares (3+ lanes each way) are/were of type “Street” and are/were likely getting disregarded by the routing algorithm. I’m doing my best to fix things, but there is a long way to go.
