Comments on the live map

Map Editors Community General Topics
1

There doesn’t to be a section in the forum to comment on the live map, so I’ll try here. (Mod, feel free to move this if there is a better place.)

I like to check the live map before I get into my car. It would be really handy if it was possible to enter a route and take a look at it before getting into the car. I do this in google maps and it’s very handy.

It would be handy if the traffic indications were given a direction, because traffic is usually not in both directions (at least during the morning and afternoon rush hours).

It wold be handy if waze would be more observant when one lane is slow, even if the the lane beside it is open. There are many places where it’s not possible to merge into slower traffic because it’s not tolerated by the drivers that were waiting to have someone bypass the traffic and cut in.

The search in live map seems to be broken. When you initially enter a word to search for (e.g., chevron), it provides list of streets, but the locations are not shown on the map. If you clock on “more results”, the street names disappear. you actually get less information. Please fix this so it actually shows locations on the map, like google maps does.

2

Hello and welcome to the forum.

You’re right that there isn’t really any section for the Livemap and I guess this forum section is as good as any. First, since this forum is community managed, we can’t actually -as community members- work on improving things on a technical level. The best we can do is share tips and tricks on how to use Waze and troubleshoot issues.

To quickly check a route using the Livemap rather than the App, I suggest you do the following once from a computer:

  • Go to the Livemap
  • Either manually click on the location where you start your usual route to get a pop-up option to “Set as Origin” or enter the address at the top
  • Once you’ve done that either type the address of your destination or find it and also click the map to “Set as destination”
  • At this point the Livemap will show you the “Route Options” on the left, below all options there is a hyperlink called “Share routes”, click this and you will be given a URL with your parameters looking like this
https://www.waze.com/livemap?lon=-123.13357&lat=49.16659&zoom=17&from_lat=49.28376&from_lon=-122.79321&to_lat=49.16659&to_lon=-123.13357&at_req=0&at_text=Now
  • Save this URL as a favorite/bookmark which you can open on any desktop or mobile device you use and that will be your quick and easy way to check traffic and suggested routes for this itinerary.
  • Repeat the steps to create another for the way back.

It’s true the Livemap doesn’t indicate the direction of traffic visually (unlike the App), but it does take it into account correctly when calculating a route.

Waze can already differentiate which lane goes faster, it cannot be seen directly on the Livemap, but it does take it into account for routing. See this example where there are two lanes, one to go straight with a short red light and one to turn left with a long red light:

To go straight the average crossing time is 11 seconds
To turn left the average crossing time is 42 seconds

N.B. This only works on the last segment before the junction node as Waze can only differentiate times based on which direction the user takes when he/she exits the segment. Depending on how the location you had in mind is mapped and if the segment is divided in smaller fractions before the junction then this may render this mechanism less effective.
For example: If the need to differentiate two lanes is on a 50m segment, but that it’s cut 5m before the junction for any reason, then only the last 5m will actually calculate ETA correctly based on exit points, while the 45m prior to the intersection node will just make an average speed of the two lanes without taking into account the next turn, since as far as it’s concerned people all exit by continuing straight onto the next 5m segment
To illustrate:

Here turning left takes longer, but the difference is only taken into account by Waze for ETA on the last segment before the actual turn takes place. The segment before that may very well see jams and traffic often on its left lane, but since people always exit straight onto the small segment, Waze just makes an average between the fast and slow lane, rendering ETA less precise than if the segment was not cut by the private road segment at the bottom and that it could consider traffic difference by lane on the full stretch of road.I should also mention that there is a way to solve this without suppressing extra nodes before junctions, Staff has developped a tool called “Junction Box” which enhances ETA calculation across multiple segments and junction nodes for every possible way the Wazer may enter and exit the junction, this needs to be installed by high level editors, so if you feel this might solve your ETA problem you could ask the Champs in Canada about it so that they can check if it would be worth installing one there or not.

As a last tip, since you like checking the Livemap, here is a script which may interest you:
https://greasyfork.org/scripts/10624-waze-live-map-big-moods
(Needs the Tampermonkey Chrome add-on or Greasemonkey Firefox add-on to run on your computer browser)

When you look at the Livemap with a high zoom, most reports on the map are minimized and you can’t easily spot them or know what they are, this script will make any report always big at any zoom level for easier viewing, see pic:

3

Thank you for the very helpful reply. Much appreciated!