Hello!
Waze takes me on a small road every day and it looks like it’s a “minor highway” even though it’s only two lanes (one each direction) and there’s a speed limit of 25, stop signs, and speed bumps. Is that right—should it still be a minor highway when it’s so small?
Additionally, also on my route is a crappy, crappy road that tries to shake my car apart. What’s the process for marking those roads as ‘to-avoid’?
Thanks!
We follow the state designation for arteries to label minor highways. That is why those roads are a minor highway. This should not effect your route all that much if you drive the road every day. Waze is trying to find you the fastest route, so once you drive it enough waze gathers enough real speed data to override any default speed data taken from the assigned road type.
There is not currently a method to mark roads to avoid. The way the process is intended to work is that you drive slowly on the crappy roads, waze learns that they are slow, and then waze finds a faster route.
Gotcha. Thanks!
I was afraid that my driving those roads was a way of ‘approving’ them. There’s a section of road that’s always dark red that the app always wants me to turn left onto. I’ve been avoiding that mess for months and it still tries to take me that way.
Which road is the dark red one? I’m not saying that there aren’t errors on the map that may cause problems. Just that we don’t see any in that area. If we can try the route too, we might be able to find any errors.
If you want to help out improving the map join us in Maryland hangout as mentioned in the post above.
East-West Highway is always dark red in the morning and the app keeps telling me to go north on Glendale and turn left onto East-West. If I squeeze my way across East-West, it then takes me north a block, then west, and directs me to make a left turn onto a usually-dark-red south-bound Connecticut—again, that’s just not realistic.
Instead, I’ve been taking Leland to Connecticut, then turning left on East-West at the light.
Yeah, I see what you mean. So essentially you are on Leland and need to head west on East-West Hwy.
So what I think is happening is that waze always has plenty of data for the heavy traffic on Connecticut and East-West Hwy (likely including data that the left from Connecticut to East-West is slow). Thus, waze looks to the various other possible routes. But as people avoid turning left or crossing East-West from Glendale, waze doesn’t have data to show those alternatives are slow too. I suspect that if you actually drive the waze suggested route enough, waze will catch on and learn to avoid the lefts that aren’t at the light.
I used to commute from east of DC to downtown. Back when there was the construction on the NY Ave bridge over the Amtrak tracks, waze would frequently try to find ways to get me up to Rhode Island Ave. It was always trying to get me to turn left from some side street onto the stopped traffic on Rhode Island. I would take the route a handful of times, then waze would decide it wasn’t good and would try the next intersection. It did seem that waze would learn what was slow. I just had to go through those very slow turns to make it happen.
Ah…gotcha…
Whereas I see the dark red road, the line of cars stretching out of sight to the right, the cars stacking up behind me, and get frustrated at sitting still.
Exactly. Waze has a problem that it doesn’t get data for turns that are so obviously inferior/slow that no one actually takes them. Waze is aware that this is a problem and is working on solutions.