Copying the Hangout conversation to continue it here:
Aleksandr
Tim
David
I doubt that Waze uses Google Maps data in Ireland. I was comparing Waze and Google Maps many times in Dublin. Waze sees only a tiny fraction of the traffic congestion that Google Maps sees. So I have a big hope that Waze routing can be improved dramatically here because I already saw such a dramatic improvement in the city I’m from.
Thanks Aleksandr.
I’ve just emailed our contact in Waze HQ to ask about this. Can you say what city in Russia you’re from? Does it appear here, or does it have a much higher population compared to Dublin? It’d be interesting to know whether Waze shows a better view of traffic congestion just because there are more users there.
I’ll let you know what we hear back from Waze HQ.
++David
It’s the city of Krasnodar. It doesn’t appear in the Active Wazers statistics.
It has roughly the same population as Dublin, about one million. The city always had the same problem in Waze as Dublin: low number of users (and mappers) and as a result, too little traffic information and sub-optimal routing during peak hours. Then one or two years ago I noticed that traffic coverage increased very much. For example the city center was looking almost completely red during peak hours. And the streets were really congested exactly as Waze was showing. It was looking as if the number of active Waze users increase by several orders of magnitude.
I asked a local Waze champ what happened that the number of users increased so quickly and so much. He said that Waze started importing traffic data from Google Maps. So it’s not direct information from Waze. It may be not 100% correct. But it was looking exactly like traffic data import from Google Maps. It’s unrealistic that the number of users just increased naturally like that.
Even the capital of Russia (Moscow with 12 million population) has quite low number of users: up to 800. Extrapolating that number to Krasnodar, I think the number of users in Krasnodar is even lower than in Dublin (which is up to 300)
Hi guys,
You might be interested by a discussion started a while ago and how real-time traffic data and Google Traffic are sourced, see here.
It would be great if Waze can add the Google traffic data as suggested especially as it does not seem to have any CCP programs with Irish authorities about sharing data, am I wrong David? :roll:
You’re right - we don’t have a CCP programme to connect Waze with Dublin (and vice versa) … I do have the name of a couple of people in Dublin City Council though and a conversation had been started a while ago to get them involved, but I think that fizzled out…
So it would be worth trying to kickstart that again.
++David
Hi David. Any news from Waze HQ?
Err, no - sorry. I think our community contact has changed from one person to the other over the last few weeks, so I’ll contact the new person - I think my request probably got lost during the transition.
++David
Good news; just in from HQ:
So let us know how it works out - and as the message mentions, send on the details for any issues.
++David
I rejoined WAZE on the strength of the previous comment as repeated below. So far, I’ve seen no Google Traffic influence, although the number of Wazers is now higher in Dublin.
“Waze HQ wrote:
We enabled the google traffic data for Ireland now, by next week you will see more jams on the map and better ETA.”
David, thanks a lot for the great news and for pushing the request to the HQ! Sorry for the late “thank you”. The notifications from this thread stopped coming to me, so I didn’t notice your reply until now.
To be honest I started testing Google Maps during last two weeks and didn’t use Waze. But I will be happy to return back to Waze.
Looking at the Waze and Google Maps, looks like Waze still doesn’t have traffic data from Google. But let’s hope it’s just a delay that HQ mentioned.
Yeah, my own impression is that there is more heavy traffic shown on the Waze map, which is a good thing - but I rarely drive at peak times, so it’s quite possible that a lot of heavy traffic is still missing.
However, there have been reports of traffic not showing up as much as it should (compared to Google maps), so we’ve sent specific examples on to Waze HQ, and it’s being looked at…
++David
Waze still doesn’t see many traffic congestions that Google sees and makes very inaccurate ETAs during peak hours when Google makes much better ETAs. So import of Google traffic data to Waze definitely doesn’t work properly.
David, do they need more examples of such issues? I could send them some.
'morning Alex,
More examples would be great. If you post them here I’ll send them on to our community contact in Waze HQ - thanks!
++David
This is an example from today.
Waze didn’t see a standstill traffic near Dundrum Shopping Center.
Date/time: April 15, 2018 2:16pm UTC+1
Start/end points of the route
Will try to catch more similar issues next week.
Thanks Alex. I’ve passed this on to our community contact in Waze HQ. I’ve also asked them whether Google Maps has access to a different source of traffic congestion that might not be available to Waze - that could provide an explanation.
I’ll let you know what I hear back.
++David
Thanks David!
I have a theory why Waze doesn’t see heavy traffic in some places but sees it in others. And it correlates quite well (not 100% always though) with what I see on the maps. Looks like the issue happens on the roads that have different names on Waze and Google maps.
I suppose Waze may import not raw GPS tracks from Google maps, but traffic data in some preprocessed form. Google maps may link each GPS track to a road. Waze may take that preprocessed data with road names and try to correlate it with its map by comparing the road names. If a road name differs it may not able to correlate Google data with its map, so it may not able to import such data.
On the other side, in the places where I definitely saw heavy traffic correlation between Google and Waze, road names were always the same.
Some proofs of the theory:
- My yesterday’s example: Google’s road name is Wyckham Way. Waze’s name is Ballinteer Rd.
- Another example where I saw significant traffic mismatch: Google’s name is Stocking Ln. Waze’s name is R115.
- Another example: Google doesn’t have a road name. Waze’s name is Ballycullen Rd.
May be worth forwarding it to Waze HQ as well.
That makes sense to me - I suppose it has to match on something, although you’d hope that roads that cover almost exactly the same path should be enough - after all, countries with multiple languages could easily have a mixture of road names in the different languages.
Do you think Google is capable of disregarding the R115 (or similar) that we use at the start of road names and just using the name part that comes after the number, assuming we have it? We do have quite a few roads where we just have the number (like “R115” and nothing else.
We should ideally add the proper road name, but not necessarily what is shown on the Google map, both because we must not copy information from the Google map and also because it’s frequently wrong anyway. I hope we get information from Waze about how it matches roads on the Google map with roads on the Waze map. You’d hope that it doesn’t just use road names, but matches based on the physical location of the roads!
I pointed them at this conversation when I sent the email this morning, so they should hopefully read everything in here.
++David
Perhaps it’s not a problem for Google/Waze. It’s difficult to say for sure but for example here Waze’s name is ‘R110 Crumlin Rd’ but looks like traffic is imported correctly.
Another example: R117 Sandyford Rd. Yesterday heavy traffic looked ok in Waze here (see my screenshots above).