It seems that Waze is unable to correctly route from 99N to I-5N in the central valley.
The quickest route from Ripon to downtown Sacramento (and every route that goes from 99N south of Stockton to 5N north of Sacramento) is almost always 99N -> 4W -> 5N (even after taking into account construction in Stockton). Waze will only offer me this route if I ask for a new route after passing French Camp Road, and even though it shows it as the quickest route, it will choose the route across Sacramento instead (99N -> 50W -> 5N) by default.
I have my client set to choose the fastest route, and I’ve driven this route almost exclusively every other night for several months, but for some reason, Waze still doesn’t offer me this route as an option when I start driving. Does anyone know why this might be?
Driving the opposite way, this does not seem to be a problem.
It does think that it’s faster on highway 4, but it doesn’t even offer 4 as a route unless it’s the next major exit, and chooses 50 even when 50 is slower (by its own calculation).
I’ll be driving it again in about an hour, so maybe I can take some screenshots that might make the weirdness a little easier to understand.
Alright, this is a transcription of the screenshots:
(the I-5 route listed was via SR-120 W)
(the I-5 route listed was via French Camp Road)
(the I-5 route listed was via SR-4 W)
So my first question is why doesn’t Waze offer the (clearly faster) SR-4 route from the very beginning for its I-5 option? It’s faster than both the French Camp Road and SR-120 routes, and is shorter than the SR-120 route.
My second question is, why does Waze default to the SR-99 N; US-50 W / I-80 Bus W route, even though the SR-4 W; I-5 N route is faster? It did this even when I stopped and restarted navigation about a mile before SR-4, while it was showing that route as the fastest.