OK - a few times I’ve posted on this idea but not on it’s own topic - so I thought I’d make it a topic :mrgreen:
So waze sells itself of saving time and saving the environment. But what strikes me is that I don’t actually always want the absolute fastest way. Things I might consider:
• Nicer more scenic route: going over the Anzac Bridge you get some pretty nice views. There’s a saying in Sydney - if your commute involves looking into the sun, you’re poor. Fairy nuff, but if you’re poor you might as well see something pretty. It adds to your life.
• Stop/Start: brake, accelerate. brake, accelerate. brake, accelerate. At some point the stop/start that our traffic authorities (in Sydney at least) seem so hell bent on has to cost more money than cruising, even at a lower speed.
• Danger/Stress: King Street Newtown in the morning, or McEvoy St anytime is like playing dodgem cars but with the real thing. There’s an awful mix of speeds; taxi drivers that will stop on a dime for a fare with no regard for safety; people turning and clogging a whole lane - it’s pretty dangerous and stressful driving on these roads & I’d be surprised if the accident rate doesn’t bear that out. So I’d love to avoid these areas
• Traffic Obstructions: this would be a hard one for waze. I’m talking about speed humps primarily. Through roads that councils don’t want people to use often grow speed humps. These are great roads to use when you’re in a hurry, but using them every day is probably not good for your car or your temper.
• Escape routes: give me ways that I could avoid traffic if I encountered it. A highway come parking lot doesn’t give you any option to go another way, or even just opt out by parking the car & getting a coffee while everyone else gets out of your way.
• At a particular time of day some routes are just going to be full. They may be fastest technically, but you still don’t always feel like crawling along a major freeway at 1% of it’s maximum speed. Maybe you could have a “To hell with it, take me a totally different way for sheets & giggles” option.
These are some considerations. I’m sure there are others.
On my wish list would be a series of checkboxes of route alternatives “Scenic”, “Smooth”, “Safe”, “Random” et al. with “if it adds less than <slider>% of time to the journey”
Some of these ideas are already covered like avoiding toll roads (who cares, really) and minimize turns (not really applicable for my route) and something to do with snacks or something? (not implemented here in Sydney).
I’d be really interested in what stats bear out with respect to road safety, fuel consumption, and just plain wear & tear on your car with respect to different routes.
I agree with you, especially when you mention scenic route. That could lead Waze to encourage people to use it while on vacation (very good for road data collection in remote areas) and use the strength of the community for a mix of a native 4square/yelp/TripAdvisor system.
But as for avoiding motorways, try to do a little test. I did it to check how fast it would be to get from Paris to a city 80 km away, with and without the ‘avoid motorways’ option. Result : 50 minutes on the congested motorway and 110 minutes through the suburbs main arteries and small streets. We have a community large enough here to trust the speed data used for the computing (and no obvious map problem for the routes suggested).
From my experience it’s much more relaxing to be a sheep following the rest of the herd on a motorway. Plus you can count how many fellow commuters enjoy nose picking. In the suburbs, trying to get through a congested xroad with red light can be very stressful and you can’t anticipate it.
Waze has stated before they have some plans for a “profile” of some sort whereby you can specify how aggressive the routing should be for you, such as rerouting quickly to save just 30seconds, or to only reroute if it will save more than x minutes, etc.
What you are proposing is interesting, and somewhat similar. When Waze gets to being a general nav system instead of aimed at the commuter market, this would be a good feature to have.
I love waze. I think it’ll add to the quality of my life and maybe save me money too. This is the spirit in which I offer these thoughts. I’m not always interested in just saving 5 minutes on a trip. In fact that’s really a very small factor, everything considered.
Bravo on the aggressive rerouting, that totally makes sense. Sorry if I’ve missed the previous statements - it’s easy on a busy site.
I work graveyard at the moment. Driving to work in the afternoon I’m not in a hurry and actually prefer to stay away from fastest-route because it takes me past downtown. Theres no traffic snarls, just more lanes and more traffic. It always routes me that way and I always take the bypass Interstate and go up and around. The difference is only 2-3 minutes, but it’s a much nicer cruise.
I think with all the user data anything is possible. With the right algorythm and database I don’t see why many more options couldn’t become a reality at some point.
Waze doesn’t learn routes… It learns your common destinations…
Waze also “learns” information about the roads you travel - average speed (broken down into 10-15 minute increments), time at the ends of segments (how long it takes to make each turn), etc. It uses all that data to determine the fastest route.
When Waze suggests “wrong” directions consistently you can help it “learn” by driving both your preferred route as well as the “wrong” route several times. Waze will take that data into consideration and “learn” the faster route.
Maybe the “wrong” route is actually faster, maybe it isn’t and Waze needs more data, maybe some Wazer drove the “wrong” road several times 20mph over the speed limit and fed Waze bad data making Waze think it’s faster, maybe some other Wazer rode his bicycle down the “right” way at 5mph and fed Waze bad data making Waze think it’s slower. There is also the possibility there are errors on the map that need to be fixed.
Waze also “learns” if roads are two-way or one-way, which turns are allowed after a basemap import by “seeing” which ways drivers go on roads & which turns they use (and don’t use).
OMG, so what you’re saying is I have to do the speed limit or i’m messing up the average speed of the road thereby skewing any route time calculations done by Waze for other Wazers who actually follow the speed limit?
No… Go with the flow of traffic… While 20mph over may be OK on the highway where you are (in most places it isn’t - and actually a criminal offense, not just a speeding ticket)… I was using 20mph as an example on surface streets - sorry I wasn’t clear about that, but most of the “this way” vs “that way” discussions are on surface streets.
I understood waze learns my routes too. I don’t know how I got confused, but I’m slightly relieved that I’m not the only dumbass that did.
For pioneers like myself, this is completely problematic. Waze wants to send me down routes that will take me ways I can’t follow, because I have a young child in the car and other people. I can’t sit in traffic for 2 hours. I wish where there was a lack of data waze would yield a little more easily. But I’ve just given up & simply ignore it, preferring instead to feed waze my data & wait for the day that I’m not the only one travelling my route at my time et al. & in the meantime I keep pleading with people to use waze. It’s like pissing against the wind.
On my routes, at my time, not possible. Not even close. But I have no way of telling waze this which effectively totally discounts my experience.
yup - I think it’s remarkable as it is & look forward to its improvements.
On the Sydney Harbour Bridge - and surely on other roads in the world - the lane directions and routes are controlled by the traffic authority. This means you’ll have lanes recording traffic in two different directions which are both valid. Is this taken into account by Waze?
Commercial GPS isn’t accurate enough to tell which lane you are in… Waze also tends to keep you snapped to the navigation route… I looked at the bridge in the editor - and the three one-way segments confused me for a bit, but then I noticed that one of them is named differently. The big question to ask is “Is it currently working properly for routing & not creating MPs & URs or are there constantly problems reported on the bridge?” If it’s working properly, leave it alone.
On my journey home I always travel Sydney Habour Bridge -> Anzac Bridge. The path is straight, you just keep to the right & then to the left. But waze is always wanting me to travel various ways through the heart of the Sydney CBD which could potentially add an hour to a 5 minute trip. Note - in the morning if you keep right when going off the bridge you’ll actually wind up in the city centre. The idea is to follow the signs. To me it looks like waze will always have significant trouble here.
Yea, after I posted, I was poking around on StreetView and going back and forth across the bridge a few times (in each of the 3 “roads”)… I noticed an adjustable sign that was used to indicate which lane to be in to get to specific streets - Waze can’t know what that sign says, so it won’t be able to get you in the correct lane… Have you looked at the various approaches to the bridge to make sure there aren’t any strange map errors to avoid that extra hour you mention? Does it work properly when there is no traffic?
I’ve had a look at the map, but it’s chaos with multiple levels and directions. It looked right enough, I gave up I admit. I keep meaning to have another look.
You also must understand that I have to generalise when I’m making statements about an extra hour. It might not take that long. If you’re extraordinarily lucky, it might take another 20 minutes. The thrust of my point is that it definitely is not, and will pretty much never be, faster.
When someone talks to me about New Zealand, I sort of scoff because it’s so much smaller than Australia. So I get it when an American hears about Australia. It’s not being mean, it’s just that there’s only 21 million or so of us. However it’s worth looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population and then bearing in mind that Sydney’s population is over 5 million people. Getting the bridge right will be pretty critical to waze if you want a good slice of that market.
But these are good. :shock:
