Based on this UR, Waze consistently tries to route drives heading Eastbound on SR-24 to Exit 8 when going to the mall.
Anyone who’s driven this area knows that Exit 7 is the more efficient way, and it is signed accordingly. I’m not sure if there’s much we can do to remedy this however.
Thoughts?
Hi there. I’m not familiar with this area, but just reviewing on the map, it certainly looks like a much better/faster option to take exit 8 vs exit 7. If I’m looking at it right, it looks like if you take exit 7 you would have to do the following:
Taking exit 8, you come off of 24 on to 124 just before the left on summit. I’m probably missing something here not being familiar with it, but the second option seems much easier in my opinion.
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The problem with 8 is that you get funneled onto a much smaller access road to the mall’s back entrance, and it is routinely backed up there. The signage puts people towards exit 7 because it can handle a larger volume of traffic to the various mall entrances. My real issue is that the signage says to take Exit 7 and it could be confusing with Waze by default, routing to 8.
Is the route I described accurate or is there another way to get to the mall from exit 7?
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Have either of you reviewed what the correct route is? There are inherent problems with the set-up exit path from Exit 7 to the JFK Parkway North.
The problem lies within these segments. My suspicion is that current set-up is creating some “hardcore” route pruning because of the street type segments right before turning onto JFK Parkway.
My recommendation would be to upgrade all segments from SR-24 to JFK Parkway North to MH to avoid any pruning effects.
EDIT: My question would be why are those segment connecting JFK Parkway street segment types. You may want to ask Fredo since he touched one of those last. I also saw your name on there too Mister.
@antsgomarching actually the signed and normal route is to get on SR-124 as you described, but take the first exit “to JFK Pkwy / The Mall at Short Hills, Summit, New Jersey” which lets you get on JFK Pkwy towards the mall. It appears convoluted but traffic flows better.
@PleaseDriveFast I agree those segments should be minor hwy instead. I didn’t change them straight away as I wanted to discuss here first. Going to make the change and see how routing improves.
I would dare say we might even consider bumping them up to Major Highway. If you look slightly further North the functional classification of JFK becomes a Major Highway right at the short hills Mall. Waze may not see this as an optimal route because of the mH segments inbetween the Exit 7 and the Major Highway portion of JFK.
However, I’m NOT overly concerned as the Exit 8 segment also has a mH segment connecting both sides of SR-124. You can try the mH upgrade and see how it works.
EDIT: added clarifying word in all caps to last paragraph.
Ok, so there are a couple things to consider here:
First, all of the segments selected here should probably be MH, since it’s both the signed and only connection path between John F Kennedy Pkwy and Route 124 E, both of which are MH.
Second, has anyone reviewed the Short Hills Mall place itself? Is the stop point in the best place for where you would expect it to route you if you merely search for Short Hills Mall, or The Mall at Short Hills, or whatever it is called? Right now, it looks like the stop point is closest to the approach along Canoe Brook Rd, which is probably not the main approach to the mall, and may explain some of the URs there.
Does this make sense to everyone?
Agree that Canoe Brook Rd is not where people usually want to go, which is where the point “Short Hills Mall (Canoe Brook Rd)” points you. It’s actually a fine way to get in, but it’s not what people usually expect.
Knowing the mall layout fairly well, I think the problem is that where you want to enter depends on where you’re coming from.
If you’re coming from SR-24 W, you typically want to enter from this segment. That brings you directly to the main garages, valet parking (if you’re so inclinded), or through to the JFK parkway side if you prefer.
However, if you’re coming from SR-24 E or JFK parkway, you probably more want to enter somewhere around these segments.
Unless Waze has a feature to have two points and select the fastest to get to from your destination, I’m not sure you can make everyone happy.
On a side note, if I search for “Short Hills Mall” on the Waze web map, the first result I get says “to JFK Pkwy / The Mall at Short Hills, Summit, NJ”, but that maps to a point on SR-124 east which is completely in the wrong place.
So it is not currently possible to have 2 different stop points, so we have to decide on one go with it.
Here’s the caveats as I see them:
If we move the stop point closer the main entrance, it will boost the chances of Exit 7 being correctly used when coming from the west. However, it will also boost the chances of being told to go past the marked mall entrance and via John F Kennedy Pkwy near Exit 7 when coming from the east.
If we move the stop point closer the parking garages on the west side, we get the opposite effect from the above. Coming from the east, you’ll likely approach correctly, but coming from the west, there’s a good chance Waze will see it as slightly faster to go to Exit 8, make the U-turn there, and use the mall entrance like if you were coming from the east. In fact, we could have this problem coming from the north or south.
If we put the stop point kind of in the middle as best as we can, we get the equivalent of a coin toss between the first 2 things I mentioned.
I would say, let’s create the main mall’s stop point near the entrance off John F Kennedy Pkwy and create place points inside for the individual garages themselves. Also, because their results are so interconnected with Waze’s, let’s go over on Google Maps and clean up their results as well by searching for the Mall and fixing any bad results through the Report Feedback function.
Then we can see how it works…
The third way is to add PLRs between the two entrances and put the stop point on the PLR.
Q, did you mean PLRs or walking trail? In either case, I’m not sure that treatment would be very effective here because the parking lot roads outside the mall between the 2 entrances are too closely interconnected. That is, Waze will simply route you to whichever side is closer to the stop point, since it’s not really much of a detour to go to the other side.
There are parking lot roads between the two entrances on the map that look correct. But I agree that Waze never seems to use those and in this case the routing around the exterior of the mall lot is fairly direct.
The PLR trick only works if Waze will see the PLR as a more direct route than the outside road. And I did mean PLR, but you can experiment with a walking trail. Last I heard, WT will typically route to the segment that is closest to the walking trail, not necessarily to the part of teh WT closes to the destination.
Interesting, did not know that.
To start, I changed the relevant segments to MH from minor, as you can see here. I want to see if that changes the routing at all.
Something else to note, the mall’s address is technically 1200 Morris Turnpike, Short Hills, NJ 07078 – which is SR-124, paralleling SR-24 right there. I’m not sure if that is being used when navigating to the default option that appears in Waze when searching for “short hills mall”. Have to play with it some more…
I’m not sure those changed segments will have any impact; there’s no connection path between 24/124 and JFK Pkwy south of that cutoff.
If we make the mall approach on Morris Tpk based on its address, Waze will almost never route to the mall correctly according to posted signage along Route 24 E.
So I’m fairly certain it’s fixed now. If you go to the livemap and ask for directions to “The Mall at Short Hills” (first hit when you search for it) from anywhere west of it (I just put in 07869 and let it go from there), it correctly navigates now.
I believe this was more due to me moving the location marker to the proper entrance of the mall than the MH changes.
Someone else give it a shot and let me know if it navigates the same.
But how does navigation from the east work?
Looks OK. The primary route still takes you off the correct exit from the EB SR-24 lanes. At that point, you have numerous options. Yes, it’s routing you to the “entrance” off JFK, but I would say this is a fair compromise.
Seems reasonable at a quick glance.