Why would waze route someone like this?
You might be best asking PealRinger as he’s recently (Dec 6th) edited these segments but best guess would be a turn restriction accidently stopping routing along Rochdale Rd so Waze finds a route around the issue.
Based on the age of the report it is likely now to be fixed.
Snapshot mode suggests that prior to PealRingers recent edits, those segments were last touched a couple of years ago, and given that it’s not a quiet side road I’d be amazed if an incorrectly set turn restriction had been preventing through-routing at that node all this time.
Snapshot mode also suggests that prior to the speed limit along there being verified at 30MPH (which appears to be the edit responsible for putting PealRingers name on these segments now), Waze had the limit set to an unverified 60MPH…
Given the quite significant difference between the user-data-derived and actual limits here, this suggests either that the limit was fairly recently lowered, or that the typical flow of traffic here is fast enough to make it appear that the limit is higher than it really is. In this latter case, any short-term significant reduction in the reported traffic speed through that segment (e.g. a cyclist/pedestrian bimbling along there with the app running) would then cause such a large difference between the predicted and realtime speed data that it’d look like a serious bit of congestion to be avoided if at all possible.
Now, whilst it still feels a bit unrealistic that Waze would then bother to calculate an alternate route just to avoid that one short segment (I’m not about to do the calculations to work out just how slow the main road traffic would need to be going across that segment for that alternate route to be faster if traversed at a reasonable speed), it’s not entirely unheard of for Waze to throw out some dubious rerouting suggestions just for the sake of skipping one particularly slow-moving segment, and this sort of realtime-data-influenced error would at least explain why the underlying map data (both currently and in the snapshot view) doesn’t seem to provide any direct explanation for this route being suggested.
Hello, did someone mention my name?
I can’t recall this section in particular so I suspect my edit was purely setting the speed limit on some B roads in the area. Testing on LiveMap suggests routing is working fine now, and as there’s only one UR I’d be tempted to close as a one-off.
Twister is right about realtime speed data affecting the routing, so could be a cyclist or a driver stopping to answer the phone for a few minutes without pausing Waze … but remember that it’s the speed on the (much longer) preceding segment that could affect this too, as Waze records a different speed on a segment depending on the exit taken. This is how it allows for filter lanes or slow right turns across traffic etc.
It’s unusual to see this where the detour prevention would have kicked in (all main road segments have the same name) but not unheard off - unless of course this was edited in the meantime. Oh for an edit history please Waze!
Thanks for the answers I have closed the report down for now 
What wondrous delights await those who are dedicated (mad) enough to reach L4 
I’d forgotten snapshot was still being restricted to L4 and above - of all the level-based restrictions imposed on us in WME, this surely ranks (ahem) as one of the most unfathomable decisions the devs have made…