It could be from weather - like when a section of road is impassible due to water on the road or downed tree crossing both lanes - but it could also be from festival closures, parades, protests, police action, etc. These are not construction events but still temporary full closures which will make you change your course… best to avoid with advanced warning by others ahead.
Idealy there should be some way for the waze routing algorthm to take into account reported closures so that routes will no be generated through them. Currently, I suspect that waze sometimes intreprets a closed road as not backed up (as many of the surrounding routes are when there is an incident that closes a road) and thus can actually prefer to route on the closed road. This can be a significant problem.
I’m not really in favor of adding a whole bunch of reporting options. But absent a method for reporting a temporary road closure that the routing algorithm would take into account, I would like to see a entire new category of “Road Closed” with its own icon for display on the map. I see tons of police reports, accident reports and hazard reports where the incident doesn’t actually slow the traffic significantly. Even when the reported incident does slow the traffic, I trust waze to reroute me. The police reports, accident reports and hazard reports that I really want to stand out are those that are reporting road closures.
This weekend, this one put me into a rerouting loop waze couldn’t reoute me out of. It kept looping me back to the same intersection. I had to turn it off and pull out a physical map to get around the flooded areas.
That sucks terribly. Did Waze only show one route under the alternate routes?
Waze keeps routing me onto a freeway onramp that is closed for construction each night for the next several months, and I keep getting caught.
Also, at this very moment, the CHP has closed a section of I-5 south due to an accident, yet there’s no way for me to warn everyone.
In thinking about adding this as a reporting feature — keep in mind that it may require a user to adjust the location of the closure, and not just report wherever you are when you tap the button, since closures often require quick maneuvering to get around, so there are no hands for reporting, and even if there is time, you can’t get on the closed part of the road (obviously).
It is unlikely that Waze will allow road closures to be activated via the application. Too much room for people screwing around. You think that ping and chit chat is annoying? Hate to remove hundreds or thousands of speed, red light, and dummy cameras that were misreported in the application (many from the exact location of a home where Wazers were obviously playing around)?
Imagine being routed 60 minutes out of the Waze because someone thought it was cute to close a road. No thanks.
Report it as an accident. Put some details such as “6:00pm, I-5 S closed at Exit 123 due to accident”.
A Wazer who is paying attention and looking at the reports will have a chance to detour. In addition, as traffic builds and Wazers get stuck, other Wazers will likely be routed a faster way automatically.
Seems pretty easy for waze to verify if a road is closed or not. If there is traffic on the road disregard the report of the closure. Of all the ways to mess up waze, this has got to be one of the easiest ones for waze to deal with.
I agree that some solution is required. There were several large highways and local roads closed in my area for a bike race through the city. Waze was next to useless at that point, as it kept trying to direct me back to the various closed exits and roads.
I am sure you could aleviate potential Waze issues by allowing someone to designate a road is closed and having several people, or a location admin approve the report. Say, once 10 people agree, or a local area admin approve it, then it will be in effect for a particular time.
Having the ability to set roads as accessible during parts of the day are also a good idea. For example, certain HOV lanes are only accessible in a specific direction at particular times of day, and are permanent. These types of settings could easily have some sort of Waze admin approval and will fix the overal issue.
Check out THIS thread about what Waze was able to do about temporary closures around the Boston Marathon… There is some official Waze comment in it…
I agree with some measure being needed. A system for reporting and activating temporary closures that don’t require map updates. Here in Utah we have our major N/S interstate I-15 getting a major rebuild through one county. Last month two interchanges were closed for a couple weeks. This month two other interchanges are closed, but the time frames of the closures and the still too random map update schedule makes it unfeasible to close those interchanges with the hopes that the closures and subsequent re-openings go live at a reasonable time. Instead I just mark all the UR’s complaining about being routed through the closed exits as solved, but I don’t like not being able to give any reason behind my inaction to the Wazer who reported it, or being able to effectively manage those closures.
Let AM’s be able to set a closure for up to a week at a time, and have that closure go live. Then if the system detects traffic on the closed route or the time expires or the originating or any other AM revokes the closure and the closure goes away.
As to the accident closing the freeway. An accident report followed by the building traffic should effectively trigger the re-routing automatically. Maybe not at the point of the accident or after it, but at the last exit prior to the accident the traffic will be so severe that Waze will route around it. I’ve seen it happen to me a couple times. I’ve been told by Waze to get off the freeway miles from my destination and then hearing about the accident on the radio. One time the back-up was within sight of the exit Waze took me off at. So that part works. It also worked during the last marathon in Salt Lake City.
Construction closures is where we need a bit of a feature fix/add-on.
If you close or restrict the road till waze sees travel on it won’t work if truck drivers are using waze and hauling using the closed exit. I have a ramp in Chicago that is closed all summer. I set turn restriction but every once in awhile I get a system generated UR for travel on restricted road. I think the workers are using waze as they haul debris away to dump.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
You could make it a percentage of the average tracks over a period of time to trigger the reopening.
I get system generated map problems all the time for closed roads. The problem is that waze will use old GPS data to create new map problems. I am entirely convinced that this is a waze problem, not an issue with construction workers keeping waze on in construction zones.
Yes, even after multiple promises from Waze about the GPS points being more up to date in WME (USA/Canada) they continue to appear to be out of date. In addition the map problems also appear to reference out of date GPS track data.
In addition, these map problems even when marked “not identified” seem to attract the attention of ign and level(6) editors, resulting in edits to recently realigned roads in new constructions zones made by those not familiar with the area based on old gps data and outdated aerials.
Ah, that makes more sense. I couldn’t figure why I kept getting those error reports from waze.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I’ve noticed that occasionally, for whatever reason, the MP analysis is run with old (9+ months) GPS traces, this might be what you’re seeing there.
Some GPS programs have an option to report “road blocked ahead”, this can be used if a road is actually blocked or if you are in traffic and want an alternate route. Perhaps this is the only feature Waze would have to implement.
Another feature would be after a few “blocks” are reported at the same point, a warning could be sent to Area Managers of that region.
Yesterday Waze routed me trough flooded road in the middle of country lane, not only had to ‘manually’ find detour by myself, I couldn’t use Waze anymore as it constantly was giving me direction to the same place, not reporting nor alternative routes helped. I think, if I make road closed the Waze for me will not use it for the period of time. Other users will have a prompt like: Proposed route includes road reported as closed. Alternative routes … Select desire route. And user could decide whichever to try closed road or not.
Sent from my GT-I9100P using Tapatalk 2