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Post by sixthdimension
I too, am an electric vehicle driver with limited lease mileage. My commute to work is a few minutes faster on the highway, but 4.6 miles longer. In order to avoid putting an extra 9-10 miles on my car 5x a week, I use the shortest route to get to work and back, and fastest route option for other destinations.
Bigbear3764 wrote:Waze staff announced on 2017-12-25 that the routing server no longer pays attention to the app configuration option requesting "fastest" or "shortest" routing.

The server will now give the fastest route, no matter what the user has requested in the app.
I'd argue your point as I seem to have left my app set to shortest before updating to this most recent version, and it is now stuck always giving me the shortest route. I have to use Google Maps now in order to get the fastest route since there is no way for me to change it in waze. The setting is stuck to my account since reinstalling the app, and trying to route on an iPhone, iPad, and Android with my account all net the same result.

Livemap showing fastest route and my app showing shortest route:
routing.jpg
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Post by SwedishKiwi
I,too, am missing this feature. If the reasoning behind this change is correct, as it has been reported in this thread, it seems quite odd.

"Only a small fraction of the users ever used it."

So? Was there a need to free up screen estate in the app? No, there wasn't, and isn't. And if only a small fraction of the users ever used it, you can't say it was too much work for Waze's servers either.

I don't own an electric car (yet) and don't need to shorten my driving. But I very much appreciated the option to sometimes choose the shortest route. It was a way to experience new scenery, to see things I wouldn't have seen otherwise. Just set a destination somewhere random (but somewhat close to where we wanted to be) and then see what roads it took me through. It was fun for my family, too.

I'm guessing it was something that enhanced the Waze mapping system, too. As people were able to go on roads not usually driven on, they collected data that rarely should have been collected otherwise. And could fix errors that wouldn't have been noticed.

Now we're back to the fastest routes, i.e. most boring routes. Waze killed all the fun.

I will still use Waze, as it's good for everyday travel and helping others, but I will definitely use something else in order to actually enjoy my driving when not commuting to work or something similar.


/ Kiwi
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Post by Toddl68
I was using the shortest option very very often because I use Waze for cruising with my convertible through the countryside preferably on the smallest roads. Use case: select a target village and then use "shortest route", at arrival repeat with next village.
I will need to look for a new navigation app!
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Post by vince1612
To add to what iainhouse said on the previous page.

Another known issue with "shorter route" was that it was ignoring any restrictions set in the editor. If a route was restricted for public transports only (for example), it would ignore that and route you through if it was the shortest way.
So in addition to being used by very few Wazers, staff also got reports of bad routing which was sometimes making people lose a lot of time or added many miles/km to find a legal detour again, and could even make people who blindly followed the route get into dangerous situations.

I don't think they would want to bring it back knowing about these flaws, as for fixing it to be safer to use and then bring it back, that would require dev time. As the devs are pressured to add or work on new features more than anything else, I doubt that management would allow them to devote time for it because of the reasons mentioned by Iain.
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Post by wedgtable
I've just realised this option is missing as I've moved house and have a new commute. I have 2 main routes to go to work which both take the same amount of time when traffic is good. One is about 29 miles and the other is about 44 miles. I'd much rather take the shorter route and save myself a bit of fuel even if the drive takes slightly longer. The frustrating thing is that 9 times out of 10 when I turn waze on in the morning, it defaults to the longer route, which is usually quicker. The really frustrating thing is that when I go onto the route options, this route that is 15 miles longer is usually no more than 5 minutes quicker. So from my personal point of view, I'd much rather be able to choose the default option to favour the shorter route, since I'd rather save 15 miles worth of fuel and take 5 minutes longer to get to work.
Seems strange to take out a perfectly justified feature just because you think it's under-used. The 99% that don't use it probably wouldn't notice (or care) that you took this feature out, but the 1% that do use it are now a bit annoyed that you have. So why upset this minority by making a change that doesn't actually benefit anyone?
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Post by Zamex
Same here... :( As EV driver, this option will be greatly missed!! :evil:
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