Waze forum

My daily commute is a long one and in a densely populated area of the country. As such I have many possible routes to take, including a toll motorway (M6 Toll), a few non-toll motorways, and lots of smaller roads. Waze really, REALLY loves the M6 Toll, but even when it does offer me non-toll routes they're always on the other major motorways, even if they're horribly congested.

Because of this, I have to use other GPS apps on my iPhone when traffic is bad, as they consider smaller roads and can save me a lot of time. As an example, last Friday evening the traffic was spectacularly bad, as it often is, and yet Waze only offered me the same three motorway routes as usual. (two using the M6 toll). Each would have taken around three hours to complete had I been foolish enough to attempt them. By contrast, Co-Pilot routed me through villages and on A roads and got me home in 1 hour 45 minutes. It was a complex route but hugely quicker, and completely avoided the traffic apocalypse on the major roads.

So please, if Waze can be made to consider all roads, then make it so, as right now it just isn't much use when the traffic is bad...

Waze tracks road congestion/speed in 10-minute intervals for every day of the week. With enough Wazer density and data made available by Wazers being on all the roads at some point in the past contributing to the data, Waze should be able to make the best calculation in most every circumstance. I think having ALL the data necessary is a good sized chunk of the problem in Waze knowing when it is OK to route off the main roadways.

Mirarkitty wrote:Really? Well, that explains a lot...
Why not use all the roads all the time?

Possibly the computational complexity of considering all roads all the time would cause routing requests to take too long. Also, when routing long distances, it is highly unlikely you would choose to drive on a 2-lane dirt road or side-street next to the freeway rather than the freeway itself. It's rather common sense.

Now, how Waze (re)considers street type when extreme slowdowns/accidents occur is another topic perhaps, but that's just me musing.

I have a feeling junction points also create quite a penalty when calculating routes.

I've seen where a misplaced additional junction point on a primary road caused Waze to route around back streets to avoid it (reducing the total number of junction points traversed).

In theory toll roads, freeways and motorways should have less junction points than standard streets (especially over a distance), thereby giving them quite a precedence when being chosen.

RodNav wrote:
Copied this from the automatic answer:

Code: Select all

Long Distances:
0-15 km - All road types are allows for routing.
15-20 km - All road types except Streets.
20-30 km - All road types except Streets and Primary streets.
30-200 km - Only Minor, Major, and Freeways.
more than 200 km - only Freeways.

That's nuts. Most commutes would be longer than 20km; and here in Auckland the motorways (freeways) are the state highways (major, minor) thereby negating any sort of usefulness whatsoever.

WeeeZer14 wrote:But one single street segment in the middle of what should be a freeway will indeed cause problems.

That's not the case either. The system appears to have different pruning strengths depending on how far A->B is in a straight line. All road types appear to be considered but at ever decreasing run lengths the farther A->B is. There's also a prune based on the ratio of straight line distance vs traveled distance, this was the problem Jenncard originally had for Boulder->Winter Park that has since been adjusted at least twice to some larger number.

From that other thread you saw, my long non-freeway route example tipping point happens to be right around 330km in a straight line.

In any case, as you mentioned, it's best to have your roads Typed correctly for best results. It matters, but not as much as that penalties list would lead you to believe.

Mirarkitty wrote:

RodNav wrote: Copied this from the automatic answer:

Code: Select all

Long Distances:
0-15 km - All road types are allows for routing.
15-20 km - All road types except Streets.
20-30 km - All road types except Streets and Primary streets.
30-200 km - Only Minor, Major, and Freeways.
more than 200 km - only Freeways.

Really? Well, that explains a lot...
Why not use all the roads all the time?

I regularly go over 20km (Stockholm) and regularly gets routed on to bad roads (>Primary). This is stupid...?!?

Yes lets completely ignore the rest of the thread after that list and go on a trip of hyperbole. That list has been proved to be in disagreement with how routing actually works with a well edited map with sufficient user density.

RodNav wrote:Copied this from the automatic answer:

Code: Select all

Long Distances:
0-15 km - All road types are allows for routing.
15-20 km - All road types except Streets.
20-30 km - All road types except Streets and Primary streets.
30-200 km - Only Minor, Major, and Freeways.
more than 200 km - only Freeways.

25Km point to point, ~35Km driven. uses Primary in the middle.
31Km point to point, ~48Km driven. Still uses Primary in the middle.
58.8Km point to point, ~72.4Km driven. Still uses Primary. And now I'm starting to run out of well edited area.
22Km point to point, ~31.3Km driven. Uses Primary for almost the entire route.
Clearly that list is not an absolute and should not be treated as such.

bgodette wrote:Yes lets completely ignore the rest of the thread after that list and go on a trip of hyperbole. That list has been proved to be in disagreement with how routing actually works with a well edited map with sufficient user density.

I think this is the crux- Waze does not tell us if our local area is well-edited with sufficient user density. When I visited Los Angeles a couple of months ago, I found Waze capable of re-routing me to other routes to avoid major traffic crunches. In my home market of Honolulu, with settings of fastest & avoid major highways non-selected, Waze will usually offer only the one east-west interstate as a route, ignoring primary streets and minor highways. I usually use the navigation only for the graphic traffic bar, then turn it off.

Basically it should take the freeways and such to begin with but when it detects heavy traffic or anything that will slow you down, it should start looking to all the roads nearby. Now I'm not sure if that's how they have it setup and it's just doing that cuz of a bug or something or they have it setup a different way but to me that seems like the most logical way.

In which case there might well be a mapping error as Roy said. Someone will look into it for you.

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