Sometimes, after adding a stop produces bizarre routing, pressing the "routes" button calculates a more sensible route. It's as if it starts again from scratch.

I went from Hastings to Sheerness adding Cranbrook as a stop. I got taken on every country road imaginable until I got to a major B road.
It's definitely wrong but I followed it anyway thinking the app could do with the traffic data.
Had I set 2 routes there'd be no way it'd have taken me that way...

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I just managed to produce a similar result. I routed from Catford to Dartford and got a sensible route along the South Circular and the A2. I then added Sidcup as a stop. What I got was South Circular then A2 along to Bexley Village, down to Sidcup then back up again to the A2 and on to Dartford.

The first leg of that route (Catford to Sidcup) is my daily route to work and Waze has never tried to route me along the A2. On the map it looks like it chose the closest point on my initial Catford-Dartford route to Sidcup and routed the stop from there (allowing for the fact it was probably preferring highways for that length of route).

However, it doesn't seem to always do this. I also tried Catford-Cheltenham-Cardiff and Catford-Orpington-Dartford. In those cases, I got sensible routes directly from start->stop->end.

I have a possible theory. When I searched for my stop location, (say Orpington), I got, as you usually do, a list of matches for my search - only one in this case. Directly below the name Orpington in the list was the text "Calculating time off route", which was then replaced by a time. I'm thinking that, if the "time off route" is sufficiently small, Waze doesn't bother calculating it as two separate routes, but instead does it as a diversion off the main route. So adding Sidcup as a stop in Catford-Orpington was small enough to not calculate 2 routes - Orpington as a stop made it worthwhile.

What exactly constitutes "small" is the real question! That could be referring to travel time, or to distance and it might be using fixed threshold values or they might be relative to the overall distance/time of the original route.

[EDIT - for TonyG-UK's reply whilst I was typing!]
I haven't seen any problems with direct routing, but I did have some problems trying to add a stop when I went to Scotland last month. However, Waze was being really difficult about routing as far as even Scotch Corner, so I thought it was an overall distance problem at the time.

I had something similar happen this morning. I drop my daughter off @ the babysitters in the morning. When I route to their house, no issues. When I route to work from there, I also have no issues. However, this morning I decided to route directly from home to work with the babysitter's marked as a stop. Waze routed me off of the original home -> work route to the babysitters and then back to the home -> work route. This doubled the amount of time from the babysitters -> work. I just drove how I normally go and the system was updated after the 2nd recalculation.

The system really needs to be able to calculate a route based on all of the items at hand. This is something it is obviously not doing. In the getting started tutorials, it is alluded to that Waze has the capability of routing you around obstacles along your route. If it only does this while laying the original route, it kind of makes traffic updates worthless for anyone already in route.

Well the fact the routes work fine when done separately suggests they are,hence why I posted the individual routes

There is nothing affecting the routing, (that I am aware of). If I route directly from either place without using add a stop its exactly as expected (see the two examples in the live map)

What waze should be doing is when adding a stop (at least what I think), cancel your current route completely, route from where you are to your stop, then route from your stop to your destination.

however what it appears to do is route from your existing route and back to your existing route.

I have complained about something similar on one of my very first posts, that when you drive off a route, it often prefers driving back to your original route, when the way ahead is actually quicker.

I think the same applies if it was to do with the speeds, then it wouldn't think that the route I actually take is quicker, and of course waze wouldnt suggest the routes seperately.

TBH as far as I am concerned its no big deal for me to set a destination to where I want to pick people up, then set the destination to where I am going when I get there. This is more of an issue for people who may not be aware of the system, and where they are going. Given that waze is supposed to save money and time it doesn't look good though.

Unfortunately its a difficult thing to test, but maybe try a few triangular routes.

Should be able to do in the app though, set start point as dartford, end point as orpington, then set a pick up point as new ash green.

It may just be some complicated rules that say maybe 7 minutes is ok and not worth fully rerouting for, I don't know.

trying some longer distance similar scenarios and cannot reproduce.

To quote from teh other post

In my humble opinion and from personal experience Waze has a tendency to keep with the original route as much as possible when adding a stop or deviating from a suggested route. Even to the extent that I was told by Waze to drive around and come back to the same intersection that my route deviated from. I've seen it happen when I've added a stop to my routes as well. It seems to me that Waze for some reason keeps the original route and calculates the shortest possible deviation from that original route. Instead it should recalcute the entire route with the new parameters. It would even be better to add the stops sequentially the way the route is calculated as with the Waze of today.

and another quote from myself back in July last year

Is it just me or is the recalculation of routes not very optimal, often prefering to take you back to a point you were previously heading to when the route ahead could be far better.

So I think this has been an issue for sometime. Like myself and Iain pointed out, it doesn't happen all the time though, so could be some complex rules trying to work out if its worth a re-route or not.

Might be worth questioning the powers that be to see what they say (if anything). Its more a reputational thing, like I said no bother to us in the know but for others who are not so much, could put them off using the app.

Perhaps it calculates alternate routes then realises how poor. it's original suggestion was lol

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