CBenson wrote:I haven't actually heard anybody complain about this in quite awhile, so I was hoping it had been addressed. Sorry to hear you are still experiencing the same issue.

I'm a bit late to this party, but just to chime in I'll drop my 2 cents. 2 weeks ago I was traveling from South NJ to Brooklyn. The fastest route is through Staten Island across the Bayonne/Goethals bridge which have the standard PANYNJ toll, then over the Verazzano which has no toll into Brooklyn. With avoid tolls turned on it routed me all the way up into Manhattan through the tunnel which the same standard PANYNJ toll, but is significantly longer in time and mileage. Maybe the number of toll segments needs to be checked on the bridges into Staten Island as well.

The only difference I see here between the two tunnels (in WME) is that for the Holland Tunnel, the entire length of the eastbound tube is marked toll road, while at the Lincoln Tunnel, only the short little connector segments right at the toll plaza are marked toll road; the lengths of the 3 actual tubes are not marked toll road. There is no toll collected for westbound traffic at either crossing.

That being said, the only thing I can think of happening here is that with the avoid toll roads switch turned on, Waze sees a shorter distance of toll roads at the Lincoln Tunnel than at the Holland Tunnel and somehow thinks that better avoids any tolls and favors the Lincoln Tunnel as a result, despite the trip taking almost twice as long. This doesn't make any logical sense, and my guess would be that if it was actually doing this, it's some sort of bug.

Can anyone confirm this?

CBenson wrote:It still seems to me that you can be routed over the Lincoln Tunnel by taking this one toll segment. So it seems to me that waze routing may still simply prefer to route over the fewest toll segments. I still wonder if we made it so you only traversed one toll segment for each Hudson crossing, whether waze would then route you the fastest route into Manhattan if you had "avoid tolls" on.

Good point.

The eastbound tube of the Holland Tunnel actually consists of 2 consecutive segments split at the state line in the middle of the river so that the western one could be in Jersey City, NJ, and the eastern one could be in New York, NY. Both are marked as toll roads.

Can anyone with an L5 rank clear the toll road check box of this segment? From what I understand, only the segment that actually passes through the toll collection point should have the toll road check box checked. At the Holland Tunnel, the toll plaza is at the western end in Jersey for eastbound traffic only (no toll is collected at all from westbound traffic).

CBenson wrote:My understanding is the opposite, that all segments that cannot be traversed without paying the toll should be marked as toll. However, that was to facilitate marking toll roads in on the client map which has not happened. If routing works better with only the segment that actually passes through the toll collection point marked as toll, then I would suggest changing our approach, at least for NYC.

I see what you mean here. It would be nice if you could see which roads are toll roads without actually taking up precious map space by plastering the word toll in the name of a road when you don't have a destination entered and avoid tolls set.

CBenson wrote:Well removing the extra toll segment from the Holland Tunnel has had the desired effect. I can now route through the Holland Tunnel with "avoid toll roads" on. It seems to me that at least for the river crossings around NYC it would be best to just mark a single segment where the toll is collected as toll so that each penalty is equal when you have "avoid toll roads" set to on.

Beyond NY/NJ, this probably applies to any water crossings in any area where all of your crossing options between a point A and a point B involve similar toll collection policies. NJ/PA border, NY's Hudson Valley, Baltimore, and California's bay area come to mind, but I'm sure there are others as well.

Evaluating toll routes by cost is a good idea. The Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike are both toll roads, but the former will cost you a lot less money to travel, if you're in a passenger (private) car. It'll likely also cost you more time during heavier traffic periods, but not as much time as an alternate completely free road. But, that's usually up to NJ drivers to judge which is more important for a given trip.

However, a series of toll segments to represent a toll charge is not sufficient, since it does not account for toll variations by time, mode of payment, vehicle type, etc. Instead, we really should request a system from Waze that can work with time schedules, vehicle types, and even electronic (EZPass) vs cash.

I'm not a fan of interim edits of any kind. Period. If we're going to edit anything on the map, we should have a permanent - or at least to the best of possible foresight - reason for doing so.

Maps typically only indicate roads that have a toll, and don't try to figure out how much of a toll needs to be paid. This is because there are too many variables involved outside the scope of the map itself. Therefore this is not something we should be trying to define in WME.

Because of side effects of how the Waze navigation system works, we should only be marking the segments that actually cross toll-collection points as toll, although frankly, the correctness of this is questionable. One has to wonder, should Waze be treating any routes with any number of toll segments equally as partially tolled routes, if it's just considering toll segments and not their costs?

In any case, this is probably moot because all the tolls on all of the Port Authority crossings between New York and New Jersey are the same and they're all in the New York bound direction. The Hudson Valley crossing tolls to the north in New York cost less, but such a decision among time, distance, and toll costs is up to the driver and way outside the scope of any map. Even if you're going from, say Riverhead, NY to Trenton, NJ, there is a much higher toll at the Verrazano Bridge than several other ways you could go, but the routes across Manhattan are significantly slower and the route across the Bronx is significantly out of the way (and both alternates will lead to a longer trip on the NJ Turnpike, increasing the toll due there). So once again, I can't help but think this is totally outside the scope of WME.

I would recommend accounting for the cost of the tolls as well. Most of the tolls around the NYC region are comparable to each other on bridges and tunnels. But there are a few exceptions, and there is a vast difference between bridge/tunnel tolls and tolled highways. The Verrazano is a more expensive bridge than the others for example.

Let's take a trip from Manhattan's De Witt Clinton park to Staten Island's Clove Lake Park. The obvious route is to go through Brooklyn, using an East River crossing (choice of free or toll) and the Verrazano (heavy toll). Or, I could go out of my way to New Jersey (Lincoln Tunnel or Holland Tunnel), through Bayonne or Elizabeth, and cross over to Staten Island via the Bayonne or Goethals bridges. A longer route to be sure, but the New Jersey bridges, while still tolled, are still cheaper than the Verrazano. If I have a gas-efficient car, I might take the long route.

I don't know that there's an easy solution to this. The only one that comes to mind is to only place toll markers at the toll booth, and add one segment there for each multiple of a dollar. There would be 15 segments for the Verrazano (we'll always use the standard car cash price), 13 for each of the Port Authority crossings (Bayonne, Goethals, Outerbridge, Lincoln, Holland, GWB).

Bronx-Whitestone, Throgs Neck, & RFK Bridges; Hugh L Carey1 & Queens Midtown Tunnels need 8 segments, 5 for Hendy Hudson Bridge, and 4 for Cross Bay and Marine Parkway.

For the Garden State Parkway, toll booths would get one or two segment, since they are 50 cents to a $1.50.

The Turnpike is much more difficult to calculate. There is a set price between any particular entry/exit pair, but the differentials are inconsistent. For example, exit 1 to exit 10 is $6.65, and to 11 is $7.25, so it looks like there is an extra 60 cents to go from 10 to 11. But if you were coming from exit 2, the prices are 5.45 and 6.10, which is a 65 cent difference, not 60. I would just toll the section of the main roadway between the exit and entry of each interchange. That would give a maximum of 23 toll segments from start to finish. It would not be that far out of line in the relative toll weights this system would provide -- equivalent to $23 instead of $13, but only if you are going that far. For most trips of 5-10 exits, it would only be an extra $2 or so.

What toll roads have I missed? The NYS Thruway is non-toll within NYC and the immediate suburbs. NYS Bridge AUthority is also fairly outer burbs. Atlantic City Expressway? Maybe, I would say that's much Philly metro. Atlantic Beach Bridge is 2. Anything else?

PhantomSoul wrote:Evaluating toll routes by cost is a good idea. The Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike are both toll roads, but the former will cost you a lot less money to travel, if you're in a passenger (private) car. It'll likely also cost you more time during heavier traffic periods, but not as much time as an alternate completely free road. But, that's usually up to NJ drivers to judge which is more important for a given trip.

However, a series of toll segments to represent a toll charge is not sufficient, since it does not account for toll variations by time, mode of payment, vehicle type, etc. Instead, we really should request a system from Waze that can work with time schedules, vehicle types, and even electronic (EZPass) vs cash.

Agreed, though it would be a much more significant undertaking. I'm not too worried about time of day or EZPass discounts for this interim solution, because they all tend to drop relative to each other (the EZ Pass disocunt for the Verrazano for example would be matched by EZ Pass discounts on the other crossings, for example, maing it still the expensive choice).

There are also other discounts that we likely could never cover. For example, there are "local" EZPass discounts that are more substantial if you bought the EZPass through the operator of the road you are traveling... other EZPass customers get less of a discount, and sometimes EZPass from a different region gets no discount. There are also car pool discounts that you may have to register for. Staten Island residents also get discounts for some of their local crossings that are much better than anyone else can get.

PhantomSoul wrote:I'm not a fan of interim edits of any kind. Period. If we're going to edit anything on the map, we should have a permanent - or at least to the best of possible foresight - reason for doing so.

It's an opinion. Me? I'm pragmatic. If you can get something to work well now for the benefit of other travellers, and there's nothing on the horizon that will supersede that, then why not?