Waze forum

I was driving yesterday in Denver, using Waze to guide me. I knew where I was going, so I was just using waze to see traffic snarls, etc. Waze kept trying to guide me to my destination via long detours. I had set it to "no highways", and waze told me that the destination was 11 miles away. Rather than following waze I decided to go a different route. Instead of re-calculating, waze kept on telling me to go back to the original route. That now included long detours, and the distance kept climbing until at some point it reached 23 miles. What is that? It doesn't make sense to me to go a 12 mile detour, even if that saves me a minute or so.
That brings me to another issue I have (related):
Under navigation, I can select to avoid freeways. That seems to be a binary choice. I can de-select freeways, and the route always seems to prefer freeways (probably because of travel time). Or I can select "avoid freeways", and the route will take me through unbelievable detours just to avoid freeways (as an example, if I want to go to the mountains, there are a couple of stretches where there is no alternative to I-70, unless I take a 2 hour detour. So, I might want to avoid highways as much as possible, but not drive 2 hours to avoid a few miles of highway).
What I would like to see is an option to "avoid freeways as much as possible". And also to then set an arrival time. So, when I need to go somewhere and have time, Waze can plot a route that avoids freeways, but does not take me on 2 hour detours, and if I am short of time, simply uses freeways to make sure I arrive in time.

The suggestion topic exists on "waze user voice"

if you want the shortests route back, just vote here

https://waze.uservoice.com/forums/59223 ... test-route

Thank you for reaching out. This forum is monitored by a group of volunteers. I'll do my best to answer your questions. Others may jump in to help clarify.

Please submit your app suggestions at https://support.google.com/waze/answer/6276841. We can only fix map issues through this forum.

Waze routes on traffic speed data. Avoiding certain road types is an all or nothing option. If you say avoid highways, Waze will do just that even if it means significant detours. There is no shortest route option any more as most users want to get to the destination as quickly as possible.

Since Waze is always trying to find the fastest route, it will continue to route you back to the original route until it is faster to take an alternate route. If you know how you roughly want to go, detour and ignore the reroutes until your way becomes the fastest. If there is truly just a few minutes difference that will happen quickly.

There is the option to see alternate routes in the app. Once you've entered your destination and the fastest route is calculated, tap on the ETA at the bottom of the screen. Then tap on Routes. That will show you the two next fastest routes in addition to the fastest route. You can tap on any of them to choose that route. You can also do that at any point in your trip.

I hope this helps explain what's going on. Let us know if you have any other questions.

Thanks,
Chuck