One thing that would be cool if you could add Traffic Lights is Waze could start giving landmark type notifications like it does with Roundabouts. eg. In 800 meters at the Traffic lights turn left.

It would remove the sometimes confusing timing where people don't really know how long 800 meters is when driving at slower speeds.

But if you do one, it would require more landmark type nodes, eg. at the end of the road is also a nice one that many other apps have (In 800 meters at the end of the road turn left), but how could Waze determine its the end of the road rather than just an unmapped road unless someone confirms it.

chrisqck wrote:Hi, new here.. can you explain ? Traffic lights does impact the decision on "fastest" route as some traffic lights here has countdown timer that starts at 100++ while others starts at 30++ so adding such information should impact the decision making for fastest route, no ?

Among other things Waze uses data it gets from the drivers via Waze client. The info is real time thus more accurate.

The idea of making your trip faster by detouring a traffic signal, or even a series of traffic signals, because it could be red is a myth. I grew up being taught that back roads are always faster, too, until I learned that it is statistically false, especially if the detour is bigger. It's not the signal itself that can significantly delay you, but rather congestion caused by it, which Waze would detect and offer alternatives, if any meaningfully faster ones are available. The signal has just as much a chance of being an un-impeding green as a delaying red, so the better approach is to track the average (i.e. expected) time it takes to get through a junction and consider that.

Many drivers, myself included, prefer less congested back roads with less signals, even if they're not statistically the fastest, because the absence of the repeating stop and go often caused by signals provides for a much less frustrating drive. But such routes are unfortunately outside the scope of Waze. Besides, do you really want Waze sending everyone down your favorite secret back road? If it does, that road will quickly get just as congested as the main road, if not more dangerous, since it's not built to handle that kind of traffic. Maybe some things are better left uncovered...

Anyway, the capability to add a traffic light simply does not exist in Waze, so you can't do it. Whether it would be desirable or not is kind of beside the point.

CBenson wrote:

PhantomSoul wrote:Besides, do you really want Waze sending everyone down your favorite secret back road?

No. But ultimately you want everybody following waze and waze sending just enough down the secret back road so that it takes the same time as the congested main road, thereby reducing the congestion on the main road by as much as possible.

Except Waze likely won't do that. Waze takes a while to notice and respond to changes in conditions, so what's much more likely to happen is that Waze will overreact and send everyone down the secret back road until it's really jammed, and then Waze will send everyone some other way until that way is jammed, and so on.