renoel wrote:Just noticed that this very useful feature is now missing. How bizarre. To be reintroduced in a ‘premium’ version at a co$t ?

I'm pretty sure Waze has no plan to charge for extra features.

I would like fastest tougher back as well as have option to post alerts on both sides of the road and or reroutes for accidents or heavy traffic thank you halfthetown

You can of course tap “Routes” after selecting your destination and chose the shortest route from the list of options.

This removal makes Waze less user friendly, taking the choice out of the users' hands.
I used to be able to decide whether I want to spend 2 more minutes on the road and drive 10 km less. Now I have no idea how much more time the shorter route will need, invariably forcing me to take the longer route, even though it might only be marginally faster.
Please bring this option back !!

As I recall from one of the Waze meetups earlier this year, staff explained that an extremely small percentage of users ever chose the "shortest" option in the app. I can't remember what the figure was, but I'm sure it was well below 1%.

On the couple of occasions in the past when I have accidentally chosen "shortest", it has been immediately obvious there is a problem as Waze took me on a crazy zig-zag route with a multitude of junctions to negotiate.

I understand range-anxiety is fundamental to the users of electric vehicles. But unless your vehicle is incredibly efficient at harvesting braking energy, then a Waze shortest route would be unlikely to help you much as the constant stopping and starting at junctions probably wastes a great deal of power. And for a conventional fossil-fuel vehicle, the shortest route is very likely to use more fuel.

Another reason for making the change is that - simply speaking - Waze has never offered a "fastest" route. Waze routing has always taken into account factors other than just time/speed. To some extent, Waze favours "smooth" routes - where there are fewer junctions and changes of road types.

It also has some preference for more predictable routes - routes where there is more speed data available or the data shows less variability in the history. The reason for that is simply confidence: if Waze regularly offered you a 1 hour route, but that route often takes 50 minute or 1½ hours, you wouldn't be impressed. But if it regularly offers you a 1 hour 10 minute route that always takes that long, you would have a much better chance of arriving when you expect.

So that's why "shortest" route is gone. It probably also means that the app no longer has to say "fastest" route when it isn't really. There are plenty of posts in the forum from users who see times where the chosen route isn't the fastest route available. The app can't really say "best" route because different people might have a different interpretation of what "best" means. It's not possible to explain (in detail, as I've done here) why Waze chooses routes in the app - and only a tiny fraction of Waze users will ever visit the forum to see such an explanation.

That's not to say that there couldn't be changes made to the routing algorithms to accommodate electric vehicles. They definitely don't have the same needs as a conventional car. But I don't think the old "fastest" route was really suitable. As use of electric vehicles is only going to increase, I hope such considerations will lead to changes in the routing servers.

edmundhill685 wrote:Also, what is "1%" of Waze users? I reckon that's a lot of people!

iainhouse wrote:. . . I'm sure it was well below 1%.

Honestly, I do not remember what the actual figure was, hence my vague statement. What I can say with confidence is that the figure I heard was so low that it seemed completely reasonable to me that they should stop supporting an option that was being used by a very small minority.

In that way, it is very similar to the number of map colour schemes in the app. There used to be about 10 different colour schemes available and a couple of years ago, Waze got rid of all but 2. Anyone who has made their way to the forums here can probably be counted as an "experienced" Waze user. As such, many of us used different colour schemes, some even working out ways to customise them and we all complained when the app schemes were cut down to just 2.

But we (the forum users) are, in reality, a tiny minority of the Waze user base. Things that we care about deeply are often completely unnoticed by the vast majority of users.

jebby7 wrote:If Google run Waze these days, why can't I get the same route offered on Waze?

Whilst Google own Waze, they don't run it. There is some data sharing between the two companies, but Google Maps are not Waze maps and the routing engine used by Google is not the routing engine used by Waze.

Same here. I observed that option was removed after an update. I wish they left the option.

senoke wrote: ↑Sun Dec 10, 2017 2:50 pm Under settings>navigation there was an option to choose between Waze prioritizing the fastest route or the shortest route. I no longer see this option here or under any of the other menu options. Is this option completely removed? If it is,does anyone know why?

 

 

Not being able to choose the shortest route over the quickest has absolutely crippled Waze. It's now basically unusable.

If I am in a big city and am not bothered if I have to wait 4 extra minutes rather than driving 20km extra in a huge semicircle through difficult and often impassable small streets I am now not able to choose. The logic behind the routes suggested is 99.9% of the time ludicrous. This has now happened more times than I can recall and I have absolutely had enough if it.

I have actually wasted *hours* being sent around in circles because of the nonsense time saving that simply doesn't work. I will not be using Waze any more for navigation before this is addressed.