daknife wrote:Umm due to the low user base in your area Waze may need to keep up with apple, but in most areas it's still definitely the other way around.

that's good to know daknife but it does't help me I suppose I can cope with being one of the insignificant

daknife wrote:People were trying waze, getting bad routes, making a few UR's and then bailing.

For me that's not an issue because I don't use waze for navigation, what I want waze for is traffic avoidance. So when waze tells me to go in to the centre of Sydney and spent hours sitting around in traffic when there's a major route off Sydney harbour on to the Anzac bridge, I just PMSL and drive on. I have tried to get in and work out the problem but it's really difficult because there are multiple levels and lanes that our traffic authority can program so that the lanes can be one way either way depending on demand. I also changed it so that you CAN follow Livingstone Road, Marrickville NSW south of Marrickville Road north, but then the map seemed to revert? It was bizarre. I'll give it another try.

It just tweeted again for people to please join & even suggested to some major tv stations here that they do a story on waze.

qhphotography wrote:I'm also disappointed with Waze in Sydney. I used it when living in London and it was great. But for my trips between Liverpool and Crows Nest it is useless, always taking me to congested roads without knowing it.

So I switched to MetroView, for the price it is pretty good and Tomtom Traffic info (in app subscription) helps.

I tried Waze again few times but no luck.

qhphotography, Waze is infinitely close to useless for me personally for traffic avoidance in Sydney & even if people here used it in it's social context to chat and share info I can't participate because I'm driving anyway.

However I keep using Waze because I see it as an extremely good idea and I want to support free services such as this. In other words I'm investing my battery power & remembering to do it on every drive for a better future (& secretly hoping Waze acknowledges my effort in some way eventually as a loyal Sydney pioneer). The thing with Waze is that unless a lot of people use it, and stick with it, it can't gain the critical mass it needs to be useful here, & then the only choice we'll have are commercial services.

I wish there were some way to get other traffic monitoring services data in to waze, even if I had to pay.

hohum3001 wrote:waze is nearly useless in most parts of Sydney Australia because there's not enough users yet. But waze has wet my appetite for traffic avoidance now & I'm thinking of going & getting a tom tom as a commercial service.

Anyone got experience with tom tom in a waze poor area? Is it any good? Does waze offer stuff tom tom doesn't?

If you're looking for traffic avoidance I was never impressed with TomTom - reports varied widely in accuracy, and they were usually delayed. Waze is good at noticing traffic when it starts, but not so good at noticing when it stops. At least it's more deterministic than TomTom was in my experience.

hohum3001 wrote:Would it be possible, if I paid some kind of subscription fee or something, for waze to integrate tom tom's data? Or is that just too complex?

Probably impossible given their respective business models.

hohum3001 wrote:iOS Apple maps sucks, but it won't forever.

You think so, do you?

xtago wrote:I also assume this will build up some route data and traffic data I do traffic reports as well.

Yes, simply driving with Waze on will build up historical data on the roads and will benefit the system as long as you a driving "normally" on those roads.

I don't use waze for the routing and I don't fuss about the traffic reports most times the traffic jams don't exist and probably based on 1 wazer driving down a suburban road at 10kph meaning waze will say blah blah road a dead end street will have standstill traffic on it lol.

But I always turn it on for every drive it's mainly to edit and fix up problems in areas that I'm driving through.

I also assume this will build up some route data and traffic data I do traffic reports as well.

See what happens I guess.

The TomTom maps use an official traffic management data provider that also includes the weather as well.

I would suspect the Apple traffic data is the same as google's traffic data which just shows up speed data.