Has Google Maps stopped helping avoid traffic?

[AlexNJ89]

I was wondering if anyone else has noticed that Google Maps seems perfectly content to let me sit in traffic for 20mins now rather than redirecting through backroads.

I'm not sure if they felt it wasn't ethical to redirect you down someone's street to save 20mins, but yesterday my friend got stuck in traffic but I turned off because I know my local area and arrived 20mins before them.

Why did Google maps not suggest the same route?

I'm so sure it used to.

[georgeyboy12345]

The trouble is now lots of people use google maps, so it directs all those people the same way = traffic jam.

There’s no replacement for local knowledge

[trickywoo]

Have you tried Waze?

[Cloudy147]

I’ve been thinking the same lately. If the traffic is quite bad it might occasionally recommend an alternative but seems to be only if an alternative is available on a major route.

It’ll often tell me I’m “still on the fastest route”, when clearly I’m not and if I take a known detour then the second I get off the route I was on, the ETA drops. So why didn’t it do that itself?

[bergclimber34]

the biggest issue with any of these is that every truck, delivery driver use them too, so you can be behind 3 arctics at 6.15 am as using a Br road is 1 minute faster than using a bit of motorway that takes you about 2 miles further.

Joke roads

[Beanie]

Recently switched to Waze, it's very good!

[kingofdbrits]

Waze is OK, though it'll happily send you an extra 10 miles if its 10 seconds quicker, quicker in their estimation anyway.

It does make me chuckle sometimes with the location names it chooses to show, on my daily commute when I'm sat in stop-start traffic, a place with an amusing name reveals itself from behind the black box.

[IanH755]

Whilst I really like Google Maps for the vast majority of things, it has some very serious limitations at times - for example, if a road ahead is blocked there is no option to say "I can't drive that way, re-route me", there is only a "lane closed" option which doesn't do the same thing.

The next is that, due to the way that most of the Unclassified Roads in the UK (but not all) are generally given an NSL limit, despite generally being single track roads with passing places or "farmers" tracks etc where doing more than 30mph can be dangerous, GM doesn't really "see" that I think, as it just seems to see an "upto" 60mph road and diverts you down it no matter how unsuitable it is.

With both of these there is no decent "error" reporting method within GM to try to get these things changed, so I end up using Waze far more nowadays.

[budgie smuggler]

Wasn't there some legal change recently preventing Google Maps using local roads as rat runs?

eta
https://www.eta.co.uk/news/end-of-the-road-for-rat...

[eltax91]

Google acquired waze a couple of years ago. Just over a billion dollars from memory.

A pal works there. The teams are merged and they are slowly becoming the same platform in the back end

[Brainpox]

As above, Waze is much more aggressive at finding the quickest route. GMaps is a combination of different apps (satnav, discovery, public transport, walking routes, reviews, photos, streetview, etc) and isn't as dynamic as Waze despite being owned by the same company.

Waze is just a driving navigation app. It tracks traffic flow more reliably rather than just sticking you on any NSL road as the signs say you can do 60 down it and actively changes routes to avoid build ups. Generally if Waze is suggesting to just sit in the traffic, it's still the quickest way to go.

[anonymous-user]

Just watch out with Waze. I had a 1 hour detour before Christmas when I was 3 hours away from home at 10pm in an area I didn’t know because the road it warned me was flooded was actually completely closed. It’s usually better than Google for directions but in this instance it didn’t know a road was closed but Google did.

[Fore Left]

eltax91 said:

Google acquired waze a couple of years ago. Just over a billion dollars from memory.

A pal works there. The teams are merged and they are slowly becoming the same platform in the back end

Google acquired Waze in 2013. If they were going to merge the back end platforms they would surely have done so by now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waze#Google_acquisit...

[AlexNJ89]

Cloudy147 said:

I’ve been thinking the same lately. If the traffic is quite bad it might occasionally recommend an alternative but seems to be only if an alternative is available on a major route.

It’ll often tell me I’m “still on the fastest route”, when clearly I’m not and if I take a known detour then the second I get off the route I was on, the ETA drops. So why didn’t it do that itself?

Exactly this, yep.

I remember the days when Google Maps would make you come off the motorway and back on at the same junction just so you can get ahead of some traffic.

As others have said, it's as if it doesn't want to create traffic elsewhere because there are so many users now.

But for my own selfish interests I want an app which tells me the best detour.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was another app out there that uses Google's traffic data but will reroute around traffic.

[eltax91]

Fore Left said:

Google acquired Waze in 2013. If they were going to merge the back end platforms they would surely have done so by now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waze#Google_acquisit...

My understanding from my pal is that the escalating Israeli situation changed all that. :shrug: