so many google products seem to reach EOL at "good enough". see also: Gmail, etc.
Instead of turning left at an intersection with a light and dedicated turn lane, I find it will often suggest I turn left then right then left to skip the intersection. It always turns out worse.
To reiterate, though: at least until a few years ago, according to PMs involved, Google Maps was tuned to keep directions shorter and simpler to read, describe (if you're a passenger) or even remember.
I find Google Maps _vastly_ underestimates how hard it is to turn onto a major artery without a light. It seems to think that turning left across three lanes of traffic without a light is "free". In practice, I have been stuck making these turns for 10+ minutes before. I've noticed it underestimates bridges as well.
> Sometimes it feels to me as if, over time, it learns from routes that it suggests and I repeatedly avoid, but that might have been just a coincidence and it might have learned that from aggregate data, not just mine.
That could be the case. Given my usage of Google Maps was less than once a month, it may not have had much to learn from me. I would also rate these poor experiences as bad.
Chicago
Maps already gives you route options to choose from, both when you first start, and during your drive; why can't they do this with toll roads? Are they secretly working with EZ-Pass?
I've the choice between toll-lanes or not on my way home, I'd love to know how much faster it'd take if I get on the toll lane...
But in that particular case, I'm not sure how that information is gathered in the first place, it might be hard for them to figure out which cars are on the toll-lane, and which cars are not since both the express lane and regular lane are next to each other.
Plus, while they aren't perfectly accurate, toll lanes are usually far enough away from the regular lanes that modern GPS devices in those lanes should be able to generally show themselves biased in that direction (relative to the devices stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic).