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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

In LA are these shortcuts worth it?

I was surprised to find with Google maps more often than not it suggests to just take that busy highway that is crawling alone because ... it really is faster. I've tried to defy google maps ... rarely do I win.

Granted google maps is wrong at times. During snowstorms it loves to send me down off streets that haven't yet been plowed or ... worse random county roads you do not want to be on during a storm. I think it inadvertently interprets "hey nobody is on this road so it must be faster" when nobody is there because that road is terrible with snow and you're far better crawling along the highway where plows will be or may have been ... or other vehicles have made tracks.

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I once read (sorry can't find cite) that Waze and Google maps run roughly the same routing algorithm now, but Waze is hyper-optimized for time whereas Google maps is optimized for some nebulous quality akin to "fastest reasonable route" where unreasonable factors are things like using small roads, exiting and entering the high a bunch, extra turns, etc.

So Waze probably is faster by a bit, but not a whole ton.

In my experience, Google Maps ETA has gotten to be frighteningly accurate in the past 6 months. For situations where traffic doesn't materially change during the trip, my ETA will be within 2 minutes of arrival even on trips of over an hour.

Do you use turn by turn navigation in Maps? It could've adjusted its predictions to your driving patterns.

I'd assume any kind of "ETAnet" would be trained on everyone's driving patterns, not individuals.

I don't know, but I always assumed that a simple optimization would be one that compared your typical driving speed to posted speed limits on open roads. That is, do you usually drive 5 or 10 miles (kilometers) per hour under or over the limit when you have the choice?

I suppose they could. I just think there's enough driving patterns that can be detected in aggregate, that a network could detect your typical style much better with everyone's data, rather than training just from you.

There must be some training involved on the user level. My route to the freeway can take 1 of 2 parallel roads. The bigger road is theoretically a minute faster but often enough the left turn lane backs up for multiple light cycles. The smaller road is quite consistent in it's timing. A minute slower if the lights work out and a minute faster if you would have to wait.

I prefer the consistent route and now Google almost never tries to send me the "faster" way.

I've noticed Waze optimizing for quickness. Not fastest, not shortest, not most direct but the route which makes you feel like you are getting there quicker. Often longer stretches with no traffic or junctions for example.

It's as if users main priority is not to be held up. Users don't care if the journey is two minutes longer or a few pence more expensive, they just don't want to be feeling they are making no progress.

The psychological pressures of 'progress' and 'entrapment' (E.G. being trapped in gridlock or long lines) are not to be underestimated.

If rush hour were still actually an _hour_ rather than a smear that covers all of daylight hours and then some, happy hours and other 'avoid the traffic' distractions would likely see more utilization as an alternate means of avoiding the above problems.

" they just don't want to be feeling they are making no progress."

I think you may have just convinced me to use Waze instead of Google Maps. I'd much rather relieve the stress of driving a bit than save a few minutes of time.

Well, actually, I'd rather not drive at all. But seeing as that isn't really an option, I'll settle for making it less stressful.

I’m 36 and have lived in a mix of rural and urban areas of America and I never learned to drive and have never driven a car.

Just want to make the point that not driving is really an option, just one that most people look for a way to avoid. It’s all a matter of priorities and as much as most people say they hate driving/traffic, very few actually do anything about it.

At some level that's true. But it's also true it significantly constrains your life choices. I've had one job in my life that I could maybe have reasonably held without being able to drive. (Business travel would still have been somewhat of an issue.) And my entire personal lifestyle would have to have been totally different.

Also, a lot of people just aren't in a position to realistically say "no" to any job that involves a need to drive.

I think it's a little ridiculous to say "I would rather not have to drive" and then make 0 life choices to reduce the reliance on driving, which is exactly what most people do.

People do often take the length of commutes into account. But, while many would prefer not to have to drive in the abstract, in practice that preference doesn't rise to the level of:

- Moving into a smaller place in a city

- Potentially putting kids into worse schools

- Passing on many of the recreational and travel activities that require driving

- Passing on job opportunities that have better salaries, career paths, etc.

- Not visiting friends and family who live places you need to drive to

All of which may be the result of not being able to drive or making a decision to prioritize minimal driving over everything else. There are a lot of things that people prefer in principle but, when presented with the actual choices, they make tradeoffs that favor different things.

IME Waze is actually dangerous because it doesn't mind sending you on crazy maneuvers like making uncontrolled left turns across 8 lane roads only to immediately merge across three lanes and hang another turn. At times it saves a couple minutes, other times it backfires spectacularly, and at all times it disdains safety and simplicity. For me, it's much higher stress.

Which rural areas have you lived in?

It's true that I could make choices that would reduce my driving further. I could Uber, or take local buses. I could even ask my wife to drive me around, and she'd probably do it, bless her heart.

But Uber is way more expensive, local buses would add hours to my commute every single day, and I'm not nearly selfish enough to make my wife drive me to and from work every day.

Oh, and bicycling is far, far too dangerous here. Otherwise, I'd totally pick that option.

> It's as if users main priority is not to be held up

I believe this to be a very real and widespread emotional phenomenon. Not only have I observed it in countless other drivers, even as a quite experienced driver myself, I still feel it on a regular basis. Sitting at a stoplight for too long sometimes just makes me irrationally angry, and I will often add a couple minutes to my commute to avoid the experience. I know it's stupid and am trying to change the behavior, but it's difficult.

My experience with Google Maps is that the accuracy is proportional to how close you are to Mountain View.

It's very accurate in Budapest so I don't think thats true.

In the Twin Cities as well.

In my experience the walking directions are the ones that suffer the most. Here's an example I discovered on my last vacation that still looks like it happens. Try asking Google Maps for walking directions to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris from any point nearby such as the George V metro stop. For anyone unfamiliar with how to get there, there is a pedestrian tunnel from the Champs-Elysees that goes underneath the roundabout and comes out right at the Arc de Triomphe.

I have had Waze give me some very good detours, for example driving to northern Michigan on a holiday weekend where there's a ton of traffic, get off the freeway before the massive traffic jam and onto the parallel 55mph highway, then get back on once the jam is cleared.

OTOH, it was responsible for getting me my only traffic ticket, for violating a (very hard to spot) no through traffic sign.

For about six months before I moved closer to work I had a super commute between Olympia, WA to Kent, WA just south of Seattle. I do not recommend this.

Anyways- for the first month or so I used Waze religiously as this is a notoriously bad commute. I realized after a few nasty trips through Fife that unless you were among th very first few people to catch a rerouting, the roads people were routed to were painfully undersized to handle freeway traffic. I have not used Waze since and am very cautious when following Google map redirections.

I'm at the point where I check Google Maps, then Apple maps (to confirm Apple maps isn't sending me to the wrong place) then close Google maps - Gmaps rerouting can be horrible, and is opt-out which can be tough to notice sometimes.

I'll stick to arterial roads, thankyouverymuch, and take my chances. Once in France it sent us on a dirt road - the car with my other family got there 10m faster by sticking to the autoroute.

The opt-out for rerouting is a truly awful design choice.

One time I was driving up through NYC during a heavy downpour where visibility was only a few car-lengths ahead. Traffic had slowed to about 30 mph on the NJTP and most people thankfully had their hazard flashers on. Then Google Maps decides to distract me and pile on the anxiety with multiple "press no in the next 10 seconds or else!" re-routing prompts to save at most 5 minutes.

Just yesterday I got a pop-under to "confirm" that a speed trap was still in effect, which of course obscured some vital information on screen for a few minutes until it finally gave up.

Demanding that your user take their attention off the road to fumble with a touch screen just to stay on the route they're comfortable with is dangerous, and if I opt out once it should at the very least snooze those alerts.

Waze has given me a lot of stupid advice in the last couple years. It will take me off a freeway, requiring many lane changes in heavy traffic, only to route me onto a clogged surface street and back onto the freeway after an exit or two. It usually fails to save me any time, and causes a lot of headaches. I stick with Google Maps now unless I need the police and hazard warnings(long road trips mostly).

I've had similar experiences with Waze. These sorts of things drive me insane. All of this sort of maneuvering around and jockeying for position... For what? If I'm lucky I can save myself 5 minutes? No, thank you. I wish these apps had options to turn that stuff off.

Having said that, I'm not a SoCal native but I've been here for over a decade now. It drives some of my SoCal native friends up the wall that I won't get in the freeway for only one or two exits, etc... I just don't operate at that pace of life.

That's the whole point of Waze: if you weren't trying to frantically get somewhere as fast as possible, no matter the cost (I mean, this app is even trying to warn you about police cars so you can get a lower risk for constantly speeding...) you would download a more mainstream app.

Okay, but, Google Maps has speedtrap warnings, too, though.

I may be mistaken, but I think only in certain locations - I've certainly never been able to use it (maybe I just haven't found out how to turn it on)

I just observed one day that it was turned on. I don't recall when, but I do recall where. I was on the I-15 driving north from the Lake Elsinore area towards Corona and saw a weird icon on the map. Had my wife check it out and we learned that it was speed trap notifications.

In my experience, they're never accurate. In fact, it's almost laughable how inaccurate they are. Google really expects me to believe that US-1 in NJ is going to have speed traps? A highway where cops regularly do the Jersey Shuffle at 90+ MPH with no emergency to justify doing 25+ over the limit? Yeah right.

It's one thing when it happens once in VA (a state I'm used to seeing lots of speed traps in) and there is no cop, it's another entirely when it happens in a state where the cops are the biggest speeders.

It seems to be based on self-reporting, so I'm sure it's 80% worthless.

But, the whole reason I brought this up in the first place is because: 1) Google Maps is as mainstream of a maps app as one can find, and it has speed trap reporting, and it will also try to re-route you around gridlock, which I personally find to be little more than a pointless exercise in frustration, and, 2) I noticed that it (speed trap reporting) was actually quite accurate, surprisingly so, in fact, on _a_ recent trip along the I-5 north and then again south through Kern and Kings county (which are notorious for their speed traps, Kings specifically).

I don't generally speed fast enough to get pulled over, I set my cruise control at 7mph over the speed limit on the highway. It's still nice to know that there may be a speed trap coming up, especially if you're driving through one of the perpetually-under-construction zones on a California highway.

> It usually fails to save me any time, and causes a lot of headaches.

If it takes you much more time and effort to navigate traffic than the average road user you won't benefit much from Waze because any gains in time will be negated by the time penalty (relative to average) every time you need to do something that requires being aggressive (merging, left turns, etc). Similarly if you're driving a large commercial vehicle you should probably not use Waze.

Ironically, I did the reverse commute for several months, which wasn't bad at all, provided I timed my trip thru JBLM correctly.

It seems like Waze should be smarter by slowly shunting a portion of traffic to alternative routes, and seeing how much it can support.

When driving around the DC beltway I found it indispensable. But I did not follow it blindly. I used it over the course of months to find what routes had potential and which did not, and a lot of times I got stuck unnecessarily in side road traffic. This taught me a few viable routes for when the beltway really was gridlocked. It also taught me how to gauge the level of traffic reports for how early I needed to bail from the freeway onto side roads, or stick it out if it would clear up.

Occasionally, but not when 5% of the potential freeway traffic gets routed onto the same tiny sidestreet. Waze is also notorious for asking people to make impossible left turns across 10 lanes of traffic.

I find Google Maps is way more conservative with those kinds of left turns where they'd rather I'd go to an intersection and make a U turn or a couple extra turns where ... actually you can make a left before there.

Granted, being conservative is probabbly the right call.

> In LA are these shortcuts worth it?

Nowadays I suspect not. Google has so much telemetry that it probably doesn't miss any real paths anymore.

Anything attempting to reroute me to save less than 5 minutes certainly isn't worth the grief of the odd turns, streets, etc. that I will have to navigate for the first time.

> save less than 5 minutes certainly isn't worth the grief

I wish we could set this threshold in the app. I'm happy to spend an extra 2 minutes on the freeway if it's a lighter cognitive load. Hell, if I'm on my way to work I might accept an extra 10-15 minutes. But, if I'm running late for a flight then I'm going to dial it up to save every minute possible.

they can be minimally quicker once Waze catches on.

One of my current shortcuts that I've taken for over 10 years dropped off the Waze radar during the summer when traffic is less. With school back in session, I am now saving 15 minutes on my commute. However, once Waze catches on and starts sending folks down my shortcut, I'll be lucky to save just a few minutes. It is for this reason I don't let any apps track my commute to work.

When i'm on a detour of sorts I often look around and wonder... "Are we all just following google?"

I'd wager that over 90% are. It literally go's from me driving the route all by myself to me driving in an endless caravan of car's once Waze starts recommending the route. For this route, it's not even just Waze. Apple recommends the route as well.

> It is for this reason I don't let any apps track my commute to work.

That doesn't seem like it would do you any good. Either other people on the road are reporting their speed and location to Waze (in which case your resistance is futile), or no one is, in which case Waze will presumably assume that there is no traffic on the road and send more people down it.

I live in Los Angeles. Waze only learns a new route if you teach it a route. One time I was stuck in the hills in the Valley and traffic was particularly awful. It kept re-routing, and I was wondering why it wasn't sending me on a particular route, so I decided to go that way. Well, next day the route is full of people. This has happened a few times.

So now I have routes that I know and purposely do not share with any of these apps. I make everyone in the car turn off Waze, Google, etc. If I am in an Uber or Lyft, I will just sit there. I once shared a route with an Uber driver and it's now filled with Wazers. I also have routes where I ignore the no turn signs but Waze respects those so I don't care.

Travel time isn't everything. Negotiating a series of scenic turns is often more pleasant than inching along on the highway, even if the latter takes less time.

That sounds nice in theory, but since everyone uses navigation apps, in practice you are just going to inch along bumper to bumper on the "scenic" route.

Very true. I live in a similarly large city and every time I try to "outsmart" Google Maps it ends up going terribly for me. I've just accepted that Google always knows best -- if it's recommending some dark-red highway it really is the best way to go.

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