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Comment by wiml | Hacker News Reader

Nice project! On the subject of different optimization goals for route planning, I was thinking about car travel. Google optimizes for travel time, but I often want to weight "route simplicity" higher than time — I'd rather take a straight shot down a mildly congested highway than wind through a bunch of peoples' backyards. And why not an option to "minimize deaths"? Some routes (and some turns) are more accident-prone than others; at Google scale you could save a lot of lives this way.

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> Google optimizes for travel time

Speaking of Google Map route optimization...

I was out and about the other day and entered the next destination in Google Maps. It told me to drive 80km which would have taken over an hour due to the roads.

Fortunately I knew that had to be wrong. After a bit of poking I found I had turned on "avoid toll roads"... after switching that off, it showed me a 5 minute route instead.

Sure I had to pay a few bucks for it, but in my mind "avoid toll roads" does not mean "avoid toll roads at all cost".

frankly, I wish there were a lot more settings to optimize for in google maps. I actually prefer to stay off the highway for short trips, even if it takes a little longer. it feels super wasteful to accelerate up to 60+ mph to merge safely, then slam on the brakes one or two exits later. similarly, google will often send me through complicated (and therefore dangerous, imo) intersections which could be avoided completely with a couple extra turns. sometimes I'm not in any real hurry to get somewhere; it would be nice to have a "scenic route" option for these cases.

unfortunately, I suspect the simplicity is more a deliberate design choice rather than mere laziness. I'm not holding my breath for these features, but I hope that one day a viable competitor may emerge to offer navigation for power users.

> similarly, google will often send me through complicated (and therefore dangerous, imo) intersections

Reminds me of another Google Maps story. Was picking up something second hand, so was driving somewhere unfamiliar. I followed Google Maps, and the route seemed reasonable.

Then I hit the residential area where my destination was. Google Maps told me to drive up this really narrow road to get onto another road. Looked really weird, but I couldn't see any other choice besides a long detour so I carefully drove up that road.

At my destination, I told the woman I was buying from about Google Maps and that narrow road. "So _that's_ why all those people are driving on that pedestrian road" she exclaimed.

Apparently I was not the first...

I'm hard-pressed to believe that Apple Maps may have something Google Maps doesn't, but I was able to choose between between a "faster" (by 5 minutes over nearly 5 hours) and "simpler" route for the drive I took from AZ to Utah 2 days ago.

I've seen this repeatedly with Apple Maps. You consistently get a "simplest" (although not labelled as such), a "shortest distance" route, and a "fastest" route. I've consistently noticed Google Maps hyper-optimize for time but you end up with slightly crazier/higher # of turns. Also, Apple Maps re-routing tends to take the hint that I want to stay on a main round around a residential neighborhood vs trying to constantly re-route my down a side street. YMMV, but I actually prefer Apple Maps c.a. 2019+

I have no idea what google optimizes for but it's not time or distance. At least in my neighborhood (San Francisco) it almost alway pushes you onto "main" traffic streets over much faster and more direct routes. It's trivial to just drag the line to a better route and see the time drop by several minutes over just a few miles. And this is not a traffic thing, they are longer even late at night. Maybe some agreement with the district to prefer mandated high traffic areas?

I think it's simpler than that: they probably weigh in popularity to some degree already. It's a very cheap way to be able to get to a point where you can say, "it's not optimal, but at least it's not awful".

In other words, just like nobody got fired for buying IBM, nobody got fired for suggesting the popular streets.

Waze went a bit in that direction, they have an option for "avoid difficult intersections".

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