Android’s Google Maps App Automatically Tells You How to Beat Traffic | Hacker News Reader

Android’s Google Maps App Automatically Tells You How to Beat Traffic

singularityhub.com

50 pointsweston26 comments

People study the Price of Anarchy [1] to design algorithms to minimize the deleterious effects of decentralizing decision making to rational and selfish agents. Traffic flow is a textbook example of selfish behaviour leading to highly inefficient solutions as compared to a central authority that decides on each agent's behalf.

It is amazing to see the time come that technology can actually allow us to centrally decide the action of agents (or at least suggest useful strategies) that are provably more efficient than any selfish strategy (which is predicated on the assumption that a large fraction, if not all agents, will go with the suggested strategy, and not act maliciously).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_of_anarchy

From the look of the article the google maps solution is using lagged traffic flow data as a basis of directing waves of traffic. I think in practice, if this had a large uptake rate, by directing cars to areas with low traffic rates, you would inadvertantly cause traffic jams even though you send "waves" to other areas in a subsequent time period.

I like the idea of a traffic utopia where cars are directed around in the most efficient way, However i think that this can only realistically work with open information sharing, (not competition) between the major players i.e. Garmin, tomtom etc to increase take up rates.

> From the look of the article the google maps solution is using lagged traffic flow data as a basis of directing waves of traffic.

I wonder if they have plans to use the destination address as another basis as this gets more traction. As the number of users grow this can help estimate where traffic will be after time passes. Google can then become that central authority of ultimately routing cars in selfless directions for maximum efficiency. It would alleviate traffic simply by showing red on the other routes, discouraging them. This red is then the predicted heavy traffic. Or rather: follow the red path and you will cause traffic.

As the number of users grow this can help estimate where traffic will be after time passes.

Fascinating, thanks for this insight. It reminds me somewhat of how Google can predict flu outbreaks better than the CDC based on users' queries.

This is a wonderful thought... but at the same time all I can think is "Gee I hope google holds true to their motto"

Most interesting. This concept is new to me; any idea if/how it has been applied to market behaviors? It would seem to be fundamentally at odds with the efficient markets hypothesis.

The efficient market hypothesis has at its basis the assumption that relevant information is readily available and disseminated to all parties.

Up until recently, information on traffic has not been readily available, nor has it been disseminated to drivers in real-time.

People can only make decisions based upon the data that they have.

I can imagine that centralized planning could be valuable in a situation like this, where it's not possible for individuals to react in real-time to changing circumstances; though I'm sure that will be possible in the not-too-distant future.

There are situations when even full information leads to failure. Tragedy of the commons (overgrazing) is the most known example.

Another less known one is as follows: assume two routes from A to B, where one is shorter (say, 1 hour when not congested) but prone to congestion and the other one longer - say 2 hours regardless of traffic.

The selfish decision is to take the shorter route as long as its congestion hasn't slowed it down to the level of the longer route. So the "anarchy" equilibrium leads to everybody spending 2 hours.

A benevolent dictator (or enlightened citizens able to come up with a social contract) could of course come with a better solution - every day choose a limited number(#) of people who can choose the shorter road without congesting it.

(#) The optimal number obviously depends on the exact characteristic of the dependency between the number of people choosing the road and the latency generated. This just a model after all.

This was my first big launch at Google!

The traffic estimates we eliminated are different that the ones we use in Route Around Traffic. The old ones (e.g. "Up to XX Hours, XX Minutes in traffic") were pretty inaccurate and was a picture only of worst case scenarios, whereas we feel the data used in route around traffic is much more accurate.

I've been waiting for this kind of thing to show up on the smartphone mapping front, nicely done!

The TomTom app has done this for a while -- historic data = 'IQ Routes', live data = 'Traffic'. The live data is by subscription, but not that dear.

Where do you guys get your traffic data from? Is it mostly from people using google maps mobile?

Can't really comment, but this blog post may point you in the right direction.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sittin...

As an otherwise happy iPhone 4 user, not being able to get all google apps as first class citizens on the iPhone is extremely frustrating.

Apple, please step up your game to offer truly competitive products (to gmail, maps, calendar) or tear down the wall!

Feel for you, and that's a big reason I chose Android. Ironically, DHH wrote about why he digs the core iPhone apps here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2684433

P.S. Web-based Gmail for mobile apparently got some updates yesterday:

http://googleappsupdates.blogspot.com/2011/08/gmail-for-mobi...

I was excited when this was announced, but I'm not sure what it's actually doing in practice. On my Android 2.3 phone with up-to-date Maps app, it always picks the first of three alternate routes, even if the others have shorter estimated times and no lengths of red.

I've compared Google Navigation on my Android to Maps on my wife's iPhone, and sometimes they pick different routes. After checking the traffic, our conclusion was that mine was choosing the route with less traffic, while hers was always choosing the most direct route. I think it just re-orders them so that the chosen route is always first.

Does anyone know if it will now actually update the route if traffic conditions change? It may pick the best route when you start, but for a multi-hour drive traffic conditions change and you may need to reroute. I've taken to regularly looking at the reroute option just to see if another route now has shorter time, but it really should do this automatically.

Wasn't it only last month when Google said they were eliminating traffic estimates due to them being unreliable?

[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20080043-71/google-maps-ca...)

The best way to predict the future [traffic] is to create it! :)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2871127

Not only does the Navigation app on Android not reroute when traffic conditions change, but it will always prefer a route with a shorter distance (over major roads) than a faster route (with traffic).

In my adventures trying to avoid traffic in Minneapolis I've grown very frustrated with the Navigation app completely ignoring a route that will take me a little bit out of my way but is 10+ minutes faster due to the shorter routes having stand-still traffic.

Google Maps with traffic has been available on Android since this article was written (5 months ago).

That being said, I use this pretty much every day on my drive home.

This is really great but I'm not sure this is going to eliminate any of our major traffic problems.

If you drive to work every morning I can't imagine you're going to pull out your phone one day hoping to find a different way to work.

Google's update to Navigation only helps the non-commuters when what we really need is something to unlock bumper-to-bumper commuters.

Ho hum. The free TeleNav app built in to Sprint cell phones has done optimal traffic routing automatically for years. And the TeleNav speech synthesis is far superior, at least on my Samsung Epic. I really have trouble understanding what the Google Maps app is saying during turn-by-turn directions.

Google Maps on Android uses the system TTS. The one that ships with Android (Pico TTS) is indeed pretty bad, but you can buy better ones in the Market (e.g., SVOX Classic).

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