3 ms·
Well the other route presumably has a significant throughput. If 1000 car/min are in traffic, and the side-road has a 200 car/min capacity, the first 20% of peo
by rland 7y ago
Well the other route presumably has a significant throughput. If 1000 car/min are in traffic, and the side-road has a 200 car/min capacity, the first 20% of people to leave the main road will experience no additional traffic.
Now, let's say that the 200 car/min turns to a bottleneck of 100 car/min if it's overwhelmed 10 mins downstream of the turnoff. If google routes >200 car/min to the turnoff, there will eventually be a significant traffic jam: cars will pile up at the bottleneck, and even if waze stops routing to the turnoff at that point, the jam would still travel upwards like a pressure wave until it hits the turnoff.
I'd have a hard time believing it's possible for waze to know beforehand what those throughputs are, so some situations like this must occur.
- alistairSH 7y agoThese situations absolutely occur. Something like this happened to me in Alexandria, VA, trying to cross the Woodrow Wilson bridge into MD. I-495 was slow across the bridge. Waze re-directed me off the interstate into residential side streets, along with thousands of other travelers. The side-streets were every bit as jammed as the highway. It took me 3 hours to disentangle myself from that mess. Was it faster than staying on the highway? No idea, but 3 hours to cover 5 miles is terrible - the app should have just said "You're fucked, go home and try again tomorrow." instead of constantly telling me "oh hey, try this other side street, it'll save you 45 minutes!"
- danesparza 7y agoI would pay good money for the "go home and try again tomorrow" feature. Especially if it was narrated by my favorite celebrity. Like Cookie Monster.
- thrownblown 7y agoYou can get cookie monster's voice on Waze...
- danesparza 7y agoOh, I'm aware. Thanks though. ;-)
- jrochkind1 7y agoMan, now imagine how the people who live on those residential side streets feel...
- londons_explore 7y agoIt depends on the city. In some cities, Googles routing takes into account the number of other users Google has directed down the road.