Under settings>navigation there was an option to choose between Waze prioritizing the fastest route or the shortest route. I no longer see this option here or under any of the other menu options. Is this option completely removed? If it is,does anyone know why?
I have the same question. Waze seems to have removed that. Iām getting different routes than what I normally did.
While starting a trip I can select Routes to see suggested routes but itās sometimes hard to see the details.
I too am having the same issue. Itās kinda hard to see which route is the best given I work as Uber driver, and canāt stop to choose some of the given options when driving to unknown destinations. Please help
Same here. I observed that option was removed after an update. I wish they left the option.
Ditto. Why would thet remove the function? Silly.
Waze staff announced on 2017-12-25 that the routing server no longer pays attention to the app configuration option requesting āfastestā or āshortestā routing.
The server will now give the fastest route, no matter what the user has requested in the app.
From my point of view, as an electric car driver, this is an amazingly stupid and retrograde step and it will mean I will, reluctantly, have to stop using Waze as my main satnav app. Range is crucial for me and many electric car drivers, and if Waze canāt give shortest journey options when I need them it will be unuseable.
As I recall from one of the Waze meetups earlier this year, staff explained that an extremely small percentage of users ever chose the āshortestā option in the app. I canāt remember what the figure was, but Iām sure it was well below 1%.
On the couple of occasions in the past when I have accidentally chosen āshortestā, it has been immediately obvious there is a problem as Waze took me on a crazy zig-zag route with a multitude of junctions to negotiate.
I understand range-anxiety is fundamental to the users of electric vehicles. But unless your vehicle is incredibly efficient at harvesting braking energy, then a Waze shortest route would be unlikely to help you much as the constant stopping and starting at junctions probably wastes a great deal of power. And for a conventional fossil-fuel vehicle, the shortest route is very likely to use more fuel.
Another reason for making the change is that - simply speaking - Waze has never offered a āfastestā route. Waze routing has always taken into account factors other than just time/speed. To some extent, Waze favours āsmoothā routes - where there are fewer junctions and changes of road types.
It also has some preference for more predictable routes - routes where there is more speed data available or the data shows less variability in the history. The reason for that is simply confidence: if Waze regularly offered you a 1 hour route, but that route often takes 50 minute or 1Ā½ hours, you wouldnāt be impressed. But if it regularly offers you a 1 hour 10 minute route that always takes that long, you would have a much better chance of arriving when you expect.
So thatās why āshortestā route is gone. It probably also means that the app no longer has to say āfastestā route when it isnāt really. There are plenty of posts in the forum from users who see times where the chosen route isnāt the fastest route available. The app canāt really say ābestā route because different people might have a different interpretation of what ābestā means. Itās not possible to explain (in detail, as Iāve done here) why Waze chooses routes in the app - and only a tiny fraction of Waze users will ever visit the forum to see such an explanation.
Thatās not to say that there couldnāt be changes made to the routing algorithms to accommodate electric vehicles. They definitely donāt have the same needs as a conventional car. But I donāt think the old āfastestā route was really suitable. As use of electric vehicles is only going to increase, I hope such considerations will lead to changes in the routing servers.
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I just planned a journey with Waze which gave:
1 135 miles 2:29
2 139 miles 2:40
3 112 miles 2:42
and shortest on TomTom is 89.7 miles 3:13.
I donāt drive fast on motorways so the time estimates for Waze are substantially out and would require additional charging stops to cover these substantial extra distances. My car is more efficient at lower speeds and a 90 mile journey will only require 1 charge enroute.
Waze would do well to take account of the type of car, as you suggest.
The thing is, I constantly receive a mix of routes between the fastest and the shortest. One night, while working as an Uber Driver, Waze gave me the shortest route, despite having an almost empty main road besides the one the app provided me. And thatās what Iām getting most frequently this days. Id like to have the option back, or at least reassure me that the fastest and smoothest (without many turns) route is always the first one shown by the app
You can of course tap āRoutesā after selecting your destination and chose the shortest route from the list of options.
Donāt forget us classic car owners who also donāt pelt round the motorway at 70mph+
The shortest route used to give me the option of taking āthe scenic routeā, which depending on where you are could be country backroads and not necessarily negotiating suburbia.
My last 3 routing options had lost my scenic routes to and from work. Shame, but good job Iāve learnt them all already. Otherwise itād be back to old OS maps!#
Also, what is ā1%ā of Waze users? I reckon thatās a lot of people!
Honestly, I do not remember what the actual figure was, hence my vague statement. What I can say with confidence is that the figure I heard was so low that it seemed completely reasonable to me that they should stop supporting an option that was being used by a very small minority.
In that way, it is very similar to the number of map colour schemes in the app. There used to be about 10 different colour schemes available and a couple of years ago, Waze got rid of all but 2. Anyone who has made their way to the forums here can probably be counted as an āexperiencedā Waze user. As such, many of us used different colour schemes, some even working out ways to customise them and we all complained when the app schemes were cut down to just 2.
But we (the forum users) are, in reality, a tiny minority of the Waze user base. Things that we care about deeply are often completely unnoticed by the vast majority of users.
Bad news
Too bad to delete an option, it diminishes the interest in waze
Is this option āexpensiveā to maintain for waze ?
As it existed it was enough to keep it and no longer make evolution, I suspect waze simplify the routing calculation to lighten the load on servers
In addition it seems much simpler to calculate a route to the shortest without taking into account the traffic, rather than calculate a fastest route.
I used this option for several reasons
- to take tourist routes outside the major axes
- with my vintage car I preferred to do less kilometers on the roads quieter than the main roads
- as a editor when I had the time it allowed me to go to roads with very little traffic on which I detected some errors
These alternative path had the advantage of relieving the āwazer highwaysā, now everyone will have more or less the same route and will go through the same roads, which will strengthen the bad reputation of waze particularly in residential areas.
As these main roads will be used a lot, their use will become more and more privileged by waze, the small roads will become neglected.
I already see this effect the non-primary roads are ignored by waze while it would relieve the main roads. To me waze guidance becomes less and less intelligent.
When I will need a shortest route, I will leave waze for another application that will have this option, there are many free applications that will do the trick because in this case the traffic info is not important.
Regarding the numbers (which is not the center of the problem)
How many journeys are calculated per waze over 24 hours ?
1% of this number is equal to ? 100,000 ? / 1 million ? / 10 millions ? ā¦
I know that my post will not help much because the waze staff does not take into account this forum but you never know ā¦
I know they may have had a good reason to make that decision, but some wazers will miss shortest route.
That feature was very important for Uber drivers and passengers. For me, itās much better following a route that takes 10 more minutes to get to the destination, but costs, letās say, 50% less.
I too, am an electric vehicle driver with limited lease mileage. My commute to work is a few minutes faster on the highway, but 4.6 miles longer. In order to avoid putting an extra 9-10 miles on my car 5x a week, I use the shortest route to get to work and back, and fastest route option for other destinations.
Iād argue your point as I seem to have left my app set to shortest before updating to this most recent version, and it is now stuck always giving me the shortest route. I have to use Google Maps now in order to get the fastest route since there is no way for me to change it in waze. The setting is stuck to my account since reinstalling the app, and trying to route on an iPhone, iPad, and Android with my account all net the same result.
Livemap showing fastest route and my app showing shortest route:
Iāve just realised this option is missing as Iāve moved house and have a new commute. I have 2 main routes to go to work which both take the same amount of time when traffic is good. One is about 29 miles and the other is about 44 miles. Iād much rather take the shorter route and save myself a bit of fuel even if the drive takes slightly longer. The frustrating thing is that 9 times out of 10 when I turn waze on in the morning, it defaults to the longer route, which is usually quicker. The really frustrating thing is that when I go onto the route options, this route that is 15 miles longer is usually no more than 5 minutes quicker. So from my personal point of view, Iād much rather be able to choose the default option to favour the shorter route, since Iād rather save 15 miles worth of fuel and take 5 minutes longer to get to work.
Seems strange to take out a perfectly justified feature just because you think itās under-used. The 99% that donāt use it probably wouldnāt notice (or care) that you took this feature out, but the 1% that do use it are now a bit annoyed that you have. So why upset this minority by making a change that doesnāt actually benefit anyone?
To add to what iainhouse said on the previous page.
Another known issue with āshorter routeā was that it was ignoring any restrictions set in the editor. If a route was restricted for public transports only (for example), it would ignore that and route you through if it was the shortest way.
So in addition to being used by very few Wazers, staff also got reports of bad routing which was sometimes making people lose a lot of time or added many miles/km to find a legal detour again, and could even make people who blindly followed the route get into dangerous situations.
I donāt think they would want to bring it back knowing about these flaws, as for fixing it to be safer to use and then bring it back, that would require dev time. As the devs are pressured to add or work on new features more than anything else, I doubt that management would allow them to devote time for it because of the reasons mentioned by Iain.
Same hereā¦ 
As EV driver, this option will be greatly missed!! :evil:
This removal makes Waze less user friendly, taking the choice out of the usersā hands.
I used to be able to decide whether I want to spend 2 more minutes on the road and drive 10 km less. Now I have no idea how much more time the shorter route will need, invariably forcing me to take the longer route, even though it might only be marginally faster.
Please bring this option back !!
:evil: