Use predictive modeling to better route traffic during a major traffic event
Western Washington state experienced a major traffic event when a train derailed and shut down Interstate 5 for the whole day. 60K vehicles use that stretch of I-5 every day. I used Waze to navigate home, but a 40 minute drive turned into 5.5 hours because of the accident and using side roads.
Waze tried its best to find the best route, but the predicted two-hour drive kept getting worse and worse. Of course, there's not much historic information to know how to the side and back roads would reach to that much traffic flooding onto them, but Waze failed spectacularly.
The suggestion I have is to look at an event like the Puget Sound I-5 incident on 12/18 and learn how to better route that much traffic. There is a way to assign cars different routes to best distribute the load instead of directing people to a route that is good now, but because a thousand cars are now on a small farm road, you've created a worse mess.
Waze kept digging itself into a deeper and deeper hole. The other issue is that there was an actual emergency alert that came across about "severe traffic delays". I hope Waze is tied into the emergency alert system so that it can incorporate those alerts into the app.
This wasn't an emergency like an earthquake, fire or lahar, but Waze can serve an important function in situations like this if it did a better job of looking ahead into an unknown situation and making additional recommendations besides "the best route".
Predictive modeling of how many cars Waze is routing onto small roads could better anticipate how small roads fill and how they "drain" when there is a major, unforeseen traffic event.
Jeremy
shared this idea
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Anonymous
commented
I've had similar problems in Orange County, California. I take a predictable route to work at a predictable time of day, and there are two predictably slow stop lights. Every morning, my estimated time creeps up while I wait at these lights. Every day, I note "traffic jam" at least a couple of times. You have to be able to adjust to this at some point - I've been doing this for months and each time it ticks upward.
And, yes, there are predictable events everywhere and Waze should hook into them.
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Hodor_ commented
use google maps, news radio traffic anouncements for better overview of traffic especially long time predictable (officially scheduled) events and recent happend events (major accidents e.g.).
Yesterday 2015-08-27 in the afternoon/evening there was a major incident close to the city Düsseldorf - Germany. The result was a de facto traffic shutdown for the entire city. On my way out of the city (20km -> 4h+) waze did not support me at all finding a way out. I had the impresion the system was overstrained. It showed me from time to time some single small traffic problems but did not put it in a bigger context. On my way I looked from time to time to google maps traffic and all roads were dark red but on waze you weren't able see the whole drama. please improve