Hacker News Reader

Comment by epberry | Hacker News Reader

One feature I miss in navigation services is an ability to choose the “easy” route. For example, I live in the Midwest and usually I’d rather take the interstate, even if it’s 5 minutes longer, than a series of country roads. Obviously you can choose this when you know where you’re going but forget it if you’re in an unfamiliar area. A simple heuristic for this would be which route involves the fewest different roads.

View on HN

I want the opposite of this; sometimes when I’m on a road trip, I want to drive through random one- or two-lane roads that go through super cool areas. One time when I was driving cross-country (US) google routed me for about 10 miles through a 1.5-lane road through a forest instead of the highway. It was magical. Beautiful, winding roads, tons of animals, etc. It’s super hard to find roads like that normally.

If you are committed enough, you can convince OSMAnd to avoid larger highways. It comes with an option to avoid freeways, which is just a parameter in the routing specification:

https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd-resources/blob/master/ro...

So then you can add similar parameters for other major highway types (or one that groups them).

Like I say, committed. I guess BRouter could do similar.

Google Maps does this to a certain extent (but it might need some learning period). At times you might notice the route it suggests you is labeled as "best", not as "fastest". Usually, for example, it sends me via the highway even if it is theoretically 2 minutes slower than the alternative via tons of small roads / intersections. Maps is also pretty smart in estimates in general, it takes intersections and the average wait time / time lost into account.

In addition to that, Google Maps has recently added a "regular routes" feature in the personal content settings. Their description: "When providing directions, suggest routes you regularly take based on your Location History.". I have noticed that after overriding the route Maps gives you and doing something else, if it's close enough in theoretical time, Maps will pick your 'preferred' route by default after a while. The original Maps route will still be shown while driving (as one of the grey alternative routes).

But Google also often uses "shortcuts" that send you through residential areas just to save 1 minute. Esp. in the US if there's no interstate anyway. Instead of keeping you on the large road, GMaps often sends you via small (gravel) roads.

Really? I don't see that happening very often here in Belgium. Unless traffic on the main roads is really really bad, I hardly ever get sent through residential areas.

(We have an incredibly dense road network though, so main roads are usually significantly faster anyway.)

I rarely encounter it in Europe (although it happened to me in rural England), seems to be mostly US. Probably because speed limits on many small roads are the same as on larger roads and local residents drive at the same speed (which Google uses to calculate trip time).

This!! I prefer to take roads wheres theres protected turns if its making me take a left. I hate trying to take a left onto a highway from a small road. Really need an option to prefer bigger roads.

Does google not already do this? I drove in the US for the first time a month ago, and GMaps regularly had us take 3 rights and add 3 miles on to save us taking a left turn (which I ignored once I figured out what was going on)

Sometimes but its more luck than anything. It'll still make me take a left if its faster which it usually is vs taking a right all the way around a block

That would be a great feature. Where I live Waze usually decides that the quickest route is through a series of side streets through less than ideal areas in the city. There should be a way tell Waze that there's a reason few cars pass through there

Reply on news.ycombinator.com