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Google Maps Hacks

simonweckert.com

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Re: Google Maps Hacks

#301

Post by netsharc »

Nition wrote: post #234
kibwen wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offline routing works? Every time that I've previously tried offline routing on downloaded maps it spun for a while and then gave up with a connection error. I was under the impression that the only point of offline maps was for looking up locations, not for navigating to them.

Get Here WeGo, Nokia's maps app. You can download whole states/countries to use offline (it's all vector data so it's not too huge), and traffic data is optional. I've been using it since the Nokia N9 days. Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.here.app.m... iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/here-wego-city-navigation/id95...

FYI this app has been sold by Nokia to a consortium of German carmakers (Audi, BMW and Daimler).

Re: Google Maps Hacks

#302

Post by rland »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #297
netsharc wrote: post #23

An interesting "red but no traffic" phenomenon is in Iceland, with roads which are next to scenery viewing points. The roads are mostly empty in this country, but everyone must've slowed down when they saw the breathtaking scenery, and would pull into the viewing point's parking spot to stop and take pictures. On Google Maps these areas were marked red. On another navigation related topic; I was using Waze in a high-…

So I'm stuck in a traffic jam, and google maps is telling me I can take an alternate route to avoid it and save 25 minutes vs waiting in the traffic jam. Something that occurs to me as I sit in this traffic... what portion of all the other driver's around me also looking at google maps? Is Google Maps telling them to take the same alternate route as me? Are they all going to do it? If they all do it, does the alterna…

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.

Re: Google Maps Hacks

#303

Post by matchagaucho »

Sounds like a good interview question for Google.

"Given GPS and cell tower location data, how do you prevent a false positive traffic jam when 99 phones are all within 1M of each other?"

Re: Google Maps Hacks

#305

Post by InitialLastName »

Spooky23 wrote: post #295
eigenvector wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I travel to new cities often and usually rent a car from the airport. In most cities around the world, there is dedicated signage pointing out the access to the airport on every major approach it. I would say half the time Google wants to take me on a different route on some back road that is not meant to be the public access to the airport, which creates the extra mental overhead of having to ignore the gigantic "AI…

My favorite example of this was in NYC heading to Citi Field for a Mets game. Google Maps guides you past the exit, has you make a u-turn by getting off at the next exit (which is really unusual) and get you trapped on some ramp for an extra 20m.

I'm really glad they aren't optimizing for people to drive to a major gathering point with 4+ good non-driving alternatives.

Re: Google Maps Hacks

#306

Post by InitialLastName »

DuskStar wrote: post #285
Spooky23 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens on NY 73, which is a road in the Adirondack High Peaks region between the highway and Lake Placid. It’s legit — even though cars are parked, you still need to slow down! I usually avoid Google maps for traveling in areas that I don’t know. It takes you off on stupid routes that save marginal time (if any) too much. Waze is good for interstate travel, but IMO Apple is better for giving you the “right”, lo…

So a theory I've had for a bit now... Google maps doesn't optimize for ease of travel, or time, or anything like that - it optimizes for engagement , like every other Google product. And how would you do that with a maps product? By making routes too complicated to memorize, too specialized (back streets, etc) to generalize, and then changing things up often to prevent a route from becoming second nature anyways . Wh…

... especially if they can bring you by some companies who have paid for ads on Maps. Where I used to live, in a grid city, Maps would take drivers down one single street whose only discerning feature from those 2 streets north or south (alternating one-ways) was that it could say "Turn left at the Pizza Hut".

Re: Google Maps Hacks

#307

Post by andrewzah »

labcomputer wrote: post #274
onionisafruit wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you fix that? I’ve been wondering how google and the others differentiate between cars on the free vs express lanes.

You can measure peak acceleration--cars accelerate much faster than buses or trains--or whether you're connected to headphones (not a head-unit). Use of headphones by drivers is illegal in most places. As for express vs. regular lanes, express-lane cars will have much different distributions than regular-lane cars. Use something like KNN where the distance metric is a weighted sum of Kolmogorov-Smirnov distance betwe…

> or whether you're connected to headphones

I’m pretty sure this is rarely enforced in most states in the US. My father frequently drives across the US and always takes his calls with earbuds because the speakers aren’t very good.

I do it with one earbud in because I find the quality of speaker audio terrible, forcing me to concentrate harder on it to discern what’s being said.

Re: Google Maps Hacks

#308

Post by [deleted] »

InitialLastName wrote: post #306
DuskStar wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a theory I've had for a bit now... Google maps doesn't optimize for ease of travel, or time, or anything like that - it optimizes for engagement , like every other Google product. And how would you do that with a maps product? By making routes too complicated to memorize, too specialized (back streets, etc) to generalize, and then changing things up often to prevent a route from becoming second nature anyways . Wh…

... especially if they can bring you by some companies who have paid for ads on Maps. Where I used to live, in a grid city, Maps would take drivers down one single street whose only discerning feature from those 2 streets north or south (alternating one-ways) was that it could say "Turn left at the Pizza Hut".

[deleted]

Re: Google Maps Hacks

#309

Post by maxtollenaar »

Google maps and other navigational apps could potentially flood residential routes that weren't supposed to handle traffic. People have done different measures to combat this. One anecdote is: "And in 2016, in Takoma Park, Maryland, residents went to great lengths to prevent Waze drivers from flooding their roads during a bridge reconstruction project. A Takoma Park man reportedly started reporting phantom wrecks and traffic jams on his street before Waze banned him" ref: https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-05-0...

Re: Google Maps Hacks

#310

Post by 32gbsd »

Spooky23 wrote: post #60
netsharc wrote: post #23

An interesting "red but no traffic" phenomenon is in Iceland, with roads which are next to scenery viewing points. The roads are mostly empty in this country, but everyone must've slowed down when they saw the breathtaking scenery, and would pull into the viewing point's parking spot to stop and take pictures. On Google Maps these areas were marked red. On another navigation related topic; I was using Waze in a high-…

This happens on NY 73, which is a road in the Adirondack High Peaks region between the highway and Lake Placid. It’s legit — even though cars are parked, you still need to slow down! I usually avoid Google maps for traveling in areas that I don’t know. It takes you off on stupid routes that save marginal time (if any) too much. Waze is good for interstate travel, but IMO Apple is better for giving you the “right”, lo…

Gm definitely does not taken elivation into account. If you live in a hilly country you will want to avoid alternative routes that seem shorter but are really elevation changes.
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