Mapbox traffic and routing is pretty far from ideal. Used it for driving directions for awhile because of the relative cost and ended up constantly wishing we could just use Google. I don't recall specific issues though.
Definitely. Offline maps are great but the only offline routing option is by car. If you want to walk, you have to figure it out yourself based on the driving directions.
I can see from a business point of view that it might make sense to optimize for drivers, but it's irresponsible of them to ignore the impact they have on users. They're creating a self-perpetuating cycle.
All the popular maps get traffic data from people who have their map apps open. [1] Waze has somewhat gameified it to make users give them even more real-time data.
My SirusXM radio gets its data from traffic probes and GPS equipped trucks while also monitoring other conditions, probably from a command center. They state there can be a 20 minute delay.[2] I’m surprised they aren’t collecting data from my radio since my car has LTE.
I believe they get their updates from TomTom. The routing around traffic was actually a bit better than Google's in San Francisco the few times I used it side-by-side.
The most frustrating thing about Waze is that it doesn't have offline maps. I get that the main selling point is live traffic data, but that's not necessarily an either/or with offline maps.
My experience with traffic rerouting is that you usually are 5% faster than just waiting. You're driving, which feels nice, but it's also stressful because you're already late and of course the country roads are now full of people routing around... Aside from major accidents, I think traffic info is quite overrated.
Not that it wouldn't be nice to have in OSM, but it's just not something that fits into what OSM is. It's a whole separate service, even if such a service could be integrated with the third party apps that use OSM data.
And last month Google Maps tried to convince me about 12 times to get off the highway and take back roads on a 900mi one-way trip because of hallucinated traffic.
Huh. I know for sure here (DC metro area) Google's navigation definitely takes traffic into account both for time estimates and routing. It'd be pretty useless otherwise: traffic is pretty much the major component of travel time for many/most trips.
If your just looking for routes/traffic, perhaps try "Waze" - also owned by Google. It has maps/routes without all the other bloat like recommendations.
I have Google offline maps downloaded for areas I end up in just in this case. Gotta do traffic rerouting the old fashioned way though.
Or have an old-school GPS map thingy in your glovebox.
(Also have kiwix and a whole archive of Wikipedia on my phone).
I wonder if meshtastic communicators sales took off during this. How’s LoRa traffic these days?
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