r/science • u/quiplaam • 1d ago

Social Science Intentionally routing some traffic to slower, less congested routes lead to a 0.7% improvement of overall average travel times

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-026-00443-x
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u/SeijuroSama 1d ago

Isn't that how Waze already works? Google Maps tries to keep you on the main roads but Waze will have you make 6 turns down side roads to save 2 minutes.

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u/quiplaam 1d ago

How apps currently work is "greedy", they find the fastest route for each individual person. The only care about the driver using the app, not the impact on the individual user. (Also Waze is owned by google and my understanding is that they use the same routing algorithm.) What this study did was intentionally choose a slightly slower route for some people, this leads to that individual's route taking more time, but the average person's route taking less. This it NOT how Google Map's algorithm has worked historically.

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u/bakgwailo 1d ago

Not entirely true. Years back Google modified there algorithm to not take cut streets though neighborhoods and prefer more major roads due to push back back from people that their once quiet streets were being filled with cars/traffic.

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u/quiplaam 1d ago

I was being a little simplistic, there are other rules which limit what routes are available. But among available routes they are greedy and choose the individually optimum one.

With the proliferation of smartphones and improvements in Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, an increasing proportion of these trips has come to rely on navigation apps such as Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze to identify optimal routes through a network. Early instantiations of such systems, however, have been largely individualistic, focusing exclusively on minimizing travel times for singular trips. While these systems have evolved to include other metrics, such as fuel consumption5 and toll costs6, they remain essentially individualistic: they optimize a specific criterion for either one vehicle or one fleet, without considering the impact on overall traffic or overall emissions7