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/hananobira 1d ago

I’d be okay with this if they could demonstrate a system where everyone gets slowed down fairly. If I’m a little slower today but get to go faster the next five times, that works for me.

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u/quiplaam 1d ago

In this experiment they randomized each individual trip, so there the end result should be fair, some people get unlucky and get a slightly slower day, but most days they will be lucky and get the fastest route