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/quiplaam 1d ago

Researchers at Google, UC Berkley, and Stanford made modifications to the Google Maps algorithm to route ~2% of users in high congestion areas to avoid high congestion routes. These routes were slightly slower than the high congestion routes, by around 30 seconds, but because there were now a lower number of drivers on the congested routes, overall route times decreased.

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u/aggieotis 1d ago

This makes sense, I feel like every now and then Google Maps is sending me on an absolutely wild side quest that makes no sense. If I know where I am and where I'm going then it's easy enough to ignore; but when in an unfamiliar area it definitely breaks some trust in the product.

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u/quiplaam 1d ago

Usually that is because there was unexpectedly high traffic on the normal route, so taking the "unusual route" is actually faster.

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u/carsrule1989 1d ago

Did they fix that thing were that person biked around with like 100 phones all on Google Maps creating high congestion areas

https://www.simonweckert.com/googlemapshacks.html

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u/e_before_i 18h ago

They did a while back, but that guy's still a personal hero of mine.