Adding “running” to the list of things that Google engineers apparently don’t do.
Where it joins “walking”. Google Maps will suggest almost arbitrarily bonkers public transport directions to avoid walking. Personal favourite: the sensible way to get from my house to work, unless the weather is terrible, is six minutes on a train and a 15 min walk. Google Maps would, generally, prefer that I spend 15 mins on the train going mostly the wrong direction and 15 minutes on a tram, then a five minute walk. It will also contemplate a ten minute walk, ten minutes walking being within the threshold Google deems physically possible, plus an arbitrary amount of time on a rather slow bus. Apple Maps and Transit are better at this.
At risk of summoning an army of vibe coders, I wish map apps were more configurable and let you set "I'm happy to walk 20 min" or "someone can drive me a few miles and drop me off"
While we're asking for navigation features, I desperately want a "chill" toggle.
I drive around the NY metropolitan area a lot. No, I don't want to take the route that saves a few minutes if it involves merging onto I95 at rush hour with 300 feet to cross 4 lanes of traffic for the next exit.
I vote for a "lock it in" feature for motorbike riding.
I set up the route, clip the phone onto the quadlock mount, ride down the street and it auto changes the route because of something motorbikes don't care about.
Or it rains and that counts as pressing buttons.
And now I am riding and with gloves on so I can't fix it.
> And now I am riding and with gloves on so I can't fix it.
It doesn't fix the problem of bad software, but try adding something like https://glovetacts.com/ to your riding glove index fingers for this particular issue.
Yeah, I used to ride with a little speaker on one side of my helmet on the inside... nothing infuriated quite like a leisurely fun ride with the audio constantly telling me to make a u-turn or whatever because it found a route that was 57 minutes instead of 59.
I'd love a "I saw your suggestions, I selected one of them, don't give me any more suggestions" feature. This was on google maps.
As for detecting rain, that'd be a whole other algorithm.
I love when Google maps in the NY metro area makes me want to take a left-turn, at a stop sign at intersection with a 6 lane road that doesn't get a stop. Yes, these insanities exist and are basically fucking death traps to attempt lefts.
This has driven me so crazy it’s about to push me off Google maps. If I’m driving upstate, I want to choose a nice straightforward highway route and stay on it. No, I don’t care if I need to sit in a little bit of traffic. No, Google, I don’t want you take it upon yourself to change my route to a bunch of back roads through Bear Mountain to avoid an 8-minute slowdown. I want you to just take me down the route you showed me when I started navigation.
I’ve had a couple times now where Google Maps has taken me into absolutely terrible traffic jams on back roads in areas where there is limited cell service. What seems to be happening is that there is a slowdown on the main road and a blind spot on the back route with no service, so Google assumes there are no cars there and no traffic, so it just funnels everyone that way until the whole route clogs up. Utterly infuriating.
All maps need to have an extra time penalty for turns, merging, etc. Even if the data is taken with an average driver, average driver probably isn't there for the first time, and for someone unfamiliar with the area any extra turn adds an extra chance to take a wrong turn.
It's amazing how bad this is in the Bay area. I wonder how map engineers don't dogfood. Or what is it that prevents them from making the maps better? They sure have no problem making changes that make maps worse.
You can do this already. Leave the map up, but silence all direction corrections. Then try to make your own way. If you already have the time to chill, you can take a little more time to think ahead about the route you’ll try. Make a wrong turn or exit and the map will still point you in the right direction.
Apple Maps suggests “your preferred route” as an option when you frequently travel an alternative path. In addition, all maps apps I know of have options to configure use of toll roads and highways.
Let me add to that: how about “no uncontrolled left turns onto busy streets” mode? Google Maps does this to me all the time and it’s infuriating, it’s up to me to avoid it.
For us in Australia it's uncontrolled right turns, and it is absolutely infuriating that many journeys would be temporally shorter if the route waited longer for the turn at an intersection with lights. Google Maps would almost surely have this data. It's been like this for at least a decade.
It's a FOSS public transport routing engine. In the options you can select what type and how much time you want to spend on the first and last "mile" (even something like bike/scooter sharing).
It uses open data or data connectors for the routing. And being FOSS, if there is no data connector yet for you region, it may be interesting to contribute one if there is a sane way to query the data from the local transport compan(y|ies).
It's not exactly what you asked for, but the public transit and multimodal focused apps are generally much better at this stuff. I like CityMapper and Transit.
Neither is good for turn-by-turn directions, but both are good for "what are all the different ways to get there"
This already exists: in "Trip options", you can toggle between "Best route", "Fewer transfers", and "Less walking", as well as allow/block "Ride services" like Uber as a transport option.
How well these options work is another question, but "Fewer transfers" does seem to allow more walking. And of course you can straight up ask for walking directions instead.
Was about to write the same - those options do exist already.
It works quite well in my experience.
Although quality may depend on how well a specific city mapped out. Melbourne for example have options for accessibility (City consuls pays for mapping accessibility scores\options and I guess those details help to plan in maps and just generally a good city benchmark).
Preferred and connecting modes works well too - one can specify if ride service or drive is not an option or bus is meh. One thing I wish to have there is 2-3 presets of these options so I can quickly switch between combinations of - "get there fast", "get on specific time", "get with my most comfortable preferences". It's all there, just switching it every time is a bit of annoying.
Conversely, as a cyclist, Google Maps infuriatingly will refuse to route you along an expressway, even when it's the shortest or only route without a huge detour. e.g. Lawrence Expressway where it crosses in an underpass under Central Expressway. This is a long-standing known issue with Google Maps routings for cycling mode.
Yes. Transit App allows you configure both your walking and cycling speeds. Combine that with selecting which other methods you allow, and you get lots of options, and more accurate ETAs.
Here's a tip if you use google maps: if you want to get from A to B but can walk a bit, just pick a point C between them then look up directions to and from point C separately. Works great
Pro-tip: if you want to get from A to B without using Google Maps, simply pick a sequence of intermediate points A = a_0, …, a_n = B where each pair of consecutive points aren’t too far apart, and then travel to each point in turn.
What do you mean "but with a waypoint”? What happens if you route on public transit without a waypoint? Do you mean indirect spaghetti routings that seem ok to Google?
No I like to find out how long it will take to go to one place and then another. With driving selected you can add arbitrary waypoints. For public transit you can have one destination only. I suppose it makes sense because they like to tell you via schedule how long it will take, and the map would need to know how long you will stay each location. But when I’m looking I’m just checking if a route exists, not which time I will take the train.
Speaking of trains, that's another thing they don't do. The auto-snapping of current location consistently snaps to whatever road or goat track it can find nearby, while equally consistently refusing to snap to the railroad they have mapped.
Sure, there's not much need for navigation in that situation, but if you're trying to be smart regarding where I am, maybe take into account if I'm travelling at 200 kph before plonking me on a twisty gravel road.
Also speaking of trains, I can't zoom out and look at intercity train lines. I can only see highways. If I'm in Japan without a car, planning a sightseeing trip and wondering where I can easily visit by train, I can't do that with Google maps. The highways obscure everything and can't be turned off.
Well, in my opinion Google Maps is terrible as an actual map anyway, it's more like some vaguely map-shaped thing that serves as a convenient geographical background for displaying POIs and directions on, but no so much use for actually orienting yourself or getting a feel for the geography of a place.
And +1 to the lack of railway lines when zoomed out, indeed another annoyance along the above lines.
I'm still astounded by how poorly Gmaps handles Seattle ferries. The time and routing calculations always assume the best case scenario.
I've had it insist I take the ferry because it estimated a 5 minute time savings, when in reality there is a minimum 3hr wait for a boat.
This I can work around, but the truly awful behavior is that if you pull off for gas and then get back on the highway, it will automatically recalculate to the 'shorter' ferry route.
The only solution I have found is to add additional stops along your preferred route.
It does this same thing when you're trying to use a road that parallels the main highway. Sometimes I don't want to go 70, I want to go 45 on a nice quiet side road. Well even after I programmed a specific route, it keeps trying to take me back to the main highway because it found a faster route. Fuck, I don't always want the fastest route. I basically don't use any turn by turn navigation stuff anymore. I check routes before leaving, take a few notes on a piece of paper, and memorize it. Not only do you learn the route much better, you have much less chance of getting lost, and you're not constantly distracted by your navigation app.
I find it incredible that "modify the chosen route as little as possible" is not really a thing in any major mapping app. Just because I turned left instead of right at an intersection and had to detour a little bit before getting to a highway shouldn't switch the way I'm going by hundreds of miles on a long trip just because it's supposedly 5 minutes or some other pithy amount faster, and I have seen scenarios like this happen in both Google Maps and Here.
Yes but then invariably I will forget to turn them back on the next time I use it. Additionally, sometimes that 45 mph option is still coded as a highway in Google’s data, so you get a really obtuse route.
As for your other question, it looks like the guy was responding to an implied “I can’t turn off tolls as a hack bypass ferries because the bridge also requires a toll”. I’d speculate that it wasn’t obvious there’s a ferry-specific filter because the other filters show up as pills.
At least on Android google maps, there's an option to avoid ferries. But if you don't set the option before you get started, it's a pita to change options.
I don't have this option available on my Android app. I have "avoid tolls" which avoids both ferries and bridges. The main alternative to the ferries in Seattle is a toll bridge. Choosing this option sends you down surface streets.
But, I usually plan my route in segments... I'll ask google for times from Colman Dock and use the WSDOT app / notifications and my understanding of typical traffic to guess how long the ferry will take. Plus, if it's important to arrive on the other side on time, I try to leave an extra ferry, in case an ambulance gets to ride the ferry all by itself and I have to wait for the next one... if I knew I wasn't going to get on that ferry, I might have driven around, but it's a lot more driving for me to go around if I actually need to head to Seattle. Seatac is a maybe, ferry is usually better, but not if I'm competing with tourist or gameday traffic.
This might just be realistic about the median American's tolerance for walking. Most Americans live in suburbs that are not walkable. At least, I know my own tolerance for walking is very abnormal for an American, and it's due to having lived in walking-oriented cities like Berkeley.
Transit App allows you configure both your walking and cycling speeds. Works great (will show you 15-20min walking), generates lots of options on how-to-get-there (e.g. bike-on-bus, Uber to train station), gives more accurate ETAs. Also instead of reducing "public transit" to a binary, it gives you much more granularity in enabling/disabling which bus/tram/light-rail/mass transit/train options, and even which specific bus route numbers to prefer.
> This might just be realistic about the median American's tolerance for walking.
This might be unrealistic about the number and relevance of Median-Americans. Turns out more than a few Americans that are outside of the median own telephones.
It would also be nice to have a configurable transportation choice for the time to leave notice. Because some things I’ll walk to, some I’ll take transit and some I’ll drive and Apple seems to want be to just pick one and only use that.
My other map complaint is that there’s no indication of how much tolls are when comparing toll vs non-toll routes. Because if it’s $5 to save ten minutes, no thanks but for a buck, maybe I’ll do it.
This is especially bad in Northern Virginia, where there is a $4 toll road that saves 20 minutes pretty reliably, and also variable priced express lanes that will save time, but can cost up to $50. I want tolls on so it directs me on the Dulles toll road, but I also want tolls off for the $50 express lanes. I wish I could set a dollar threshold.
And some of the roads have a toll only at certain times of day, but they're treated as tolled 24/7. Some are free if you have 3+ people in the car, but there's no way to say "I have N people in the car, adjust consideration of tolls accordingly."
Unless that’s changed in a recent version, it was a global setting. As I mentioned before, sometimes I will walk, sometimes drive, sometimes take transit.
> So why are Fitbit users’ profiles able to be searchable in Google? It’s not really Fitbit’s fault. When you create a profile, the default privacy setting allows profiles to be found in search results (Google, Bing, etc).
That sounds like it's Fitbit’s fault to me, although I guess some blame has to go to people who bug themselves with a device that tells a third party about every moment they're having sex in the first place. Fitbit having that data isn't much better than Google or anyone else who isn't intimately involved.
Well this was 15 years ago, all companies were trying to jump on the social media bandwagon (Google Plus launched in 2011), and both companies and users had to re-learn what privacy meant.
A lot of tech is overfit to the product manager role in tech companies. One of the side effects of living in a bubble.
My Apple Watch is set up by default to assume any 15-minute walk is a "workout" and interrupt me to ask if I wanted to record it. No, I'm just going to the store, what is this "workout" nonsense. My Oura Ring was worse, it would assume any walk duration is noteworthy and my timeline would be a jumbled mess of "workouts". But these would be reasonable assumptions for a mostly sedentary office worker living in the suburbs.
I remember when a Google feature was announced long ago, some of the headlining features was plane ticket support and currency conversion. The average American gets on a plane once a year, to a place where they accept American dollars, and wouldn't ever care about these features. But these are important if you're in your 30s and travel is an important part of your life for either business or vacations.
They have big offices in San Francisco, and also in New York, Dublin, Zurich, London, and various other cities where this stuff matters, though, these days (their Dublin office is right beside the train station that it insists I shouldn't go to, because walking!). You'd think it would've gotten fixed at some point.
We've banned this account for going on tilt, posting unsubstantive, flamebait comments. This is not what HN is for, and we've asked you before to observe the guidelines.
We've banned plenty of your accounts and we'll keep doing it if we must. We all have grotty chores we have to do. You always have the option to make a positive contribution.
Google's mapper has an option for whether to minimize walking. Turned on, it will do things like this, prioritizing the route with the least walking. it would be quite willing to do this sort of thing. Turned off, it will prioritize based on arrival time.
There is a maximum walking distance, I don't know the limit but it's certainly more than 10 minutes. I have never managed to trigger it other than by asking for a route to a location miles beyond any transit options. And it did provide me a route across the Grand Canyon. (Most people are not doing a rim-to-rim in a single day.) (But then it was totally bonkers--offered me a bike route with a time that was preposterous. Looking at it--tiny portion by bike, then walk your bike--the standard rim-to-rim route. But it assumed bicycle speed. No--try that, you're going over.)
My Apple Watch asks me if I am doing an outdoor walk everytime I am at Disney World. It sometimes takes 15 minutes to notice. Imho if its going to ask me this it should know every time I get to Disney that I am going to walk all day long and account for it.
Google Maps has had glitched-out building outlines overlapping rivers in my city for years. I don't trust it at all. Citymapper is nice for public transit directions in cities.
But then, another Google product, Pixel Watch, has the bonkers default that if you just take a walk, like I normally do on most days, it considers that a "workout" of a dedicated type "walk" that needs to be tracked. It would vibrate rather annoyingly too. So basically every time I go outside to grab a lunch, that's a "workout"? But at least you can turn that off.
Following a route through a tunnel (less than a mile long), Google Maps on iOS zooms forward on the route many stops and many miles (5+ miles) in the tunnel. I had assumes Apple Maps was worse, but to my surprise it's quite good and doesn't have this bug.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in Mexico City. I had to abandon Google Maps there. The transit system has an excellent metro, a solid BRT setup, some electric tram buses that are fine and then the purple buses that run irregular routes, don’t always accept the transit card that the rest of the system uses, and are by far the most unsafe option, such that even locals won’t ride them unless they have no choice.
Google will always route me on the purple buses. Even when the metro is faster. Their directions in Mexico City make zero sense.
The directions tend to be conservative in their assumptions. Like you won't walk/bike through a business parking lot to save 10 minutes of walking around the block.
My main two puzzles with Google Maps are:
- on my timeline I have a few driving and motorcycling, and I have neither of those, I only bike to work. But my puzzle here is: how do they know that someone is riding a motorcycle or a car?
- when I ask it for walking routes, the estimated time is always way longer than my walking time. I get to the destination in half of time. So what do they do with all the tracking?
While I am on the subject, Google Maps seems to be somewhat aware of big awkward train stations which take ages to navigate, and applies a time penalty. That's good (though also a bit inconsistent). However, it seems to assume that metro stations are of zero size; you go in the door, and immediately get on any line. This is very not true in some places.
My favourite, while being stranded on a trail with a broken bike: teleport across a lake, drive fifteen minutes, then hop on a bus. Apparently you are SOL if you don't have a car.
There are definitely better apps out there, unfortunately my area requires Maps for transit data.
Why only one app, and not several and choose the right one for the occasion? Mapy.com and OsmAnd are much better for trail use than Google Maps. Mapy has public transit info (depending on where you live, of course).
Don't forget driving in the bay area. Google maps will happily recommend entering 580/880/80 at Emeryville and going on 580 east instead of the much better entrance at 36 street that's 5 minutes out of the way.
Its also possible that its optimised for least walking for other reasons. If you were disabled in any way (like a wheel chair) or even an old lady maybe this is the better route. Or if was during a huge snowstorm or heatwave?
It's a very American take yes. I also like to walk more on either side. Simply switching to walking is usually not the solution because I usually need some public transit to cover the majority is the distance.
there really needs to be a configurable rules/decisions engine. I.e. i would prefer to walk everywhere, i will take public transit if it saves me more than 15 minutes total or 5 minutes per leg, evaluate this at every interchange node.
There are some routings in london for example where the best course of action is actually to take a train, get off walk 5 minutes then take a different train, google will always tell you to stay on the train to a point where you can change trains in the same station.
I'd also be able to tell it "never suggest that I get bus routes A, B or C; they do not in practice turn up on time".
> There are some routings in london for example where the best course of action is actually to take a train, get off walk 5 minutes then take a different train, google will always tell you to stay on the train to a point where you can change trains in the same station.
Had a good one in Amsterdam recently; rather than walk 9 minutes to the nearby central station and get a train there, it wanted me to walk 6 minutes to the central station's metro station entrance (which was a bit closer), get a metro, then join the train at another station entirely. Would have taken about twice as long.
Google isn't making arbitrary decisions here - it's reflecting social norms. Americans aren't big on walking. I've seen pictures of beautiful leafy suburbs that don't even have sidewalks.
This is overstated. At least as of 2017, Americans walked about 93% as much as people in France, for example, and a little more than people in Portugal or Greece.
I don't have sidewalks in front of my house but our neighbors all take walks - and walk to main street. A quiet street that sees a few cars an hour doesn't need a sidewalk to be walkable.
The other scenario of no sidewalk are like rural roads that are very long with nothing in between. So there sorta "no place to walk to".
> Why would you take your phone with you when you run?
Music, being able to tell what time it is, navigation¹, emergency calls², non-emergency calls/communication. Or, … the use case in TFA.
> If you really need to be reachable or to be able to pay for something in emergencies, that’s what smart watches are for.
… not everyone has the means to drop $400+/y³ on a watch & plan. Smart phone & plan prices are high enough already.
(¹perhaps more useful when I'm biking than running)
(²I've literally witnessed accidents while out on such a run. Having a phone is handy.)
(³we have to restrict ourselves to "the set of smart watches that are capable of making a call independent of a phone, here, too. If the watch requires the phone to make the call … well, that'd defeat the point. This is approximately the per-warranted-year price of a Samsung Galaxy Watch with LTE support.)
I have a smart watch; I still take a phone when running. It's not particularly inconvenient to do so. Lots of people don't have smartwatches, of course, and yet might still want to run.
I almost always run with my phone. One of the few times I didn’t, I was on about a 12 mile out and back run. At mile 6 my IT band seized up in a way it never had and never has since. I could barely walk, much less run and I was six miles from home. Eventually, I managed to hobble about a mile over the course of an hour and find a business with a phone I could use to call for a ride.
Having a phone that day would have been really nice.
… between me & my partner, we own multiple pieces of exercise wear that has a dedicated pocket for a phone, because … you need somewhere to put your phone.
I, for one, endeavor to retain situational awareness even while on foot.
The author of this article apparently demands to run around with an unlocked phone. I have the same "Theft Protection" enabled and the only thing it purports to do is lock the screen. So I may never trigger it, because if I'm walking, or running, or bicycling, the screen is locked!!
If I cram earbuds into my ears and drown out the world, then I am functionally deaf; I cannot hear tires squealing, or honking horns, or victims screaming. I shan't go on about how my bone-conduction technology muddles up both music and the real world sounds.
If I'm checking my phone while I'm in motion on a sidewalk, I'm functionally wearing blinders, and not the good kinds like they put on carriage-horses. Especially at night when my glowing screen is brighter than the Full Moon! If my face is in my screen, then my mind is also not in meatspace, but my imagination is in Lothlórien, or Cair Paravel, or 40 Eridani in the 23rd century.
My mind and five senses need to be in the present and need to be in meatspace, or my feet don't belong in traffic.
Unlikely to be the product manager, but absolutely the product manager mentality. How can people live without our product? Reality check: people fucking manage in the real world. Especially those with limited means.
The parent isn’t looking for pure walking, they’re looking for transit directions that include a higher amount of walking in order to save time overall.
My tips would be: check if it mistakenly thinks you can't directly walk to the station or something. In my town there's a particular place i often go to where Google I guess just doesn't know or care that there IS a crossing. if I just pick a point across the street it suggests much better routes
And personally if it's more than 5 min of walking i would just look up the way to the station and then from the station separately with whatever modes i prefer
And lobby your government for sorting out public transportation to your block? It seems crazy inconvenient
> My tips would be: check if it mistakenly thinks you can't directly walk to the station or something.
no, it knows and will give a sensible route if you ask for walking directions to the station.
> And lobby your government for sorting out public transportation to your block? It seems crazy inconvenient
Dublin is far from a grid layout, and has serious problems with east<>west transport; there are a bunch of buses and a tram going east to west in the city center, and a few partial orbital routes in the outer suburbs, but going east<>west near but not actually in the center is a problem. They were supposed to launch a proper inner orbital bus route a few years ago, but it has dragged on; in particular it requires special buses, because double-deckers (Dublin Bus's fleet is otherwise entirely double decker) won't fit under the very old railway bridges to the east, and it requires some hard infra work around Heuston Station. But at this point they finally have the Special Buses in operation (there were a lot of teething problems) filling in on other routes, so not sure what the holdup is.
That said, given that it's 15 Google Map minutes walk from the station to office (10 minutes in reality; Google Maps assumes a quite slow walking pace), I'm not sure I'll bother with the orbital bus even if it ever launches.
> And personally if it's more than 5 min of walking i would just look up the way to the station and then from the station separately with whatever modes i prefer
Problem is when there's multiple stations nearby and which one has the quickest connection varies depending on when exactly you leave. In that case manually checking every combination of stations could be somewhat cumbersome, especially if there's a choice of stations at both ends…
Ok also true. In my google maps in public transport mode there's also an option to prefer least walking or fewest connections, maybe it's not available in some cities?
Where it joins “walking”. Google Maps will suggest almost arbitrarily bonkers public transport directions to avoid walking. Personal favourite: the sensible way to get from my house to work, unless the weather is terrible, is six minutes on a train and a 15 min walk. Google Maps would, generally, prefer that I spend 15 mins on the train going mostly the wrong direction and 15 minutes on a tram, then a five minute walk. It will also contemplate a ten minute walk, ten minutes walking being within the threshold Google deems physically possible, plus an arbitrary amount of time on a rather slow bus. Apple Maps and Transit are better at this.