Adding “running” to the list of things that Google engineers apparently don’t do.<p>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.
Are we using the same app? Google Maps on my phone has a selector which MUST specify if you want public transport, car, walking directions etc.<p>If I select public transport yes, it will suggest least walking by default. Sometimes I want that if I'm tired or weather is bad<p>If I select walking it will show me how to walk there no matter if it takes 15 min or 15 days.
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?
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.
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"
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.<p>Neither is good for turn-by-turn directions, but both are good for "what are all the different ways to get there"
The public transport app in my city almost does this well, it even affords cycling. But it isn’t quite as nuanced as one would like.
I wish I could add certain streets and routes to some sort of block list.<p>There are certain roads I would be willing to spend an extra 10-30 minutes driving to avoid. (And certainly would not get on them on a bike!)
Not to mention “public transit but with a waypoint” which is too advanced for all mobile apps
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.<p>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.
> <i>”Adding “running” to the list of things that Google engineers apparently don’t do.”</i><p>Not with a phone, no. Why would you take your phone with you when you run? It’s bulky and annoying.<p>If you really need to be reachable or to be able to pay for something in emergencies, that’s what smart watches are for.
> Why would you take your phone with you when you run?<p>So you can listen to music? And most people don't have a smart watch.<p>It's fairly common to see people running with a phone strapped to their arm.
> Why would you take your phone with you when you run?<p>Well, how would I get my phone back after I ran to the place I intended to run to otherwise?
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.
Yeah at this point Google Maps has 20 years of data to work with it should work flawlessly in big cities.
Can’t you disable ferries same as toll roads?
It’s not on the quick select pills so it’s not obvious but yes you can <a href="https://youtube.com/shorts/SA72d9VfsPg?is=F6zKWQNOkokN31F3" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/shorts/SA72d9VfsPg?is=F6zKWQNOkokN31F3</a><p>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.
The main alternate route is a toll bridge unfortunately.
Apple Maps also does this.<p>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.<p>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.
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 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.
That completely tracks coming from people who work in a place laid out like <i>this</i>:<p><a href="https://maps.app.goo.gl/JHQPdvSStnr6jfm77" rel="nofollow">https://maps.app.goo.gl/JHQPdvSStnr6jfm77</a>
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.
A lot of tech is overfit to the product manager role in tech companies. One of the side effects of living in a bubble.<p>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.<p>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.
I think this likely has more to do with the NP Hard problem of generating directions more than it has to do with bad design.
I remember Google maps working well for walking around in Europe. Ever since I've moved to America, not so much. Go figure...
This is in Ireland. I’ve also noticed it doing very silly things in Germany and the UK.<p>It’s fine for pure walking directions, but it gets unhappy about the idea of someone using public transport walking.
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.<p>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".<p>> 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.<p>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.<p><a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/747380/daily-step-averages-select-countries-worldwide/" rel="nofollow">https://www.statista.com/statistics/747380/daily-step-averag...</a>
Jogging was invented in the US. I think it is more of a class problem than a nationality problem.
I guess it says more about people in France, Portugal and Greece.<p>The difference is: they COULD walk if they wanted.<p>You can't if there is no walkway.
Google has giant offices in NYC. Like, you'd think this would have come up.
I remember the time when roundabouts were round in Google Maps.
[dead]
Fwiw I have a pixel and run a lot. It's never happened to me.
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.<p>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.)