Routing-FAQ

Q: Does having roads with contiguous names play a role in routing?

• Driving instructions may be influenced by street names. If, for example, one segment is a straight continuation of another segment but has a different street name, the routing server will generate a 'continue straight' instruction, rather than issuing no instruction at all. However, this capability was disabled via configuration on our systems almost 3 years ago, so truly enough our drivers won't see those automatic instructions, but only the ones overridden explicitly by the editors.
• Off-again/on again (AKA 'big detours'): a prerequisite for determining that a route went off a FW and back on (and therefore may be corrected) is the fact that both FW segments have the same street name
• HOV optimisations depend on HOV segments having the same street name.

Q: Are alternate names taken into consideration for routing equally as primary names?

Alt names are looked at, like primary ones. This way editors have the flexibility to use primary as the name determining the turn instruction, and the alts to create name continuity (when needed).

Q: Do we use GM info for very long routes ?

We use a lightweight optimised algorithm for extra long routes.

Q: Are Closures automatically suspended when traffic starts flowing?

We monitor closure traffic based on time windows:

• If the systems detects a certain amount of vehicles going through a closed segment with a high enough speed, we will suspend the closures until the next evaluation.
• If in the next time window there is no activity/minimal activity, the closure will be reactivated.
• If there is no activity/minimal activity the closure will stay as it is.

If GPS drift has caused the closure to be inadvertently lifted (for example, when the closed road is next to a HOV lane or service road), you can override this feature by selecting the "HOV/Service Road adjacent" option when adding or modifying a closure.

Q: Does having roads with contiguous names play a role in routing?

• Driving instructions may be influenced by street names. If, for example, one segment is a straight continuation of another segment but has a different street name, the routing server will generate a 'continue straight' instruction, rather than issuing no instruction at all. However, this capability was disabled via configuration on our systems almost 3 years ago, so truly enough our drivers won't see those automatic instructions, but only the ones overridden explicitly by the editors.
• Off-again/on again (AKA 'big detours'): a prerequisite for determining that a route went off a FW and back on (and therefore may be corrected) is the fact that both FW segments have the same street name
• HOV optimisations depend on HOV segments having the same street name.

Q: Are alternate names taken into consideration for routing equally as primary names?

Alt names are looked at, like primary ones. This way editors have the flexibility to use primary as the name determining the turn instruction, and the alts to create name continuity (when needed).

Q: Do we use GM info for very long routes ?

We use a lightweight optimised algorithm for extra long routes.

Q: Are Closures automatically suspended when traffic starts flowing?

We monitor closure traffic based on time windows:

• If the systems detects a certain amount of vehicles going through a closed segment with a high enough speed, we will suspend the closures until the next evaluation.
• If in the next time window there is no activity/minimal activity, the closure will be reactivated.
• If there is no activity/minimal activity the closure will stay as it is.

If GPS drift has caused the closure to be inadvertently lifted (for example, when the closed road is next to a HOV lane or service road), you can override this feature by selecting the "HOV/Service Road adjacent" option when adding or modifying a closure.