Photo: Bogdan Popa/autoevolution
In addition to providing route guidance and turn-by-turn navigation, Waze is also a fantastic solution for making the road more predictable.
Traffic reports work like a charm, and they give users the power to let others know about what’s happening on the road at any given moment. This tool is extremely efficient, as the large Waze user base helps inform drivers about accidents, traffic jams, roadkill, potholes, flood, and various other incidents.
In the meantime, the Google-owned company (that’s right, Waze is owned by Google) is working on adding support for additional reports. One of the options the dev team is currently focused on is lane closures.
Right now, users who want to report closures can only do so for entire roads. Once a report is sent, Waze assumes a specific section or the entire road is closed to traffic, therefore providing route guidance accordingly. However, if just a single lane is closed due to things like accidents or roadwork, the only way to let others know about it is with a typical traffic report and add more context in the description field.
Lane closure reports would obviously come in handy, especially as drivers could figure out that a specific lane is not available for traffic by simply looking at the screen. Depending on the number of available lanes, Waze should also be able to provide guidance in advance, so drivers would know precisely what lane to use to avoid slowdowns.
Someone sent a request for this feature back in 2016, but Waze has so far ignored this idea. In the meantime, the submission received over 400 upvotes, more or less emphasizing that users need a way to flag lane closures.
A member of the Waze team confirmed in late January that reporting lane closures is currently on the table. However, no further specifics were provided other than “we plan to work on having an option to report a lane closure.” As for how it’s supposed to happen, the Waze employee only said the release would happen “in the near future.” Given how things typically happen in the Waze world, you’d better not hold your breath for this feature, as I don’t see it going live earlier than late 2023.
In the meantime, if you want to report a lane closure, you can just use the solution I detailed above. A typical traffic report or even a map chat would come in handy to let others know that a specific lane is closed for traffic. This way, fellow drivers would know in advance what lane to use, though it goes without saying that a dedicated feature in this regard would be more convenient and make the restrictions easier to observe in advance.
Eventually, the new feature could convince more Google Maps users to switch to Waze, especially as the latter is slowly becoming the better option for traffic navigation. Google Maps needs Waze to become the almighty navigation app, but right now, the search giant still favorites a strategy that involves keeping both solutions alive.
In the meantime, the Google-owned company (that’s right, Waze is owned by Google) is working on adding support for additional reports. One of the options the dev team is currently focused on is lane closures.
Right now, users who want to report closures can only do so for entire roads. Once a report is sent, Waze assumes a specific section or the entire road is closed to traffic, therefore providing route guidance accordingly. However, if just a single lane is closed due to things like accidents or roadwork, the only way to let others know about it is with a typical traffic report and add more context in the description field.
Lane closure reports would obviously come in handy, especially as drivers could figure out that a specific lane is not available for traffic by simply looking at the screen. Depending on the number of available lanes, Waze should also be able to provide guidance in advance, so drivers would know precisely what lane to use to avoid slowdowns.
Someone sent a request for this feature back in 2016, but Waze has so far ignored this idea. In the meantime, the submission received over 400 upvotes, more or less emphasizing that users need a way to flag lane closures.
A member of the Waze team confirmed in late January that reporting lane closures is currently on the table. However, no further specifics were provided other than “we plan to work on having an option to report a lane closure.” As for how it’s supposed to happen, the Waze employee only said the release would happen “in the near future.” Given how things typically happen in the Waze world, you’d better not hold your breath for this feature, as I don’t see it going live earlier than late 2023.
In the meantime, if you want to report a lane closure, you can just use the solution I detailed above. A typical traffic report or even a map chat would come in handy to let others know that a specific lane is closed for traffic. This way, fellow drivers would know in advance what lane to use, though it goes without saying that a dedicated feature in this regard would be more convenient and make the restrictions easier to observe in advance.
Eventually, the new feature could convince more Google Maps users to switch to Waze, especially as the latter is slowly becoming the better option for traffic navigation. Google Maps needs Waze to become the almighty navigation app, but right now, the search giant still favorites a strategy that involves keeping both solutions alive.
Google News