[pdeuchler]

I live in Boulder and this happens all the time during ski season. When traveling towards I-70 there's a longer, more circuitous route which breaks off of Highway 6 and goes through Idaho Springs. This path is longer, but cuts off the beginning of the initial drive into the Front Range... it's also just a two lane mountain road.

Sometimes google maps will detect heavy traffic on I-70 and start re-routing drivers the other way... unfortunately this very quickly creates a bottleneck that Google Maps can't detect in time (traffic goes from 0mph to 60mph to 0mph in the mountains) so it'll continue to funnel people down that "shortcut" until the traffic essentially equalizes with the I-70 traffic.

There's an even worse side effect, as those who went through Idaho Springs eventually have to get back onto I-70 to get to the ski resorts, so now that on ramp (which is a metered on ramp) backs up, further hurting both I-70 and the "shortcut" traffic. It's a real terrible feedback loop that essentially is caused by Google Maps not being able to adequately predict how much traffic the Idaho Springs route can handle, which seems like a hard problem to solve (especially generally).

Edit: Thought about this more and realized predicting ski traffic is more or less a proxy for predicting the weather, so I highly doubt this is a fixable problem (at least in this specific case)

[toomuchtodo]

Would you be willing to report this to the Maps team? If not, just reply and I'll get in touch with someone about it.

[pdeuchler]

Can't seem to find where to file this bug since it's not a physical mapping error. Coincidentally the Maps team is in the Boulder office, are they not? I guess I could just walk down and say hi :)

Feel free to connect me with the right people, my email is in my profile

[toomuchtodo]

Try this:

https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/6194894?hl=en

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Your directions were wrong

At this time, you can’t report wrong turns from your phone or tablet, but you can report them on your computer.

Open Google Maps on your computer. Click Directions directions button image. Enter the starting point and destination for the route for which your directions were wrong. In the bottom right of the map, click Report a problem.

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I'm working on getting a human contact involved.

[MichaelGG]

Couldn't it take a guess based on previous actions? If it does this every weekend and keeps getting the same results, ease up a bit? If it tracks individuals, it should be able to tell when it see it diverted someone, only to have them end up in traffic.