denverpilot
Tied Down
I've seen that also. It appears that it favors larger roads until it has enough data on smaller ones to recommend them. Also may be related to distance traveled. If you go short distances it seems to work with more local roads but over longer distances it reduces its subset of options to highways, probably so it responds quickly enough not to be dropped by users.
You can tweak some of it in the settings. "Avoid Highways" and a reroute while stopped sometimes gives a better time by a few minutes than with it on. Same thing of course for "Avoid Toll Roads".
It doesn't take it too many trips of being ignored and you taking your own chosen back road route for it to offer it as the main option between two points.
I kinda wish it had a "take as long as you want but get the absolute minimum time" option.
One other thing I've noticed. If you're in an area where speed limits are changing, that data is slow to be updated and it tends to change the results a bit.
It's a tool. It ain't perfect.
Also the whole "no data" thing. If you route before you lose data it'll be fine for the trip unless you stop the App for too long. If you do, it deletes the route.
Not sure how long you have to be off of it for that to happen but on a long trip with spotty data coverage I try to keep it in the foreground as much as possible.
I've also had it decide to drop the active route when I stopped for lunch. No idea why.
Anyway. It's a fun little gadget with good and bad points. It has definitely routed me around some impressive traffic jams before, which it seems to excel at. I also really enjoy marking where speed traps are for others since I don't speed, but screw the revenue generation. I won't mark an officer's location in a sparsely populated sea at night, but daytime or urban? You're getting tagged. The iPhone is in a holder at windshield level and it's got voice commands with a wave at the phone's camera to trigger them, or it's three button presses and the initial button press logs the location so you can do it slowly many minutes afterward or at the next stop light.
Best warning I ever got from it was a "Debris on road" warning in medium traffic. The extra alertness meant I missed hitting tons of crap that had dumped out of a construction or trash truck that was hidden from view by the traffic. That was nice.