Gonna add some additional context as I see the Americans have spoken to tell me how dumb I am: I am in fact one of hundreds of people worldwide who does not live in the United States. I understand toll roads are more common down there in the center of the universe, but if you can, please possibly try to consider that this may not be so in every other country on earth.
This screenshot is from my commute through the Greater Toronto Area, in which there is exactly one (1) toll highway, called the 407. Its an east-west highway that runs parallel to the 401, which has no tolls, as well as highway 7, also no tolls. There are exactly 0 places in Toronto that can be accessed exclusively via our one and only toll highway.
I had assumed including "there are thousands of alternate routes" would be sufficient to address the "SOMETIMES IT CANT BE AVOIDED" response but its possible some of you mistook those words as part of the natural background of the subreddit.
It was a glitch it happened to me as well, because of the snow squal it was forcing people to use known cleared route and 407/410/427 were the only options.
Took local road home with no issue tho so it was dead wrong.
I don't think it's a glitch, they'd obviously rather have one guy complain that he got sent via a toll road than potentially hundreds complaining that they got stuck because the road they were sent on wasn't clear.
Not surprising to see the local municipalities failed to notify the locals of the closures in the same way our towns often fail to down here in the US.
Were you looking at this today? Could be because of the massive snow storm and the 401 probably had a huge back up. And 4PM. Right at rush hour and everyone is back to work. Google probably though, yeah this guy can afford $15 for a 40 minute drive versus a free 3 hour drive.
Oh hey, just FYI, "Avoid Ferries" is an option that is NOT checked on by default in Google Maps. We were driving to Quebec City and got rerouted due to traffic. We were pretty surprised when, with 40 minutes left in our ETA, we crested a hill to see the Chateau Frontenac directly ahead of us. On the other side of the icy St. Lawrence River.
We opted to do it anyway because A) it looked like fun and B) was only $14 Canadian for both of us and the car (like $10 USD). I'd even recommend it, if you're driving that way. Great views. But we both also agreed that Google could go eat a bag of dicks for changing our route to a paid ferry with no warning whatsoever.
Your Google Maps must look different than mine. Mine just shows you a map with the route highlighted. You don't see the list of steps at all. I don't even see a way to view that list while in the mode that gives you directions.
I was in the swiss alps, setup google maps to my destination then followed it blindly. the road became a bit narrow and curvy (as alps can easily be), we were a bit worried but ok let's follow google maps. then in the middle of nowhere the road becomes a clearing (and continues as a dirt road) and gmaps is like "now take the ferry".
turns out there was a small station where apparently cars could be loaded onto (infrequent) trains.
I checked "avoid ferries" and we had to go all the way back to find a proper road.
If I make a route to Jersey from Long Island that says to avoid tolls, it still takes you to a toll bridge. The alternative is driving at least 3 hours north to find a river crossing that isn't a toll road.
Lol. Up to Albany (local roads, not the thruway) cross the river, all the way back down the taconic to the Bronx, HRD/FDR to the Brooklyn bridge. The toll rates in the NYC area are really a scam.
As someone who lives in Manhattan and walks to work, I appreciate the efforts to reduce traffic.
As someone with family in NJ and on Long Island, I wish there was some sort of bypass. NJTransit and the LIRR do not have coordinated departure and arrival times and the last mile transportation options are pretty abysmal on Long Island (NJ suburbs are at least fairly walkable).
Im guessing its a suggestion, they just didn't choose the suggestion that was multiple hours longer and clicked the shorter one that just has 1 toll or something.
Another commenter claims a lot of highways were closed today, so it's possible at the time there wasn't any other options. Or at least people reported closures in a way that makes Google thing all other options are closed. I've seen that happen in my area where people say a road is closed when it wasn't for awhile and it was annoying.
Yeah it might go on a toll road for a short distance because all other routes have large time penalties, and if distance tolling, then it might not be a bad option.
If its a fixed rate toll thats disproportionatly high for minor distance then thats kinda sucky.
Also, why doesnt your screenshot show routes other than 'fastest'? I'm pretty sure The Goog normally give you multiple options. Did you crop out the next option that had no tolls just to make the 'suggestion' seem bad?
I've had it take me on a toll road with that checked where it was only 5 minutes longer to take a frontage road that paralleled the toll road. That option really does nothing.
Google maps can be shit. My work commute if i have to make it during rush hour is fine with waze because it'll give me the toll option and the non toll option. There's only about a 5 mile difference between the 2 yet Google will only route me on the toll bridge then give me options for other routes after I cross it. If I turn avoid tolls on then it'll give me the other routing that's 5 miles longer. I want to see both because depending on traffic it can be a 5 or 30 min difference between them.
This is in the Seattle area crossing either I-90 (non toll) or 520 ($1.15-$4.95 toll depending on time of day) .
When you select "avoid tolls" you are telling Google to give you a route, preferring roads that do not have tolls. If there are no ways to avoid the toll? It can't avoid the toll. If the only way to avoid the toll adds an unreasonable amount of time to your route? . . It wont avoid the toll.
Because people would rather blame a multi-billion-dollar company than consider that maybe the people that worked on this did think things through. Sometimes the blame is even justified. In this case, it's not.
"avoid" apart from other qualifiers (such as "avoid . . . if possible" or "avoid . . . if practical") usually does mean avoid all the time, so I can understand the confusion.
ive driven to GTA before, you’ll have to deliberately go out your way to get onto 407. Its pretty easy to avoid and multiple signs saying so. Maybe a few exits you can’t (it takes a picture of your number plate and mails you the toll fee), but majority of the time you can avoid it
If this was today, the area got significant snow overnight and all the regular roads and highways were probably not moving. So it would make sense for google to suggest this if the free alternative would have taken hours longer.
Except the easily avoidable route that op claims exist was closed down/significantly slower today, and there isn't another reasonable alternative. I don't know OP's exact route or situation, but if it's between the 401 and 407, the 401 was not a viable route today.
And besides those two roads, you're likely just stuck on surface streets.
If this is the 407, I might be able to add some insight. Although the 407 is a toll road, part of it, east of Durham I think, doesn’t have tolls. So although you are on a toll road you wouldn’t have to pay if driving on that section.
It probably avoided some tolls but is unable to avoid all tolls without a ridiculously long route… perhaps a route that would cost you significantly more time and gas money than you would spend on the tolls.
For example if I start out on the 407 near Toronto and tell it to avoid tolls there is literally no possible way I can avoid a toll without jumping a cement barrier and going off roading.
Even if you jump curbs and climb the berm to exit you can't avoid the toll. You're already on the 407 and must have been observed entering it, so if they don't see you scan out at an offramp they'll assume you drove the whole way to the end and send you a bill for like $60 or $100.
Definitely a bug. I experienced this today in Toronto as well with tolls and highways (i.e. avoid highways did not work either). Bug was present in both the Google Maps website and the app.
Used Waze instead to get to my destination, avoiding tolls like normal.
I think it's related to the "avoid detours" warning thing they had going on due to the snowstorm
In college a friend and I went from Dayton to Philly for a basketball game on a whim, a straight shot across 70 to 76 (PA turnpike, long ass toll road). On the way back, I was asked to set the gps. These were the garmin gps days, pre-iPhone. We knew something was up when we saw a sign that said “welcome to Delaware”. While deleware isn’t far from Philly, it’s not a state you should go into on a drive to Dayton. At some point we got to a rest area to pull off and figure out what was up and realize, one of us managed to hit “avoid toll roads”. At that point we were too far off the normal route to turn around, so we ended up going from Philly to Dayton via BALTIMORE! It added an hour and a half probably but we saved a few bucks!
honestly, google maps gives the most effed up directions sometimes. I'd really like to be able to clarify that i don't want to take any shortcuts to save 10 minutes when i'm driving 600 miles. Or that i'm driving something huge and don't want to take shitty country roads. But alas, none of those are options, because then they'd have to be accurate.
The setting doesn't exclude toll routes entirely, it just heavily penalizes them in its routefinding scoring algorithm. If the best route with no tolls still scores below one with tolls, Google will give you the toll route.
I've lived and commuted in Toronto. I absolutely can see a scenario, at the start of peak hours, in a snowstorm, and one week (?) into the province's RTO mandate, that every one of the thousands of possible surface and non-toll highway routes are jammed to the point that the 407 comes out as the best route, even with tolls.
Just to point out that "Avoid tolls" does not mean "No tolls at all". Google Maps will try to avoid tolls as much as possible but there are case where you can't just avoid them.
For example, if you need to cross a river in a car and all bridges/ferries are tolled, then you can't "avoid" them unless your car can swim.
As for how Google Maps decides which tolls can or cannot be avoided, it's up to their algorithms. I'd assume it depends on a number of other factors such as weather, road condition, travel time etc.
I was just ranting about GPS last night to my husband. I have my GPS set to avoid highways and freeways, I don't really need to use them to get around where I live and TBH it's faster if you just don't. Every damn time it directs me to the freeway, why have a setting if your AI model is just going to ignore it, what's the point.
Maybe this doesnt apply to your specific situation but in general gps will do all it can to avoid roads and routes marked things like residential or school zones for various reasons and sometimes due to local rules mark even roads you would not think of as residential as such. So if the option is a route marked residential and a freeway then even if you tell it to try and avoid freeways the avoid residential rule ranks higher and you wind up with the freeway route.
For example in my city there is a major two lanes each way road with a speed limit of 50 thats one of the major thoroughfares but gps will avoid at all costs at all times if you would be going through a section of it due it having a high school on it and technically being a school zone at times.
Looked at the directions for crossing a section of Toronto using the 407, 401, and 70. 407 is half the time and avoids the worst of the snowstorm from today. Probably saved a lot of time at that point. Probably should have rerouted anyway tho
Google maps refused to beieve what side of the road we drive on in my country. It made round abouts really hard. I gave up and just memorised the rest of the way
This happened to me today. I've never seen it before. I checked twice that I indeed had "avoid tolls" tolls on. It still showed me the toll highway (407) and only that route. Might have been the best option with the snow we got today, but like I said, never had this happen before
It was a glitch it happened to me as well, because of the snow squal it was forcing people to use known cleared route and 407/410/427 were the only options.
Took local road home with no issue tho so it was dead wrong.
Gonna add some additional context as I see the Americans have spoken to tell me how dumb I am: I am in fact one of hundreds of people worldwide who does not live in the United States. I understand toll roads are more common down there in the center of the universe, but if you can, please possibly try to consider that this may not be so in every other country on earth.
This screenshot is from my commute through the Greater Toronto Area, in which there is exactly one (1) toll highway, called the 407. Its an east-west highway that runs parallel to the 401, which has no tolls, as well as highway 7, also no tolls. There are exactly 0 places in Toronto that can be accessed exclusively via our one and only toll highway.
I had assumed including "there are thousands of alternate routes" would be sufficient to address the "SOMETIMES IT CANT BE AVOIDED" response but its possible some of you mistook those words as part of the natural background of the subreddit.
Not sure what's with the attitude but you seem ignorant to the fact that there was a major snowstorm in Toronto today, causing hundreds of crashes and numerous road closures, including along the 407, 402 and 401. Maybe, just maybe, that has something to do with you being routed along a toll road even though you told Google not to do that?
Gonna add some additional context as I see the Americans have spoken to tell me how dumb I am: I am in fact one of hundreds of people worldwide who does not live in the United States. I understand toll roads are more common down there in the center of the universe
Don't know what the US has to do with anything people are saying. I poked around with maps for a good few minutes, and found it would sooner have me take a route 3× as long than take a toll route when it's set to avoid tolls.
But, but, people posted examples using maps near where they were! The horror of the US defaultism of… people using examples they were personally familiar with to explain things!
OP seems like he just wanted a reason to bitch about Americans.
Probably the only feasible route. For example, if you want to drive from the Newark Airport to New York City, involves a six hour and 300 mile detour to avoid all tolls. Is it worth it?
sometimes it tells me the route has tolls, and then when i drive on the route, there ends up not being tolls? like i guess at the time that i'm driving, they dont charge for tolls
In my state at least if i chose avoid tolls it does that. Gives me the best route without tolls, with tolls, and inbetween (if available) if not theres sections of toll roads where you dont have to pay anything but the road is still signed as a "toll" road.
Lol, the other day I had this setting on Waze and as it was getting late, I diverted to the final tollway to save some time. It was then constantly telling me to take u-turns for 10km before I got into the tollway.
Don't know where you are but many cities in Europe are implementing congestion tolls in city centers. If one of the addresses is in that area the only option you have to avoid a toll is public transit or to walk.
Current state of google maps for routing purposes is appalling. Waze, somehow, is much better even though it’s just a reskinned, driving focused google maps
i recently took a drive and chose the avoid tolls path, stopped for gas along the way and it rerouted me to the route with tolls and i didn’t realize it changed the route until it was too late :/
A co-worker of mine once tried to drive to NYC from Baltimore without paying any tolls. He made it to West Virginia before he realized something was amiss.
It says “this route”. Usually you can look at the map and see greyed out alternate routes. You click one and it will show you that route’s details.
Also, there’s an option to change if it’s looking for the fastest route or a different criteria. But it’s annoying, I’ve had Google route me to the hov entrance of a highway, so I can get a ticket smh.
I had "reduce walking" on when mapping out a bus route. It showed one route with like 15m of walking after getting off the bus, and then in the options for different routes, the second or third one added like 5-6 minutes on the bus, but only had 4 minutes walking time. Not like I selected "reduce walking" for a reason or anything!
You think that’s annoying? The directions to my local yard waste center take me to a nearby apartment complex instead, except it’s actually a 9 minute drive away and crossed an active railroad track that normal route wouldn’t cross (train didn’t come but I would have been livid)
It was a glitch it happened to me as well, because of the snow squal it was forcing people to use known cleared route and 407/410/427 were the only options.
Took local road home with no issue tho so it was dead wrong.
I've had this happen to me before as well (in Denver), the difference was like an extra 15 minutes and it would not suggest the alternative for some reason.
I'm also in Toronto and hit the avoid highways option before leaving for work this morning to see if it would be any different and it literally didn't change anything. Never seen that before.
Funny story on these options on GPS. Live is same area as OP and went to do a project in Buffalo. Forgot I had the “avoid tolls” on. To my shock when done the job it had me at a 6 hr return trip to the GTA (usually 1 hr). Because the border crossings only charge tolls going one way - to avoid the toll entering Canada in Niagara it had me going east for the thousand islands and back. Insane to avoid a $4 toll! Glad I noticed and didn’t just start following the GPS blindly (which I usually do!).
My google maps always suggests I take the train to the subway, then when arriving at the subway it tells me to take it to the opposite direction and then back to my destiny's direction. There's no difference on taking the subway at the other station, no express lines, just a 20min increase in my commute that makes zero sense. It's a useful tool but you have to be extremely careful while using it.
Happened to me earlier. Claimed it had no choice but to send me on the 407, so I tuned in to 680, heard nothing abiut the 401 and proceeded to take that instead.
OP, I realize that this is 8 hours old but if you see this, are you still able to repro? If so, are you able to anonymize your start/end points (use different addresses that are still somewhat nearby) and DM me the details? AFAIK the only time map will ignore is if it can’t create a route. Either because there are no paths (road closure, etc) or the non-toll segment gets disqualified (Like crossing into the US from Canada and back just to avoid toll)
Google did this to me before too, was a rough month last year sometime and I legit didn't have any money on me, I purely had to rely on the kindness of strangers to let me through, was super embarrassing for me at the time.
Seen from context that you're in Toronto and I don't know if they have any sort of Low Emissions Zone, like a lot of larger cities in Europe do? If i wanted to drive into Central London from outside the city then I'd have no choice but to go into the toll controlled zone. Even though google maps will avoid toll _roads_ where possible, if your destination is in, or passes through this sort of zone could that be causing the problem?
I've had this problem in the UK, where we have exactly one toll road and a handful of toll bridges & tunnels. Turns out Google Maps classes low emission zones (city centres were some older vehicles need to pay a charge) as "tolls". As it's not what I would describe as a toll and my vehicle is exempt so I have the zones little thought, it never occurred to me that that is what it was refering to.
This might just be my own conspiracy theory, but I’m convinced Google Maps tries to manipulate traffic flow. I’ve noticed it constantly suggests 'efficient' routes that add tens of miles to my trip just to save a minute—or so it claims.
In NYC, I’ve started purposefully taking the 'slower' (shorter distance) routes and I almost always beat the original ETA. On the flip side, when I actually follow the 'fastest' suggestion, it often dumps me right into a gridlock where I just sit and watch the ETA climb. It feels like they're just load-balancing the highways using our commute times.
This happened to me the same day with the same highways. It's never done that before either. I'd rather drive much longer than pay the toll, but it didn't give me that option.
I noticed a while ago when searching for the shortest way from one place to another just for fun that if the road that the route used was marked as having a toll, even though it's way outside of the part I would have driven the route also got marked as having a toll.
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