Montreal City Weblog

Kate 19:19 on 2026-02-16 Permalink Reply  

• CE 10:51 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

  When driving on the 20 to the airport, the highway signs switch back and forth when they indicate Trudeau or Mirabel airports. I wonder how many people have just looked for the airplane symbol and have turned off toward Mirabel and missed their flights at Trudeau.

• Joey 11:05 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

  TVA says they wind up at the fire service office at the airport… Uber also loves to send drivers down snow-filled and ice-covered back alleys to avoid spending 15 seconds waiting for a red light to change, especially when the alley is actually closed at the supposed exit point… to think cabbies used to have to know where everything was.

• MarcG 11:13 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

  Interesting to reflect back and see how GPS driving directions were early AI destroyers of knowledge.

• Ian 11:57 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

  Yes and no, using Waze has shown me some really good routes I would never have considered. It’s also really handy if there’s been an accident or roadwork up ahead that you can detour to avoid. FWIW Waze did get bought out by Googel but maintained its live user input so is a lot more accurate.

• MarcG 12:47 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

  Thinking about the increasingly frequent phenomenon of making conversation with someone who has an interest in a subject and you want to hear what they have to say about it… and they suggest that you just look it up on the internet. A literally dehumanizing enterprise. (Or maybe people are just fucking exhausted).

  On the other side of the map-apps-are-useful ledger, I have to fight with them to not send me over the tracks in St-Henri because as far as I can tell they don’t consider the train schedules and I could end up rotting there for 20 minutes, and the other day there was a backup on the 20 and it directed a bunch of us to an offramp, only to send us right back on again after properly clogging up the local overpass, presumably in order to shave a few seconds off the total trip time.

• Kate 14:13 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

  No app completely compensates for knowledge of the situation on the ground.

• Joey 14:50 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

  @Kate no, but these algorithms are supposed to learn, right? Like you’d expect that after the Nth driver did not complete the route because the alley is closed at one end, the algorithm would adjust and conclude that the route is never going to work. Same for railway crossings – a true learning machine should be able to anticipate the likelihood that a train is coming. I wish these apps would allow you to designate a preferred route for regular trips and only suggest alternatives if the ETA is more than, say, 5% shorter.

• MarcG 15:28 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

  Not only do they not learn on their own but it can be frustratingly difficult to get changes made manually. When visiting Parc national du Lac-Témiscouata a few years ago, Google maps told me that the drive to a trailhead would be 20 minutes or so – it turns out the map had detected a bushwacking trail which wasn’t actually a road and it ended up taking way, way longer, especially because I trusted the directions and wasted a bunch of time circling around trying to find it. I told the park staff and they said they’re aware of the problem and have repeatedly asked Google to fix it. I just looked now and they’ve fixed *that* problem, but it now directs you down a different non-car-friendly-path which seems to be some sort of logging road. I wonder if the person I spoke to at the park has any hair left.

• SMD 16:08 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

  @MarcG I was there this summer and ran into the same issue. They now have a sign saying “Don’t trust Google Maps, this is not an entrance” at the trailhead.

• Ian 16:10 on 2026-02-17 Permalink

  Waze updates baased on user inputs, Google maps doesn’t. Given the random closures brought on by construction sites in this city, I find Google maps pretty much useless a lot of the time.