Unreasonable difference between the measurements obtained with the 'shortest' and 'recommended' options for the driving-car profile

Hi,

We use the ORS Direction API for distance measurements in our project. However, in some cases, there is a significant difference between the measurements obtained with the ‘shortest’ and ‘recommended’ options for the driving-car profile. In certain situations, this difference can exceed three times the distance between the two measurements.

To prevent this, we created new profiles by adjusting speed limits defined for road types, but this did not provide a complete solution for us.

Do you have any insights on why there is such a significant difference? Or any suggestions on how we can optimize this?

We haven’t been able to determine whether the source of this problem is the map data or ORS.

For a clearer understanding of the issue, I would like to share:

1. Coordinate data;
[[33.93106372015712,36.38085005546252],[33.93021614213607,36.384702374654225]]

2. Measurements obtained through the ORS interface;
Reccomended;
image

Shortest;
image

We believe that the measurement made by ORS for ‘recommended’ is inaccurate here because it seems to calculate the route longer than necessary for a very close point.

We recalculated these measurements using the new profile we created by updating the code with the following speed limits;

-Default speed limits;
image

-Updated speed limits;
image

But the result remained the same.

If it’s related to ORS, do you have any recommended configuration changes or any other methods you could suggest for us?

Thx

Hi,

the shortest weighting is based solely on distance, i.e., you get actually the shortest route.
The recommended weighting is mainly based on time, i.e., returns the quickest route (see the duration in your screen shots). Speed limits on smaller streets have a big impact on this. In addition, recommended may include some preferences for certain profiles, e.g., the bike profile prefers a bike-lane over a parallel street, even if it takes a bit longer.

Best regards,

2 Likes

Hi,

what other factors besides time is the recommended car route based on and how big is their influence?

Best regards

For the car profile, recommended corresponds to fastest.