I find once you know traffic patterns, picking your own path is generally the same or faster. All the traffic mapping apps tend to send people down the same core routes even if they aren’t actually the best/fastest. Tons of streets are completely ignored by mapping apps.

For those that do need maps, an old Garmin, or sometimes cars have built in maps that can be updated. Even old maps are generally useful unless you live in a city that redoes their entire road network every 20 years.

Another one of those things to think about at scale. So many vibe-coded web sites have such terrible performance. Computers burning power on absolutely nothing, phones draining battery on absolutely nothing. They are causing energy usage to go way up across the planet by lazy ass design that isn’t tested or verified all across the board.