Waze and Other Traffic Dodging Apps Prompt Cities To Game the Algorithms (usatoday.com) 469
KindMind writes: USA today reports that Waze and others are causing traffic planners to try to figure out how to gain control back. From the article: "While traffic savvy GPS apps like Waze and Google Maps have provided users a way to get around traffic, it has caused massive headaches for city planners. With highways frequently congested, navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze started telling drivers to hop off the freeway at Fremont's Mission Boulevard, cut through residential streets and then hop back on the highway where things were clearer -- much to the distress of the people who lived there. 'The commuters didn't live or work in Fremont and didn't care about our residential neighborhoods,' said Noe Veloso, Fremont's principal transportation engineer. Fremont instituted commute-hour turn restrictions on the most heavily used residential cut-through routes. The city also partnered with Waze through its Connected Citizens Program in order to share data and information, such as the turn restrictions, so that the app takes them into account. The result has been effective, but Veloso is worried the changes may simply reroute commuters into other neighborhoods."
I'm hungry (Score:5, Insightful)
God forbid that someone gets off a freeway and discovers a local establishment while passing through.
Re: I'm hungry (Score:3)
Excellent point. Interstates destroyed many communities due to their limited access nature. In recent years some roads formerly designated as Interstates have actually been torn down in some areas bringing back traffic (the good kind) to some communities that deperately need it.
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The Cypress Street Viaduct (I-880) that ran through a West Oakland neighborhood. After the viaduct collapsed in the 1989 earthquake, the replacement structure went around the neighborhood through an unused rail yard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Street_Viaduct [wikipedia.org]
Re:I'm hungry (Score:5, Insightful)
Having owned a business along such a commuter route... All I can say is ROTFLMAO. You have no idea what you're talking about.
All those commuters care about is getting the hell out of Dodge and back onto the freeway and getting home. They're not even looking at the local businesses.
Re: I'm hungry (Score:4, Funny)
Nobody wants to stay at your hotel anyway, Norman.
You're missing the point (Score:3)
"God forbid that someone gets off a freeway and discovers a local establishment while passing through."
I live in a neighborhood affected by this: there is a narrow road connecting our town to the next town over, that gives commuters a handy shortcut. This road runs through the middle of our town, past three schools and a kindergarten. Commuters - in their blind rush to get from A to B - are not interested in stopping at a local restaurant. They're interested in driving as fast as possible through town, mayb
Re:I'm hungry (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm hungry (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me the apps are reducing the problems for everyone
Except the people living in the rat runs. Pollution goes up, health deteriorates and costs increase. Accidents increase, insurance goes up. Property prices decrease, they can't use the street for other things any more.
There is a reason that major roads are kept separate from where people live.
Time To Invest In Infrastructure (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, you mean we're just supposed to sit in gridlock instead? Our highways have been an inadequate crumbling mess for decades. The proper response here is to fix them, not gripe that there's an inadequate workaround.
Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure (Score:4, Insightful)
By "fixing" do you mean widen? Which usually actually ADDS to congestion on many cases?
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Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you can do what most major cities around the world do, which is fund mass transit at extremely high levels, to encourage people to not drive.
The Bay Area has some unique geographical features that make the sort of public transit that works extremely well in other places more difficult here; that said, it's still pretty good.
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Pretty good? Bart has a years long list for parking at most stations as well as being standing room only at the first stop. Caltrain might be ok if you live or work in the peninsula or the city, but if you can afford to live in those places you're probably commuting by private jet or helicoptor anyway - forget east or north bay. I've been to a lot of cities around the world and public transit in the bay area is hands down the worst I've ever seen.
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Trains in Tokyo are light-years beyond "standing room only". Until we have public servants literally squishing people into trains to make sure the doors close, you can't really talk about Bart being crowded. At certain times of the day, trains are crowded, yes...but literally NOTHING like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
or this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
So if you haven't been to those places, you should get out more before you talk about how bad BART is. In addition, almost none of those othe
Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure (Score:5, Funny)
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In this case, "fixing" would be reducing the population by about 50%.
After the dot com bust in 2001, 2M+ people moved out of Silicon Valley and SF Bay Area. Traffic was wonderful until the economy started improving and people moved back in from the hinterlands.
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Another point of view would be that highways are more than adequate for decades, it's selfish people who don't use mass transit and idiots living one hour away from work that are the problem.
Bus downtime; housing cost gradient (Score:5, Insightful)
it's selfish people who don't use mass transit
If you live in a city that doesn't run its buses from 8:45 PM to 5:45 AM (source [fwcitilink.com]), and you're given hours at night, you need a car in order not to have to spend the majority of your paycheck on a taxi or lose your job. If you live in a city that doesn't run its buses on Sundays, and you're given hours on Sunday, you need a car in order not to have to spend the majority of your paycheck on a taxi or lose your job.
and idiots living one hour away from work that are the problem.
A lot of jobs don't pay enough to rent a place to live closer to work. How are people "idiots" for taking advantage of a sharp gradient in annual housing costs? Perhaps the real "idiots" serve on the city's zoning board that created this situation.
Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient (Score:5, Insightful)
it's selfish people who don't use mass transit
If you live in a city that doesn't run its buses from 8:45 PM to 5:45 AM (source [fwcitilink.com]), and you're given hours at night, you need a car in order not to have to spend the majority of your paycheck on a taxi or lose your job. If you live in a city that doesn't run its buses on Sundays, and you're given hours on Sunday, you need a car in order not to have to spend the majority of your paycheck on a taxi or lose your job.
And if you're paying for a car anway, you don't want to pay the same amount again for a month pass, even if your usual hours are not at night or on sunday.
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Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
it's selfish people who don't use mass transit and idiots living one hour away from work that are the problem.
Yes, those inconsiderate bastards that can't find a job that's only 5 minutes away from where they live! Who do they think they are??
Newsflash, dumbfuck: EVERYONE would love to live close to where their job is, but it doesn't always work out that way.
Shockingly, some people change jobs once in a while, and even more shockingly, some people can't afford to move or find it impractical to do so.
Should I move away from the home I've lived in for 20+ years just to be a little closer to wherever it is I work? No fucking way.
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Re: Time To Invest In Infrastructure (Score:2)
Fixing could mean removing as I pointed out above. The predecessor to the Interstate system was the US Highway system which didn't have the drawbacks of Interstates and quite honestly aren't necessarily slower than an Interstate.
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https://xkcd.com/277/ [xkcd.com]
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Oh, you mean we're just supposed to sit in gridlock instead? Our highways have been an inadequate crumbling mess for decades. The proper response here is to fix them, not gripe that there's an inadequate workaround.
If I had to choose between you and 1000 other commuters racing down my small residential street and you sitting in traffic, I'd pick having you sit in traffic. I didn't move within walking distance of work to have to deal with commute traffic on my own street.
There's no easy "fix" to congested freeways around here -- the freeways have already expanded to the center as far as they can go, and they are surrounded by homes and businesses to each side, so any expansion would be prohibitively expensive.
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Let us know when someone asks you to make that choice. Until then, it's up to everyone and about what's best for most. Build over or build under and yes, it will be expensive and people will lose their homes and business just like they did the first time the freeways were built. Did you really think this just had to be done once and that we'd be good forever?
Someone already asked me to make that choice, maybe it was even you, Anonymous Coward:
Oh, you mean we're just supposed to sit in gridlock instead?
He asked, I answered.
Or politicians can go back to basic services (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, you know, politicians could spend the gas tax funds to improve the freeways and stop pissing them away on mass transit buses that have a 15% utilization rate...
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Or, here in Austin, 20-30 mile long bike paths for 100+ million dollars, while there has not been a -single- highway improvement, other than making an existing road a toll road, since 1995.
Even without Waze, I can save 30-45 minutes on a commute by exiting, going down 10-20 blocks, and getting back on an exit north of the university. A city trying to stop that is in dereliction of their duties... these are public roads, and people using Waze are free to use them. If they don't like it, fucking fix the hig
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How about finding ways to push the utilisation rate of those mass transit buses instead?
Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services (Score:4, Insightful)
Mass transport is going from where you aren't to where you don't need to be.
Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services (Score:4)
Mass transport is going from where you aren't to where you don't need to be.
That's funny. Two local buses and an express bus gets me from my front door at 6AM to the front door of my job 30 miles away at 7AM. Best commute I ever had in 30 years of taking public transit.
Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services (Score:5, Insightful)
That's funny. Two local buses and an express bus gets me from my front door at 6AM to the front door of my job 30 miles away at 7AM. Best commute I ever had in 30 years of taking public transit.
And you probably represent a small fraction of a small percent. In many areas of the county, the mass transit simply doesn't work well because everyone is going everywhere and there are not enough routes or connections. Nobody is going to trade crawling in a traffic jam for an hour (in their own car) to standing outside multiple times in the rain, jumping from one bus to another, dealing with smelly and loud people for 1.5 hours.
Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that a problem with public transport in general or just your poor implementation of it?
In Tokyo you can get everywhere on public transport, which runs every few minutes. It's often faster than driving. They build the tracks and over and under, even though it costs more, because they need them and 50 year ROI is fine.
the mass transit simply doesn't work well because everyone is going everywhere and there are not enough routes or connections
Personal transport simply doesn't work because everyone is going to the same place and there are is not enough capacity on the main trunk roads.
Part of fixing this requires designing your cities so that it is possible to walk or cycle around them, so that when you get off the train or bus it's no problem to walk a short way to your destination.
Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services (Score:4, Informative)
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>"How about finding ways to push the utilisation rate of those mass transit buses instead?"
Will it start with you? Everyone wants EVERYONE ELSE to use the buses/train/whatever. That is the problem. Here, the buses are slow, smelly, loud, and EXTREMELY inconvenient. With 7 interconnected cities, there is no standard commute, everyone is going everywhere, making it a logistical nightmare. You would spend MORE time getting home while hating the experience even more than sitting in your own car crawling
Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services (Score:5, Interesting)
The buses have a 15% utilization rate? Sound here the buses hold 90 off people when full. At 15%, that's about 10 people. They take up the space of little more than a car when travelling at speed: the safety gap you need to leave is far longer than the bus. Sounds like a net win for making more space available for cars.
I'll also bet that like here, the utilization is MUCH higher at rush hour, when demand for space on the road is heaviest, meaning the gains are much better.
Or, you know, politicians could spend the gas tax funds to improve the freeways and stop pissing them away on mass transit buses that have a 15% utilization rate...
They could, but I always find it strange when drivers make these kinds of complaints. The most effective thing for improving things for drivers is to get fewer people to drive. That way the roads will be clearer for you. Objecting to politicians spending money on non-car forms of transport seems to be like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
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Promote motorcycles and make filtering legal.
Motorcycles, as a general rule, get better gas mileage than most four-wheeled vehicles (less pollution). Each motorycle weighs significantly less than a four-wheeler, reducing wear and tear on the road (less maintenance). Each motorcycle sitting in between lanes is one more car that's not taking up a lane (more room for four-wheelers). Anybody who's idiotic enough to filter illegally at a high rate of speed might just end up as an viable organ donor, which helps
Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services (Score:4, Insightful)
So.. You are telling me that there are no special bus lanes that could otherwise be carrying cars?
Some places yes. But the congestion happens at junctions mostly. The bus lane allows the bus to skip the traffic queues at the junctions. I don't see how it would increase the throughput at the junction however, since the junction itself is what causes the congestion.
That the buses don't have very high fuel (and therefore pollution) footprints
Not per passenger mile, they don't. But are you complaining about fuel economy or congestion? They're different problems (though often with the same solutions because of physics).
and that they don't cost the city huge amounts in subsidies
The roads cost a huge amount too. If the bus subsidy reduces the congestion more effectively than the equivalent amount of money spent on roads, then you should be in favour of it.
I wonder what color the sky is in your world.
Mostly grey, but I live in a part of the world where buses are heavily used and the idea of operating without public transport is so patently absurd that all but the most reality-denying feverent of wingnuts are in favour of it.
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They just spent 6 years in my area widening a major freeway from 4 lanes each way to 6 lanes each way, totally eliminating gridlock, and they also managed to cram in a 2 lane dedicated HOV lane in the middle. They did it without bulldozing anyone's homes on the existing easements and went through densely populated cities as they did it. Even if they have to bulldoze or go TBM underground, there is no excuse for not improving freeways. Stop and go traffic is a completely avoidable pollution nightmare, and
Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services (Score:4, Interesting)
They just did the opposite here, reducing a 4 lane freeway to two "peasant" lanes and turning the other two lanes into expensive toll lanes ("Lexus lanes"). The tolls can be as much as $10 for a one way trip. This is on I-405 from Everett to Renton in WA state.
$20 per day times 250 days per year....so about $5000 a year to get back and forth to work. And we already paid for those fucking roads with our tax dollars.
Now, of course, the traffic in the "peasant" lanes is terrible, just super super bad. Gee, who could have foreseen that?
Lots of people would love to kill the fuckers that made this happen. I mean really kill them, with guns and knives and shit.
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You do realize your 6 lanes each way freeway will soon (within years at most) be filled up to as much as it was before, right?
"Even if they have to bulldoze".. I hope you appreciate your land being taken for eminent domain.
Public roads? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are the roads paid for by public taxes? They're public roads. I used to do this all the time with the old paper maps. Looks like a road stoppage? Find a parallel city or state road. Follow the speed limits and other rules of the road and you're legally allowed to drive on them.
Want a gated community with private roads? Pay to live in one.
Re:Public roads? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a bad attitude frankly. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's a good idea. In fact more or less everything has been legal at some point, which is why there are now so many laws. Because if there's no law against it, then some idiot will do it, no matter how ill conceived.
Yes, it's legal to do that. Yes people have always skipped busy areas with local knowledge. However large numbers of people going down a rat run (see there's even a phrase for it now) makes life miserable for those on the rat run. It's the sort of thing that prompts local authorities to put in traffic restrictions, entirely reasonably, because residential streets are designed for access, not throughput. And if they get misused, then that's bad.
It's now getting worse because of the increased convenience.
Anyway it's a classic case of "this is why we can't have nice things". People will abuse the residential roads and eventually the authorities will intervene. Then those abusers will whine and the locals will grumble a bit about the restrictions, but not that much because of the reduced traffic on unsuitable roads.
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However large numbers of people going down a rat run (see there's even a phrase for it now) makes life miserable for those on the rat run. It's the sort of thing that prompts local authorities to put in traffic restrictions, entirely reasonably, because residential streets are designed for access, not throughput. And if they get misused, then that's bad.
It's not the drivers' fault that there is insufficient highway capacity. What are they supposed to, just suck it up?
Re:Public roads? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not the drivers' fault that there is insufficient highway capacity. What are they supposed to, just suck it up?
Yep. Or you know, live somewhere which doesn't require huge commutes. So that means probably living in a smaller house, but that's basically trading your lifestyle against externalities imposed on other people.
Traffic congestion is a problem which needs to be fixed. A small percentage increase (the residential roads don't have much capacity) which makes a huge number of people miserable is a poor solution.
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Braess paradox [wikipedia.org]. Adding more lanes and capacity actually makes it slower for everyone.
Dietrich Braess, a mathematician at Ruhr University, Germany, noticed the flow in a road network could be impeded by adding a new road, when he was working on traffic modelling. His idea was that if each driver is making the optimal self-interested decision as to which route is quickest, a shortcut could be chosen too often for drivers to have the shortest travel times possible. More formally, the idea behind Braess' discov
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Sounds great. Why don't the local residents do that? Why should they not be burdened by the problem just as much as the drivers are? Why the double standard?
So your solution is to cause a problem for someone else. Nice.
The residents are deliberately ruining a public resource for everyone.
Back in the long-long-ago, people had some courtesy and respect for other people. Your attitude is exactly why we can't have nice things anymore. Generally, if you don't have any reason to be in a residential area, you should stay out of it. That's just common courtesy. Just because it's not illegal to drive on the road, doesn't mean it's not a douche move to cut through someone else's neighborhood. Those people pay for the road in front of their
Re:Public roads? (Score:4, Informative)
"It's the sort of thing that prompts local authorities to put in traffic restrictions, entirely reasonably,..."
Not "entirely reasonably", not reasonably at all. What causes authorities to put in restrictions is the endless complaints of an entitled few, not concern over improper use.
"...because residential streets are designed for access, not throughput. And if they get misused, then that's bad."
BS. All roads are designed for "throughput", some for higher throughput that others. No road, however, is optimized for throughput since it's speed limit is set intentionally too low, at least in the US. Driving on a public road to get somewhere is NEVER misuse.
"Anyway it's a classic case of "this is why we can't have nice things". People will abuse the residential roads and eventually the authorities will intervene."
No, we can't have nice things because a few ruin it for others. The few in this case are not the drivers, it's the residents who think that public roads are their private property.
"Then those abusers will whine and the locals will grumble a bit about the restrictions, but not that much because of the reduced traffic on unsuitable roads."
The way to "reduce traffic on unsuitable roads" is to fix the roads which are intended to handle that traffic. No discussion of that though! Who cares just so long as the residents get the roads reserved for their use only.
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Not "entirely reasonably", not reasonably at all. What causes authorities to put in restrictions is the endless complaints of an entitled few, not concern over improper use.
No you're the entitled one thinking you have the right to use residential roads for commuting. Typical of car users, it's all "mine mine mine". No mater if you make roads not designed or use more dangerous, and subject people to large amounts of noise pollution.
BS. All roads are designed for "throughput", some for higher throughput that
Re:Public roads? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's mostly my attitude.
In Minnesota, MNDOT decided to close all of US-169 to replace a bridge/causeway and now a whole bunch of people are trying to cut through side streets versus taking the MNDOT-approved detours, which are on parallel freeways miles away.
What's funny is that the city they're driving through, Edina, is probably the wealthiest one in the whole state and the residents are MELTING DOWN over the cut-through traffic. They're organizing vigilante slow traffic, the city has been cracking down hard on traffic violations and has put up all manner of "calming" obstructions to discourage people.
It's so hard to not link their economic privilege with their apparent sense of geographic privilege. I think they believe they ARE living in a gated community and somebody left the gate open.
Re:Public roads? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are the roads paid for by public taxes? They're public roads.
Well, for one, commuters frequently are cutting through roads which aren't in their own community. So, unless it's a state road or something, they may not be paying taxes for these roads.
Second, neighborhoods are often planned and zoned based on assumed traffic patterns. For example, they may choose to put a school or tight residential areas farther away from heavy traffic commuter highways -- for safety reasons. If you suddenly start routing rush-hour traffic through there, it can create hazards with pedestrians, driveways, kids playing, etc.
The problem isn't new, though -- and many towns and cities even have policies on the books to deal with it. The difference is that in years past traffic patterns would change over years or decades, whereas now they can be altered quite suddenly with a map app's algorithm. Long before stuff like Waze, the city I used to live in had a series of progressive restrictions it would make on streets that exceeded their designed traffic load for the zoning, etc.
They'd put in more one-way streets to make it more difficult to navigate the area without a lot of turns, then introduce things like raised crossings to slow people down (and help point out places where pedestrians might be very common), eventually they'd covert some streets to cul-de-sacs, and in a worst case scenario might even put a mid-block barrier to stop traffic going through entirely.
These weren't actions undertaken by citizens -- this was official stuff in the municipal code of the city, authorized by the city's governing council, elected by the city's taxpayers who paid for the city's road maintenance. If you're a commuter who doesn't like those policies... drive on somebody else's "public roads."
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Are the roads paid for by public taxes? They're public roads. I used to do this all the time with the old paper maps. Looks like a road stoppage? Find a parallel city or state road. Follow the speed limits and other rules of the road and you're legally allowed to drive on them.
Want a gated community with private roads? Pay to live in one.
There are legitimate reasons not to want high volumes of traffic cutting through neighbourhoods. That's why many new subdivisions are unnavigable, so people can't use them as short-cuts.
I don't like the idea of an app expediting the tragedy of the commons.
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I think the local residents have a valid reason to be upset. Best thing they can do is put a s
Speed bumps are a fire hazard (Score:2)
Speed bumps are not the answer because they also impede emergency first responders.
Make the speed humps narrow (Score:2)
This is the approach here; wide enough to catch cars, but so wide that emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire engines aren't inconvenienced.
Speed bumps slow cop cars (Score:2)
This is the approach here; wide enough to catch cars, but so wide that emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire engines aren't inconvenienced.
Police cruisers are both cars and emergency vehicles.
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No they are not. Public roads are for use by all, not by a select few. It is not within a few citizens' "rights" to deny others use of taxpayer-funded public roads.
The entitlement here is the residents. If they don't like their side streets being used to overcome traffic congestion they should lobby for improvements to all roads, not to f*ck over the other 99%.
I'd like to see proof that drivers on their commutes "don't care" about residential neighborhoods. What a BS inflammatory statement.
"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
but Veloso is worried the changes may simply reroute commuters into other neighborhoods.
Rerouting traffic to the best available route is a feature, not a bug. Seriously, it's a feature. Don't mess with it.
If you really don't want people cutting through neighborhoods during rush hour, then put up temporary traffic-flow restrictions in ALL neighborhoods during those hours and make sure Waze, Google, etc. know about them.
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but Veloso is worried the changes may simply reroute commuters into other neighborhoods.
Rerouting traffic to the best available route is a feature, not a bug. Seriously, it's a feature. Don't mess with it.
If you really don't want people cutting through neighborhoods during rush hour, then put up temporary traffic-flow restrictions in ALL neighborhoods during those hours and make sure Waze, Google, etc. know about them.
But is it legal for a city to restrict public roads like that? I think there would be some legal road blocks with that concept(pun intended).
Ultimately, it comes down to needing a better design of city infrastructure to combat the use of non-highway routes if they want to prevent that from happening.
Either that or we change the business-day concept in a way where traffic isn't at a standstill at key hours in the morning and afternoon.
Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously (Score:4, Insightful)
But is it legal for a city to restrict public roads like that? I think there would be some legal road blocks with that concept(pun intended).
Yes, it is legal for a city to do such things, particularly in the name of public safety. Residential areas are frequently zoned, parcelled, and otherwise designed with an expected traffic volume. Increase that volume significantly with a bunch of frantic rush-hour drivers, and suddenly your school is no longer located on a "safe" street, and hazards are created by pedestrians, frequent driveways, kids playing, etc.
Controlling traffic on streets to try to keep it to its designed volume for safety reasons is no different from prohibiting you from parking near an intersection or next to a fire hydrant or whatever on a "public road," also in the name of safety.
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Thank you for clarifying on that. Wasn't having any luck so far finding the answer.
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Thank you for clarifying that. I obviously have no clue about what my city can do.
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If you really don't want people cutting through neighborhoods during rush hour, then put up temporary traffic-flow restrictions in ALL neighborhoods during those hours and make sure Waze, Google, etc. know about them.
So basically the city needs to spend ass loads of money because people are dickheads. I do believe that this is why we can't have nice things.
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So basically the city needs to spend ass loads of money because people are dickheads.
It's called social engineering. Want people to use light rail to get to work? Build mixed developments — stores and high density housing — around each light rail station, providing the incentives for people to live closer to a station and take the light rail to work.
Bandaid (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is a bandaid on the much deeper problem. Inadequate highway infrastructure. Fix the root cause, not the symptom.
Not every congested location has space to add new freeway lanes (or new freeways). Take I-5 through downtown Seattle sometime, then figure out where you'd put the new "infrastructure".
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This is a bandaid on the much deeper problem. Inadequate highway infrastructure. Fix the root cause, not the symptom.
Not every congested location has space to add new freeway lanes (or new freeways). Take I-5 through downtown Seattle sometime, then figure out where you'd put the new "infrastructure".
Never been to Seattle, but every other major city has pretty much the same answer. Build another layer above.
Don't have the funds in the city coffer and can't stomach the tax hike for fear of citizen revolt? Fine. Make the next layer a toll road to pay for it. People hate traffic and are impatient enough these days they'll pay, believe me.
Re: Bandaid (Score:3)
Yeah, we already did that. And we got other stuff over that layer too.
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'Build another layer above' worked wonderfully for San Francisco until 1989.
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bad example. the transportation "planners" in Seattle, a region growing by leaps and bounds, is REDUCING freeway capacity by removing the 6 lane Alaskan Way Viaduct and REMOVING the two express lanes across I90 to put choo choo trains on them in a region that already has some of the worst gridlock in country.
Re: Bandaid (Score:3)
Why are you terrified of light rail? Bad childhood experience with Thomas the tank engine?
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You do realize that the "choo choo trains" can transport more people than a freeway, because they hold hundreds of people per vehicle rather than the typical 1 person in a car on the freeway?
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No. For densly populated areas, adequate infrastructure would be better public transport. ("better" in terms of capacity, price and safety)
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I'm in Ohio, I'd love to have a rail line installed in the median of all our interstates that connect the main cities with stops along the way.
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The root problem is too many cars, not overpopulation.
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Re:Bandaid (Score:4, Insightful)
>"The root problem is too many cars, not overpopulation."
No, it is pretty much overpopulation. I moved to this area 30 years ago and traffic was X. Now it is about 2X and so is the population. Car ownership rates hasn't changed all that much in 30 years. Most adults own a car and use it regularly.
Learn the Lesson of Water (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: How does water get where it's going?
A: Any way it has to.
Commuters and drivers are like water. Put up a barrier and the "water" will adapt, and rather faster than a creaky bureaucracy can keep up.
An easy fix (Score:2)
When a freeway is congested, good old-fashioned Supply & Demand says it's because the price is below market equilibrium. That's easy to fix, and as a bonus it provides a revenue source to pay for freeways that's less regressive than the sales tax.
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When a freeway is congested, good old-fashioned Supply & Demand says it's because the price is below market equilibrium. That's easy to fix, and as a bonus it provides a revenue source to pay for freeways that's less regressive than the sales tax.
Won't that just push more people onto the side streets? Besides, it might even be more regressive as a lot of working poor do have jobs that require a lot of driving to get to them.
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More than Waze already does?
If they can't afford to get to work, their employers will have to pay more if they want their toilets cleaned and their grass cut.
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Perhaps, but the fact that people fill up an unpriced freeway with cars is no more a sign of need than people grabbing all the burgers on free burger day [ggwash.org].
Cars? In my street? (Score:2)
How they dare! City mayors must send them back to the traffic jams where they belong!
It's not the highway infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
The real root of the problem is that people are either unwilling or unable to live within a short distance to their workplace. Many large cities were not designed to handle the volume of commuters that we have had for at least 20 years. People live in the suburbs (for a variety of reasons; some due to economics, others due to a desire to live in areas with lower population density), and commute to the city centers to work. This was okay when suburban sprawl was not as extreme as it is now. In the Bay Area, people can't afford to live close to work due to the insane real estate market. And they don't want to live in shoebox apartments, either.
The problem can only be solved by reducing the need for people to commute. There are a lot of ways to do this:
1. Encourage employees to work remotely where possible.
2. Decrease the cost of living in the city center or areas close to work.
3. Provide financial incentives for employees to live near their job site.
4. Allow more flexible working hours so that traffic volume can be distributed over a longer period of time.
5. Self-driving cars have the potential to reduce accidents and increase traffic flow efficiency.
Notice I did not include public transit. Public transit is only good for people who already live sufficiently close or do not need the flexibility of traveling by car. In Los Angeles, public transit is a complete joke. To commute from a suburb to downtown can take over 90 minutes, whereas driving by car--even in traffic--is at least 30 minutes faster, simply because train frequencies and network densities are too low. Sure, it's great if you only need to travel two or three stations and the trains run every five minutes...but for the vast majority of commuters this is not realistic. Commuters want and need to drive cars.
Re:It's not the highway infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
In Los Angeles, public transit is a complete joke.
>90% of the buildings in the Los Angeles area are 3 stories or less.
The problem is not public transit in and of itself. The problem is zoning restrictions that prevent the density required for effective public transit.
Americans always see this issue backwards (Score:4, Interesting)
As an expat who has lived all over the planet, the best organized cities make it really hard to drive *through* neighborhoods by which a neighborhood is maybe one 8x8 block region divided from other similar neighborhoods by a main artery road.
Germany is perhaps the best at this city planning skill. One learns fast to never try to drive *through* such a neighorhood block because you will go mad. Dead end obstacles, trees planted in the middle of the road that you must slooooow down for, super narrow roads (despite wide sidewalks and ample parking), and raised platforms at crosswalks(think of a 5 yard thick speed bump) make going around them the only sensible choice.
They do it because they believe if cars are going fast enough to kill children in small neighborhoods, it is a street design problem so they are often solving high traffic rates by intentionally making it impossible to drive fast with the above car thwarting techniques. Side effect is that waze is moot here and neighborhoods all remain quiet and safe.
Also makes it so they have no police enforcing speed limits in such neighborhoods. The streets are made super narrow and convoluted exactly to the degree necessary to keep you at or below the intended speed limit. The attitude is also something like "If you dont like it, then get on public transit" , which by the way is also fantastic in Germany.
Traffic and speeding are both just engineering problems waiting to be fixed if you see it clearly.
Easiest way to gain back control (Score:2)
Easiest way to get control back to the traffic planners would be to provide waze with highly dynamic information where traffic planners would like to send the cars to to minimize congestion. And if traffic planners would like them to be stuuck in a traffic jam they should look up their job description or for other jobs.
Re-route to poor neighborhoods (Score:2)
Wait (Score:4, Insightful)
well, crap (Score:2)
As always, down to $$$ (Score:2)
Charge for crossing certain points during peak hours, give locals a transponder to wave the fee. It's basic supply and demand.
Car-Magedon in Fremont last week (Score:3)
I happen to live exactly within the affected neighborhood. Last week we had the first of what we're calling "Car-Magedon" occur here. Cal Trans in their infinite lack of wisdom chose to fix a large pot-hole in the 680 Freeway right as rush hour was starting block 2 of 4 lanes that leaves the Silicon Valley. This is the major artery that everyone is talking about in the article. Anyway - traffic was SO BAD that it took me 15 minutes to move 5 houses from the corner to get into my driveway. I snuck in to the traffic having luckily met up with my wife who had been waiting on our street for 45 minutes inching her way to our house - she let me cut in front of her! We had a linear parking lot in front of our house for around 4 hours.
As it goes now - we are seeing mile long lines queueing up to get on the 680 before it goes through the hills at the last couple of on-ramps. That is a nightly occurrence.
Drivers need to outsmart Waze as well (Score:3)
I take instructions Waz gives me with a grain of salt these days, because something tricky it's telling you to do might give you an extra MINUTE vs. just stating on the highway... also Wze traffic understanding is inherently a little delayed. So now when I think about Waze detours I look carefully at what ahead is triggering going around - if it's an accident more than 30 minutes old, that's probably gone and it will be better to stay on. If rush hour is winding down, the predictions of heavy traffic may evaporate. Conversely, If rush hour had just started the rosy prediction about how awesome the freeway will be is probably wrong.
Also anymore if I do decide to take the Waze side street detour, I take a side street parallel to the one Waze suggests - because after all Waze is sending a lot of people down that street and increasing traffic more than it knows!
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its a disruptive neighborhood app.
pretty sure that's the right use of the adjective.
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Won't neighbourhood roads get destroyed pretty fast if you redirect highway traffic through them?
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There's a route I take sometimes to work, and they have a street that just had a sign put up outside of it that says "carpool only" during 7AM-9AM to try and curb people cutting through to get around a nasty bit of traffic in that area. It helps, but people like myself scoff at it and proceed to drive through it anyways.
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To be clear, you're advocating willful ignorance of the 4th and 5th amendments as a way to prevent legal use of taxpayer funded roads?