Why Google Told Drivers to Drive a Longer Way On Purpose (sfgate.com) 149
"A team at Google's research arm used Google Maps to reroute a small portion of drivers in 10 U.S. cities," reports SFGate — including San Francisco and Los Angeles.
"Through their experiment, which was published in the journal Nature Cities in June, the researchers sought to evenly spread traffic down more corridors as the drivers head to similar destinations, in the hopes of reducing congestion." The experiments nudged up vehicle speeds by 2% on average on the congested roads, and shortened travel times by a modest 0.7%. Scientists have long thought that traffic could be eased this way, and this now demonstrates how it could actually work in the real world.
The researchers collected data on weekdays in the 10 cities, which included Seattle, Salt Lake City, Chicago and Atlanta. While they studied a variety of types of roads, from city streets to highways, they found that in cities such as Los Angeles where they targeted highways, their diversions had the biggest effect, with driving speeds in those areas increasing by about 4.6%. Most cities, though, saw a smaller improvement with speeds across them increasing by just 0.5% during peak times. The Google study's findings confirm what other researchers have long suspected, said Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at UCLA who was not involved in the study. "This is a pretty nice empirical illustration of a longstanding idea," he said. If a clogged traffic artery is on the verge of a long delay, he said, rerouting a small number of vehicles away from the bottleneck produces a "not gigantic but noticeable result...."
As with other traffic interventions, there's a risk that Google's approach to spreading traffic could backfire. This concept, known as "induced demand," also applies to efforts like adding a lane to a critical highway, which temporarily relieves congestion, until traffic rises again. "You can do this, but you cannot be too successful, because if you are too successful, then more people will start driving, and essentially you'll be back to ground zero," [said Alexandre Bayen, a co-author of the study and director of UC Berkeley's Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society]. "That's why when we did the study, we only operated at the margin." The idea is to make minor improvements, enough to matter in the aggregate but not so significant that people notice and start driving more, canceling those improvements...
The Google Research study also considered the potential environmental benefits of its traffic improvements. The paper highlights the carbon dioxide emission reductions resulting from the slightly smoother traffic flow and shortened travel times, which add up to a savings of about 1,000 metric tons annually. That's equivalent to the emissions of about 200 vehicles, a drop in the bucket for cities with millions of cars, the majority of which are still gas guzzlers, even in San Francisco and LA. Bayen acknowledges that while emphasizing the cumulative benefit if such efforts were sustained for a longer time. For Manville, the study is a useful proof of concept. "It is a demonstration that if we managed roads better, air would probably be cleaner," he said.
According to the article, "Google's study might not just be a one-off, and city officials could decide to make use of the Google research findings, Bayen said, such as by trying to improve traffic congestion on a larger scale..."
"Google declined SFGATE's requests for comment on whether the company informed city authorities or rerouted drivers about the study," the article points out.
"Through their experiment, which was published in the journal Nature Cities in June, the researchers sought to evenly spread traffic down more corridors as the drivers head to similar destinations, in the hopes of reducing congestion." The experiments nudged up vehicle speeds by 2% on average on the congested roads, and shortened travel times by a modest 0.7%. Scientists have long thought that traffic could be eased this way, and this now demonstrates how it could actually work in the real world.
The researchers collected data on weekdays in the 10 cities, which included Seattle, Salt Lake City, Chicago and Atlanta. While they studied a variety of types of roads, from city streets to highways, they found that in cities such as Los Angeles where they targeted highways, their diversions had the biggest effect, with driving speeds in those areas increasing by about 4.6%. Most cities, though, saw a smaller improvement with speeds across them increasing by just 0.5% during peak times. The Google study's findings confirm what other researchers have long suspected, said Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at UCLA who was not involved in the study. "This is a pretty nice empirical illustration of a longstanding idea," he said. If a clogged traffic artery is on the verge of a long delay, he said, rerouting a small number of vehicles away from the bottleneck produces a "not gigantic but noticeable result...."
As with other traffic interventions, there's a risk that Google's approach to spreading traffic could backfire. This concept, known as "induced demand," also applies to efforts like adding a lane to a critical highway, which temporarily relieves congestion, until traffic rises again. "You can do this, but you cannot be too successful, because if you are too successful, then more people will start driving, and essentially you'll be back to ground zero," [said Alexandre Bayen, a co-author of the study and director of UC Berkeley's Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society]. "That's why when we did the study, we only operated at the margin." The idea is to make minor improvements, enough to matter in the aggregate but not so significant that people notice and start driving more, canceling those improvements...
The Google Research study also considered the potential environmental benefits of its traffic improvements. The paper highlights the carbon dioxide emission reductions resulting from the slightly smoother traffic flow and shortened travel times, which add up to a savings of about 1,000 metric tons annually. That's equivalent to the emissions of about 200 vehicles, a drop in the bucket for cities with millions of cars, the majority of which are still gas guzzlers, even in San Francisco and LA. Bayen acknowledges that while emphasizing the cumulative benefit if such efforts were sustained for a longer time. For Manville, the study is a useful proof of concept. "It is a demonstration that if we managed roads better, air would probably be cleaner," he said.
According to the article, "Google's study might not just be a one-off, and city officials could decide to make use of the Google research findings, Bayen said, such as by trying to improve traffic congestion on a larger scale..."
"Google declined SFGATE's requests for comment on whether the company informed city authorities or rerouted drivers about the study," the article points out.
Experiencing this firsthand (Score:5, Informative)
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Had this happen three times in the last month or two in Northern California. As long as I follow the new route strictly, I usually get there at about the same time I would have otherwise, but with a brand new view of the cityscape / rural landscape. Went for a nice river drive last week, 10/10 so far.
(Me) ”I’m just curious; what time did Google suggest you leave for your trip?”
(You) ”Well..OK..Yeah, technically it was three AM.”
(Me) ”Mmhmm. Just wanted to confirm the ‘best’ time to survive California travel and enjoy a cityscape or two.”
Re:Experiencing this firsthand (Score:4, Interesting)
Liquor sales are not allowed after 2am in California. Bars close at 2am as a result. There is an increase in drunk driving accidents in the following hour as a result. I got a power outage at 3am Sunday morning. I knew it had to be another drunk driver knocking down a power pole. The final e-mail from PG&E after the outage resolved confirmed that it was due to a vehicle.
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Had this happen three times in the last month or two in Northern California. As long as I follow the new route strictly, I usually get there at about the same time I would have otherwise, but with a brand new view of the cityscape / rural landscape. Went for a nice river drive last week, 10/10 so far.
This is what a lot of people who can navigate by themselves already do, I call it a long cut (as in the opposite of a short cut) and even though it's a longer drive than the direct route because it travels through faster roads with less traffic it takes less time (and less stress/annoyance). There's a small motorway near where I live where people line up for ages at an off ramp where as I go up to the next exit, do a U turn on the roundabout and come back beating the queue... I thank all the gods, old and
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I call it a long cut (as in the opposite of a short cut)
I call it the indirector's cut. Not saying it's a good joke, but that's what I do.
For comparison, my Hyundai EV, when I plug it in at home, says "Charging started." So if I time it right I can say "Iiiii've plugged it in, so you'd better get this.." "charging started." It's a guaranteed groan if someone witnesses it.
Re: Experiencing this firsthand (Score:2)
Most better navigation apps take future traffic into consideration, based on historical trends. They have billions of hours of driving records at this point.
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Had this happen three times in the last month or two in Northern California. As long as I follow the new route strictly, I usually get there at about the same time I would have otherwise, but with a brand new view of the cityscape / rural landscape. Went for a nice river drive last week, 10/10 so far.
Don't think Google did it to me as I am not in the targeted cities, but a few times I've had WTF reactions to routing and said F it, I'm going how I always do...
Re:Experiencing this firsthand (Score:4, Interesting)
For what it's worth, London Black Cab Drivers (broadly regarded as something of a 'gold standard' for such things) will never take you across london by crossing the river twice. The river does bend around quite sharply, and for a few journeys it makes absolute sense, but they won't do it because people, being thicker than two short planks, complain that the driver is taking them the "long way", when actually they are keeping it as short as possible.
These days with GPS maps and such like, I suspect thick people have offloaded even more of their thinking to their phone apps, so maybe nowadays things are different, I don't know.
As for this story, I'd expect them to find me the quickest route, taking traffic into account. I don't know how these journeys are charged, but in the UK, it's per mile and per minute - that is, you get charged for sitting in traffic, as well as zipping down a trunk road. As such, I suspect most people would prefer the quickest route, given that it's highly unlikely to be materially much longer than the shortest route.
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I also think I was included. Noticed weird Google map directions on my common urban routes, where there was not an obvious accident/construction/blockage. Depending on how much I cared to care, I've taken the Google suggested route and other times 'my' preferred route. No discernable difference in my admittedly anecdotal, not scientific trials, so maybe that fits the 0.5% improvement. Wondering if the overall throughput was improved, could not discern that through a quick read of the study. Though
Induced Demand is full of holes, change my mind (Score:2)
Induced demand is plainly a theory with lots of holes. It sees no utility in moving any greater number of people the same distance in the same amount of time, according to induced demand theory that's a complete waste. If induced demand were true, Japan's Wangan should be clogged with traffic instead of empty enough for ultra-high-speed street racing, and China's highways to newly-built empty towns should probably be full of traffic for some reason too.
The best debunking of the idea I've run across comes fr
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Induced demand is plainly a theory with lots of holes.
It is not.
. It sees no utility
Ah yes, they theory doesn't address your feeling therefore it's bad! Induced demand is about traffic numbers. Utility of those numbers irrelevant to the numbers.
according to induced demand theory that's a complete waste.
I love how when people hate the results of a theory they just make shit up about the theory and attack that. Induced demand has NOTHING TO SAY about the value of the demand.
If induced demand were true[...]
Th
Induced demand (Score:2, Insightful)
As with other traffic interventions, there's a risk that Google's approach to spreading traffic could backfire. This concept, known as "induced demand," also applies to efforts like adding a lane to a critical highway, which temporarily relieves congestion, until traffic rises again. "You can do this, but you cannot be too successful, because if you are too successful, then more people will start driving, and essentially you'll be back to ground zeroâ¦"
Oh fuck all the way off.
This idea of "induced demand" always comes up in the context of traffic improvements, as though the goal of traffic design is to keep people from driving. (We had a sale on apples, and everyone bought our apples! Damn this counterintuitive induced demand!) Add a bypass and now it's full of cars? Good! That was the whole point: to help people live where they want to live and get to where they want to get to. Every car making up that new traffic jam is being driven by someone who is, o
Re:Induced demand (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you fundamentally misunderstand the point. The point of induced demand is that it can't solve traffic congestion, it can only further intrench car dependency. It's counter-intuitive to its own goal, as you said the point is to get people where they want to get to, and the best way of doing that is to provide them with a method of doing so that doesn't waste their lives.
Induced demand is a concept unique to overcrowded individual mobility sources, specifically driving. On the flip side you can do something like invest in high-speed rail or better more efficient public transit and move more people, more quickly, without it just turning into a parking lot, which at the same time reduces demand on an arterial.
This isn't a question of expand highway vs do nothing. It's a question of expanding highway vs doing something different that may have a better outcome (for both people who will use the system as well existing people on the highway who won't).
Rather than telling people to fuck off, please understand what it means in the context of city planning.
But if that's your aim, at least be honest about it.
City planning is fundamentally about controlling habits of people. It's at the very core. You don't drive because you want to drive. You drive because planners and designers have ultimately created an environment which made it either the best or maybe the only option for you. This kind of thing doesn't need to be stated.
Re: Induced demand (Score:2)
the best way of doing that is to provide them with a method of doing so that doesn't waste their lives
Thanks for your concern. Please refer to my fuck off from above. You donâ(TM)t get to decide what I want.
You don't drive because you want to drive. You drive because planners and designers have ultimately created an environment which made it either the best or maybe the only option for you.
You're wrong on both accounts as well as wrong fundamentally. I personally donâ(TM)t want to drive. I quite dislike driving. I prefer a short walking commute, and when that's not practical I prefer mass transit. But for many people, driving is the only practical way to simultaneously accomplish several aspects of the life they want to live, including being housed in a very low-density area, wor
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Thanks for your concern. Please refer to my fuck off from above. You donÃ(TM)t get to decide what I want.
So you're saying you do want a method that wastes your life? Because that's the alternative to a method which doesn't.
hose desires are not a matter of planning.
They absolutely are. Do you have some sort of theory where American are fundamentally lazier on a genetic than other people? If not, then the desire to not walk must come from somewhere else.
Don't go so far the rabbit hole of social engineeri
Re: Induced demand (Score:2)
The refrain of radicals everywhere, and of all sides. "Just shut up and wait until we remake things as we want. You'll learn to want them that way too, we promise."
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Cool story, bro.
So are you saying you prefer something that wastes your life or not because it sounded like you said you did. That seems a strange opinion to me,
Re: Induced demand (Score:4, Insightful)
I personally donâ(TM)t want to drive. I quite dislike driving. I prefer a short walking commute, and when that's not practical I prefer mass transit. But for many people, driving is the only practical way to simultaneously accomplish several aspects of the life they want to live, including being housed in a very low-density area, working in a high density area, commuting without significant walking sections, etc. Those desires are not a matter of planning.
IMHO they actually are. As example, the typical American residential low-density suburb is the result of significant planning and the way it's structured is a fundamental reason for car reliance. Other countries have made different planning decisions and that leads to less reliance on cars.
I currently don't need a car: I can do everything I need with either mass transit or a bicycle, but if I were transplanted in a typical American suburb I will almost guaranteed switch to a car. People will do what is a combination of most affordable and most convenient and how cities, residential areas, commuting, shopping is planned has a huge impact on what is most affordable and convenient.
Also it's important to keep in mind that once the planning allows for alternatives to the car that are affordable and convenient, car users also benefit immensely from that. The reason is that a road has a relatively small capacity. A bike lane occupies a fraction of the space of a car lane and has 5-10 times the capacity. Every person that decides for an alternative to the car is one car less on the road which benefits every other car user.
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Every person that decides for an alternative to the car is one car less on the road which benefits every other car user.
So many people forget this. They get angry that they are behind a bus while ignoring the alternative to the bus is potentially 50 additional cars on the road in front of them.
For a practical example of this look to the The Netherlands tomorrow morning. There's a nation wide public transport strike announced. The roads will be absolute unmitigable fucking shit-show.
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A bike lane can't possibly have a larger capacity than a car lane. It only takes a little bit of thought to see why. You must be comparing the typical car lane with the theoretical max capacity of the bike lane.
I am talking typical usage. In typical usage a car lane is very inefficient since cars have on average very low occupancy, are large and require significant safe distances. In comparison, bike lanes are much more efficient since bikes are much smaller and can safely travel closer together.
This is true for a single car lane vs. a single bike lane, but consider that for the space occupied by a car lane you can easily have 2 bike lanes, so a comparison of capacity per area is even more in favour of bike lanes.
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Thanks for your concern. Please refer to my fuck off from above. You donâ(TM)t get to decide what I want.
Of course not, I'm not a city planner. But city planners very much *do* decide what you want. Even if you don't understand it, or think that you have free will. Your autonomy extends to living in a city that suits your lifestyle or not. That's it. That's always been your entire influence on this topic. Everything else is up to town planners.
What you want is decided by where you live, not by some idea that people don't dictate the lives around you. I'm much the same. I don't like driving so I moved to a plac
Re:Induced demand (Score:5, Insightful)
car dependency is baked into large tract single use developments, fix the corrupt development process and then maybe you can reduse the need for travel in the first place
people don't just decide to drive around for little reason
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people don't just decide to drive around for little reason
If you don't get a license from the government, then subject yourself to numerous extra rules and get tracked by camera, how are you going to prove you have freedom? Maybe buying a lifted Ram will help.
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They could eliminate induced demand by reducing the numbers of drivers licenses issued. And confiscating them from the worst drivers.
Get caught fiddling with your cell phone while driving? We'll trade your license for a bus pass. Now you can Tweet all you want, sharing a bench seat with a smelly bum.
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This is true, give people options that are time competitive with driving and many of them [youtu.be] will free up a LOT of space [imgur.com] on the roads for ever
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Braess's paradox, Jevon's paradox. Read up...
> Add a bypass and now it's full of cars?
And the approach ways are all congested. Congratulations.
Physics and maths will always win over whatever you want or think is right.
Re: Induced demand (Score:2)
Read up...
I have, thanks. Now, read about the fact-value distinction, and reflect that average road speed may not be a reliable indicator of overall happiness.
And the approach ways are all congested. Congratulations.
That was the whole point: to help people live where they want to live and get to where they want to get to. Every car making up that new traffic jam is being driven by someone who is, on balance, willing to sit through it because of the positive effects it's had on them.
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> willing to sit through it because of the positive effects it's had on them.
If you put "must drive to work, because there are no other options" into "the positive effects it's had" category, then sure.
Re: Induced demand (Score:2)
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Market forces are alw
You are Volunteered! (Score:2)
I was driving up 101 once... (Score:2)
What else can the algorithm suggest? (Score:2)
Road A is blocked. Road B is the only alternative. So of course it will divert the cars onto road B. The degree of detailed understanding of the roads required to avoid this may be possible in the long term, but at the moment it's always going to happen.
Re: What else can the algorithm suggest? (Score:2)
induced demand is not a valid reason to not build (Score:3)
Induced demand does not mean that building roads never reduces congestion; new capacity can provide substantial and sometimes lasting benefits. Rather, it means that traffic responds to changes in the cost and availability of road travel, just as traffic can decrease when road capacity is reduced through people changing routes, times, destinations, modes, or simply making fewer trips.
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Induced demand is not a question of to build or not to build. It's a question of what alternatives should be investigated. I.e. is it better to add a lane to the highway so that an additional 200 cars /km fit on it, or is it better to add a train track which could potentially remove 1000 vehicles from the highway for every single train instead.
Or some far more intelligent planning decisions: Is it better the expand an extra lane into each arterial, or is it better to develop another business district in a d
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we already know that people don't choose to live in large tract suburban developments, nor do people choose to live in apartments or condos, developers make those choices for us and shape the transportation problem as a result
the solution is simple, make the developers build what people want and need, not what makes developers the most profit
most of our civic problems are because of irresponsible development driven by greedy classist developers
upper class communities have few of the problems most of us have
Commuting to/from work with google? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you use google to find your way to work and home, you have truly drunk the kool-aid.
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If you use google to find your way to work and home, you have truly drunk the kool-aid.
Or maybe some of us live in areas where we have multiple equal paths leading from our work to home and on any given day localised road conditions dictate which way is best to take in such a way that only a real time navigation system can offer.
Actually Google isn't the only answer here, when I come up to the south-ring of my city there's a big digital board that indicates the traffic status of both paths in both directions (4 roads) which ring around the city and if maps isn't running that sign could tell m
Re: Commuting to/from work with google? (Score:2)
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Now you have a reason to use it: Save 30 seconds off your commute.
...and in the process maximize the street surface used for car traffic, endanger and scare away cyclists and pedestrians from formerly quiet residential streets, etc...
Unethical (Score:3)
The Stanford University Institutional Review Board clearly dropped the ball on this one. Not entirely surprising since Stanford is Google's alma mater and I'll let you imagine what that means for board members.
There's a right way and a wrong way. The right way:
1) Ask humans for permission to experiment on them, before experimenting on them. No matter how minor the inconvenience. What if they had been routed into a wall or a river or incoming traffic? Just because nothing happened this time doesn't mean it's ok. And what if something did happen? How would the humans know they were experimented on? How would the researchers know who to contact for follow up?
2) There are competent government authorities that must be contacted for permission when intending to obstruct or tamper with traffic on public roads. It's not Google's right to do as they please, no matter how much money they splash around.
3) I'm not impressed.
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1) have you read google's TOS? Are you sure you didn't consent to experiments?
2) nothing is obstructed or tampered with. Only tweaked suggestions the human drivers blindly followed.
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TOS is irrelevant. TOS is not a blanket protection against unethical behaviour.
Traffic is clearly being obstructed and tampered without authorization from the government and the human subjects. That''s literally the purpose of the experiment.
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That's absurd. It's an app designed to find the optimal route from point A to point B. This is just a feature flag to determine if this method works in real life as it does in simulation. It's nothing different or unusual from any gated feature flag that any company uses to roll out new features to a subset of the user base first. That's not "unethical experimentation on human subjects", it's bog-standard app development, the way everyone does it.
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You are confusing doing business experimentation with writing a paper for scientific experimentation.
Secondly, it is clearly tampering with traffic without pri
Re: Unethical (Score:2)
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The Stanford University Institutional Review Board clearly dropped the ball on this one. Not entirely surprising since Stanford is Google's alma mater and I'll let you imagine what that means for board members.
Last I check Google is a private company, not an academic conduction research under Stanford's name. There was no more tampering than any other routing and the users know Google going to recommend a route based on their algorithms, and this was simply can attempt to see how well they could work.
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It looks like those routes got you there at the same time while helping everyone get there a tiny bit quicker.
If you don't like it don't use their service. Get a paper map and learn to self-plan.
What if they intentionally just gave everyone the same lazy route and now it is a traffic jam on purpose? That is unethical,
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1) You have granted permission to be experimented on. It's right there in Google's ToS. They literally constantly test new algorithms and changes to maps on a tiny subset of people at a time. You're likely being experimented on RIGHT NOW!
2) No one was tampering with lawful street traffic. At no point are you forced to follow where your navigation app tells you to go. There was nothing "unauthorised" about this as there's no authority required.
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Do you worry about these things whenever you get driving directions from Google Maps?
Google Maps are detached from reality (Score:4, Interesting)
Google has a fundamental problem with perception of which roads are equivalent.
It often sees rural 60mph roads as equivalent to highways where in reality they former are narrow, bendy, sometimes dangerous, and you can never so more than 30mph on them safely.
When I drive, I want the less hassle. I want to get from A to B with the least amount of thinking and stress. I would choose the road I know, or the road with the least number of turns over a road with even a 10-minute saving any time.
That's why I always turn down Google re-route suggestions. They are absolutely silly and detached from reality, and it annoys me to no extent that there is no global setting that aould allow you to disable automatic rerouting completely.
I'd like to be able to start the nav, look up the route, correct as need it and pin it so that it doesn't change mid way. Any modifications to the route should only be made on demand when I interact with the maps and tell it to try and re-route.
There's also something else that irks me considerably on Google Maps. In the UK it is illegal to interact with your phone in any way while driving. When Google re-routing pop-up appears, the default action after the timeout is "accept". This means that if I wanted to just follow the route I chose at the start of the journey, I'd have to break the law to turn the suggestion down.
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Google has a fundamental problem with perception of which roads are equivalent.
It often sees rural 60mph roads as equivalent to highways where in reality they former are narrow, bendy, sometimes dangerous, and you can never so more than 30mph on them safely.
One advantages of this if enough data is collected on those roads then Google will have real data to base they routing on rather than speed limits which may not reflect reality on the road.
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Agree. When driving from Tucson to SE Valley (Phoenix area), Google wants me to take a dark two-lane country highway instead of staying on I-10. No thanks. Ever. Besides being dark (real dark) and winding, you get stuck behind a slow driver and you're stuck for a while. I've only taken that route once - during the day - and never again. Small chance of being faster. Large chance of being much slower. I-10 always has at least 2 lanes open, even while they've been doing construction for the last couple years.
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When I drive, I want the less hassle. I want to get from A to B with the least amount of thinking and stress. I would choose the road I know, or the road with the least number of turns over a road with even a 10-minute saving any time.
This.
I'd rather take the less stressful route. Even if it's a few minutes longer. Hence, my selection of routes cutting through local neigborhoods as soon as DOT turns on the traffic calming systems and freeway traffic becomes stop and go.
Conversely (Score:2)
Called it! (Score:2)
... the researchers sought to evenly spread traffic down more corridors as the drivers head to similar destinations, in the hopes of reducing congestion.
Here in Canada, I frequently drive on a section of Highway 401 which has express and collector lanes. At one specific point in the journey, Waze almost always directs us into the collectors for no apparent reason. I was fooled the first few times, because at that point the collectors offer access to alternate routes which would be faster if there was a slowdown ahead of us on the highway.
I finally started to suspect that Waze was deliberately distributing the traffic in order to distribute the traffic more
Isn't this already how it works? (Score:3)
When I try to go somewhere using Google Maps, it won't try to send me down the shortest route, it will try to send me down the *fastest* route. And what route is the fastest depends on traffic. This would naturally spread people out: as soon as the busy highway becomes congested, people automatically get sent down alternate routes instead of further congesting that highway.
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will try to send me down the *fastest* route
No it won't. Google typically will prefer core arterials over local traffic areas in an effort to balance traffic. The "fastest" option on the screen is just the fastest it has calculated from the options it wants to present you quite often this explicitly involves not giving you an option such as cutting through a neighbourhood. Google maps has an internal hierarchy for roads and tries to prioritise you according to that first and foremost which is why you may find yourself on a gridlocked highway staring
Informed consent? (Score:2)
I have just the teensiest problem with it, however, and that problem is "consent". Nine trips out of ten I'd be happy to opt in to this experiment, but one time out of ten I really do care about getting the exact route I request, and would be apoplectic over Google sending me the scenic route.
Looks like MapQuest is getting yet another new user. At least all the bodies of water
Suggest an alternative? (Score:2)
Google LITERALLY ruined my car (Score:3)
However, what keeps me up at night is that I don't know what I did wrong. How am I supposed to know a road isn't a road? Why would Google send me through there? How will I know next time?
Again, I'm screaming into the void, this is off topic. However, I really have no faith in Google Maps and am not sure Apple Maps would have been much better.
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I remember Google taking me off the highway in Australia and down a country road. The road turned to a lane. The lane turned to dirt. The dirt terminated at a cattle grid and about 15min later we were stuck in a field full of sheep with 3 farmers on horseback herding them around and a sheep dog deciding to nip at the tires of our car while we all laughed. We were long past what anyone considered "road", but it was technically found on a map.
Why did we do this? Well it knocked a full hour off the trip due to
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Google took me on a dead end dirt road on a levee when all I wanted to do was circle back to Sacramento airport (SMF).
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Nope...none...no indicator. (Score:2)
Was there no indicator the road was closed, like a massive barrier or sign that said "Closed Road." Even in the middle of bumfuck nowhere USA that usually gets a fairly large indicator the road is closed to traffic.
I wish there was, then I would have a lesson to learn from it. It was far out in the middle of nowhere....definitely a state I hope to never visit and few people live in anyway. Reading the responses here, plenty ACs are getting schadenfreude from the story "urban prius driver gets car ruined by shithole state road"...the road would have damaged most SUVs and trucks as well...unless you have one of those extreme ones. So it can definitely happen to them as well....but yeah, I guess shit happens....not s
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That's funny, ever hear of Situational Awareness? (Score:2)
Rude (Score:4, Informative)
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Stop letting your kids play in the street. This isn't the 70's, people aren't having 14 kids per couple to compensate for the dumb ones getting run over or killed in other ways. People are having far less children now. Treat them like the precious resource they are and keep them out of the road. FFS. The road is not your playground.
The joke I was looking for (Score:2)
Where's the joke about the AI "thoughtfully" selecting the drivers who are still stupid enough to trust the google's directions?
no-op (Score:2)
If they take me on the fastest route, which is presumably what I want, won't that also be the route that has the least congestion, hence balances congestion? The only difference is whether they are predicting future congestion, in which case they should be taking me on what they *predict* will be the fastest route as I traverse each segment.
What really pisses me off, though, is that their "fastest" route for me in SF involves 32 turns at bizarre intersections, which is 38 seconds faster than the route with
message (Score:2)
Viable alternatives to driving (Score:2)
The only way to reduce traffic congestion is to provide viable alternatives to driving.
Also Experienced This (Score:2)
Fun Test--for Science! (Score:2)
When 101 TollExpress Opened Google Promoted It (Score:2)
There is no best way (Score:2)
This shows how much we are controlled by algorithms. I bet most people didn't know it. Most maps try to find the shortest distance. You might get options for fuel efficiency or can compare routes with estimated time. Waze is supposed to take traffic conditions into account. We don't always want what the algorithm tells us is best.
UPS creates routes for its drivers with as few left hand turns, stop signs and traffic signals as possible. When I was commuting every day, I avoided certain dangerous inters
Re:Induced demand is BS (Score:5, Informative)
Induced demand is BS [...]Traffic engineers are fucking assholes, every last one of them.
You can't wish away reality jut because you don't like it.
We should have double-decker freeways and people zipping along from wherever they want to be.
How much more tax are you prepared to pay to support that?
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> You can't wish away reality jut because you don't like it.
Yet he's absolutely correct. There's a demand for more travel, which governments refuse to fill. When new roads are finally built which meet those demands, the communists shriek "LOOK! THE NEW ROADS ARE ALREADY CONGESTED! WE MUST STOP BUILDING ROADS!" and midwits nod sagely because The Expert Is Always Right.
> How much more tax are you prepared to pay to support that?
It's weird how we used to be able to build these things when society was muc
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> It's weird how we used to be able to build these things when society was much poorer.
You mean when there were far fewer cars around, and they were much smaller? Yeah, I wonder too.
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When new roads are finally built which meet those demands, the communists shriek "LOOK! THE NEW ROADS ARE ALREADY CONGESTED!
Are you denying that the "communists", i.e. people with basic powers of observation are correct about the level of congestion?
It sounds to me that as a dyed in the wool right winger, you dislike the rational conclusion of the observation of reality therefore you believe that reality must be wrong.
It's weird how we used to be able to build these things when society was much poorer.
Ah r
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The reality is that there would be twice as many empty bike racks in front of the building. Why did they fail to induce demand in this case? People (mostly) do t drive just for the sake of driving. They do so because the trip serves some purpose. If the trip is too costly in terms of time taken then people a
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Observable reality is wrong because of irrelevant example.
Sure bro, can you tell me your dealer because your copium is way stronger than I can find.
This follows typical human behavior where lower costs tends to lead to higher consumption.
OK, it' not copium you're on but something stronger. You jut said induced demand is flat out wrong then just stated that induced demand is typical human behaviour.
but I've only ever stumbled across it there.
That's because you never bothered to find out anything about it i
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It's weird how we used to be able to build these things when society was much poorer.
Show me when we *ever* built significant 'double decker' freeways? We have, obviously, been willing to build, rebuild and expand roads beyond what we had before. The problem is that we are seeing diminishing returns for our efforts. We give up more and more resources and land and get less and less benefit out of it. We expand 3 lanes to 4 and after tolerating *years* of even worse traffic to facilitate construction and then it opens up and... still jammed up because an additional lane didn't help *that
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Indeed. There are a variety of things in specific happening when "you build a lane and it fills quickly"; but here's what's not causing that: drawing people off public transit. In the US, public transit is too small a fraction of both trips and distance for any pull-off impact to affect things.
What's actually happening is a mix of:
1) Demand builds up as population grows, as do mean travel distances. If you don't build capacity for this new demand, it starts flowing out of the arterials into smaller roads,
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I hate how the debate is "try to force people who drive to stop driving" vs. "no changes at all". I wish people would instead focus on the middle ground: recognizing both that (A) cars cause externalities* and should pay for those externalities, and (B) in the US don't pay their share**but also C) most people want to have a car, and it's a major quality of life factor for them. And from that, trying to build cities that are friendly to all users. The bargain is:
* If you have a car, you'll pay more (welco
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If you're not a car person, the cars will be funding excellent bike / pedestrian infrastructure
Hahaha. Too funny. I was in southern CA last week. Not a bicycle or pedestrian in sight. It's far too dangerous to walk or bicycle for any form of reliable transport in LA. Even my friends who live there and would love to commute on bicycle say they prefer staying alive.
And this is not an anti-California thing. There is not a large city in the U.S. that has done pedestrian and bicycle travel safely and effectively.
In contrast, Berlin you see safe bicycling all over the city. Same with The Hague and Amst
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Indeed. But you have to actually pay for it. Currently, cars in the US don't even come close to paying their own way, let alone subsidizing cycling / pedestrian infrastructure.
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Bike infrastructure is far less expensive per passenger mile than car infrastructure.
Funding cars at the expense of bikes is costing MORE money. Cars are about the single most expensive and least efficient use of space when it comes to infrastructure.
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(A) * Sometimes you see lists that blame cars for everything under the sun and come up with nonsensically huge externality bills, but these always leave off every single externality that cars *reduce*, e.g. only half of the equation. There is zero accounting for the value of time saved in commutes,
Compared to WHAT? Londoner here, and I'm a bit mystified as to what you're trying to say, frankly.
zero value of the healthcare advantage of being able to reach a hospital quickly at arbitrary times from arbitrary
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How much more tax do I currently pay for mass transit I never use? $500 car tabs, anyone?
... This translates to $110 per year for every $10,000 of your vehicle's calculated value.
If you own a car that's valued at $50,000 after the year you buy it, you can easily afford $500 in tax.
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When the road widens, it meets a need, which means more people consume it.
No one uses those roads anymore - they're too busy.
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We should have double-decker freeways
California tried that.. until 1989 when they noticed why this was not such a good idea.