
Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts” - 80mph
https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/waze-los-angeles-neighborhoods/
======
simplesleeper
Transport for London Tech Lead here.

In London, we have been collaborating with google waze - we provide them with
information at the local level. Streets that waze should not use for route
finding (e.g. roads with schools) can be blocked for use by Waze. Both local
councils and TfL can provide this data.

The main difference between Waze and Google Maps is that Waze uses real time
traffic data. There are multiple map providers that do this in London. There
is a plan to provide different data to different TfL data consumers in the
future to try and get map providers to seperate traffic across roads (at the
cost of surrendering absolute truth).

London is also host to discussions of taxing roads - this is unsurprising when
the roads are mostly paid for by the cost of the London Underground (LU makes
the majority of public transport money, but 80% of revenue goes into road,
traffic and bus management). The London Assembly (who supposedly keep the
London mayor accountable) have written a paper "London Stalling" to suggest
road taxing related to mileage across London. This, they no doubt expect, will
cut down the traffic. However, from my understanding of embellished models of
Braess' paradox, this will only result in similar traffic (on maybe slightly
different roads) with an optimum equilibrium between how good a route is and
what the cost of it is - meaning people may just take longer to commute and
pay more tax.

~~~
rahimnathwani
"when the roads are mostly paid for by the cost of the London Underground"

Taxes on fuel used in motor vehicles (duties and VAT) are something like 30bn
GBP/year in the UK.

London has about 1/6th of the UK's population, so let's assume 5bn/year comes
from London.

That's 5x the annual operating profit of London Underground[0].

Government income and expenditure is fungible, so it's hard to determine
precisely whether X is paid for by Y or by Z.

But it's clear that government revenue from London road users is much higher
than the profit from London Underground.

So it seems strange to assert that roads are paid for mostly by London
Underground.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20865111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20865111)

~~~
edh649
For reference, from the 2019/20 TFL Budget, direct operating surplus' are:

Streets -£167m

Buses: -£722m

Rail: -£49m

Underground: £823m

Elizabeth Line: -£267m

Other: £9m

Professional Services: -£560m

Property: £69m

Media: £145m

[0] [http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-
budget-2019-20.pdf](http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-budget-2019-20.pdf)

------
orthoxerox
> These thousands of homeowners and renters have arguably been injured by
> Waze’s and Google’s successful privatization of formerly public streets.

That's a... very creative interpetation of what public and private mean.

If you don't want your side street to be driven on at 30 mph, then you can't
drive on it at 30 mph either. Traffic calming measures are a thing. Make it
even more winding, add road bumps, bottlenecks. Turn it into a 12mph street,
and no one will use it as a shortcut anymore.

~~~
kenned3
These "NIMBY" people always make me laught.

if you dont want to have a ton of traffic dont buy a house on a major road.

There is a street on the subdivision i live in with the same issue. it is the
main entry point to the subdivision. people bought houses there, then fought
the city for years over traffic?

they put up stop signs, speed bumps, etc.

they wanted the lower house prices associated with living on main roads, but
then tried to redirect traffic elsewhere?

~~~
human20190310
The issue is that traffic apps turned non-main roads into main roads, not that
people bought on main roads then tried to block them.

NIMBYism can be a problem, but it's still important to characterize the issues
at hand accurately.

~~~
XaspR8d
Well the issue behind that issue IMO is that so many US streets _can_ be used
as main roads. They were built overly-spaciously with only the interests of
car drivers in mind.

------
floatingatoll
It’s disappointing to see LADOT neglecting to use a road management tool
already at their disposal to stop Waze’s abuse of their residential zones:

No Thru Traffic.

Posting NTT signs at entry points into residential neighborhoods and
specifying even as little as a $5 fine would make entry for thru routing
unlawful, stopping Waze.

Whether or not the city enforces these signs would be irrelevant, as long as
the traffic laws were in place _permitting_ enforcement. Their simple presence
would require Waze editors to accurately identify all such entry points and
force Waze to prefer the surrounding arterials. They are, I believe, requires
to denote such signage to their maps so that Waze does not compel unlawful
driving behaviors, even if some percentage of drivers might otherwise make the
entry illegally.

As an additional possible bonus, by marking zones as NTT, the Waze algorithms
would not only exclude those zones but likely also reject periphery roads near
those zones, as their value as a shortcut would diminish further versus the
arterials they circumvent.

~~~
matt-attack
And to what end? I’m of the firm belief that the good done by Waze far
outweighs the cost to the NIMBYs. In LA we have a traffic crisis. Sorry but
your government built and tax funded residential street is just as much mine
to use as it is yours. I won’t speed through it but I sure as hell have a
right to use it as much as the local home owners.

The city should not be doing what your suggesting until they’ve solved the
traffic crisis and provided actual solutions.

The freeways are parking lots. Housing costs in the city are insane. So
workers are forced to have longer and longer commutes. And the city’s
infrastructure crawls to a halt at rush hours.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.

~~~
mc32
Residential streets are not designed for heavy through traffic.

It comes back to “why we can’t have nice things”. Abuse. Many systems work
when they are not abused but break down when they are abused.

~~~
matt-attack
Well that's not really what I hear the NIMBYs complaining about. "Hey our
streets are forming ruts and potholes from the excess traffic! We need better
reinforcing under our street to prevent this!"

~~~
Dylan16807
Good! You can continue ignoring the NIMBYs then! You can both spite them _and_
focus on the actual problem.

------
duxup
In LA are these shortcuts worth it?

I was surprised to find with Google maps more often than not it suggests to
just take that busy highway that is crawling alone because ... it really is
faster. I've tried to defy google maps ... rarely do I win.

Granted google maps is wrong at times. During snowstorms it loves to send me
down off streets that haven't yet been plowed or ... worse random county roads
you do not want to be on during a storm. I think it inadvertently interprets
"hey nobody is on this road so it must be faster" when nobody is there because
that road is terrible with snow and you're far better crawling along the
highway where plows will be or may have been ... or other vehicles have made
tracks.

~~~
tschwimmer
I once read (sorry can't find cite) that Waze and Google maps run roughly the
same routing algorithm now, but Waze is hyper-optimized for time whereas
Google maps is optimized for some nebulous quality akin to "fastest reasonable
route" where unreasonable factors are things like using small roads, exiting
and entering the high a bunch, extra turns, etc.

So Waze probably is faster by a bit, but not a whole ton.

In my experience, Google Maps ETA has gotten to be frighteningly accurate in
the past 6 months. For situations where traffic doesn't materially change
during the trip, my ETA will be within 2 minutes of arrival even on trips of
over an hour.

~~~
thinkingemote
I've noticed Waze optimizing for quickness. Not fastest, not shortest, not
most direct but the route which makes you feel like you are getting there
quicker. Often longer stretches with no traffic or junctions for example.

It's as if users main priority is not to be held up. Users don't care if the
journey is two minutes longer or a few pence more expensive, they just don't
want to be feeling they are making no progress.

~~~
wccrawford
" they just don't want to be feeling they are making no progress."

I think you may have just convinced me to use Waze instead of Google Maps. I'd
much rather relieve the stress of driving a bit than save a few minutes of
time.

Well, actually, I'd rather not drive at all. But seeing as that isn't really
an option, I'll settle for making it less stressful.

~~~
paulcole
I’m 36 and have lived in a mix of rural and urban areas of America and I never
learned to drive and have never driven a car.

Just want to make the point that not driving _is_ really an option, just one
that most people look for a way to avoid. It’s all a matter of priorities and
as much as most people say they hate driving/traffic, very few actually do
anything about it.

~~~
ghaff
At some level that's true. But it's also true it significantly constrains your
life choices. I've had one job in my life that I could _maybe_ have reasonably
held without being able to drive. (Business travel would still have been
somewhat of an issue.) And my entire personal lifestyle would have to have
been totally different.

Also, a lot of people just aren't in a position to realistically say "no" to
any job that involves a need to drive.

~~~
paulcole
I think it's a little ridiculous to say "I would rather not have to drive" and
then make 0 life choices to reduce the reliance on driving, which is exactly
what most people do.

~~~
ghaff
People do often take the length of commutes into account. But, while many
would prefer not to have to drive in the abstract, in practice that preference
doesn't rise to the level of:

\- Moving into a smaller place in a city

\- Potentially putting kids into worse schools

\- Passing on many of the recreational and travel activities that require
driving

\- Passing on job opportunities that have better salaries, career paths, etc.

\- Not visiting friends and family who live places you need to drive to

All of which may be the result of not being able to drive or making a decision
to prioritize minimal driving over everything else. There are a lot of things
that people prefer in principle but, when presented with the actual choices,
they make tradeoffs that favor different things.

------
sosodev
It seems to me that Waze isn't the problem. I've seen very similar problems
where I live. When the freeway gets backed up, as it inevitably does, traffic
spills out into awfully designed city streets.

I once got stuck in small neighborhood for 2 hours while the freeway was
backed up and that was before Waze existed.

In Southern California we have massive urban sprawl most of which is filled
with cul-de-sacs within cul-de-sacs. Waze isn't the problem it's just
exacerbating it.

~~~
apexalpha
But usually people don't go into neighborhoods they don't know. Locals might
cut through a city but others won't. Now, with Waze and Google, literally
everyone can cut through a city even though they've never been there.

This is the problem: these roads weren't build for it and the neighbors are
left with busy streets, noise pollution and an increase in traffic.

~~~
codedokode
But aren't those public roads, made for everyone to use?

~~~
falsedan
"Have access to" and "drive down at 35" are different things. Parks are public
but you may not be able to enter one if there's some event and its massively
over capacity.

------
ishi
The article tries to paint Waze as an "evil" corporation, but to me it sounds
like they haven't perfected their algorithms yet. If Waze reroutes 1,000 cars
to a shortcut that can only handle 100, that's idiotic and does not provide a
good service to users. But if their algorithms took the road's capacity into
account, everyone would benefit since there would be no "synthetic" traffic
jams.

In my experience traffic apps are imperfect and even dangerous:

\- Waze sent me once to a shortcut via a very shady neighborhood

\- Google drove me through an alley so narrow that I had to fold the side
mirrors in order to pass

\- Google twice tried to put me on a toll-road ramp that could only be used by
electronic pass holders. As a tourist, I didn't have one.

That said, these apps provide huge value by telling you about road conditions
(e.g. accidents) and routing you around them, estimating your ETA, and telling
you how to get to your destination even if you miss a turn. I would not want
to go back to the old way of navigating using paper maps and just hoping for
the best...

~~~
Dylan16807
> But if their algorithms took the road's capacity into account, everyone
> would benefit

The people getting extra non-resident traffic on residential streets don't
benefit.

But let's ignore them and look only at current drivers. It's quite possible
for routing even one car through shortcut neighborhoods to be a net negative,
because they have to spend time leaving and merging back with the main traffic
flow.

~~~
ovi256
>The people getting extra non-resident traffic on residential streets don't
benefit.

Those streets being public roads, they don't have any right to exlusively
using them. Furthermore, a public resource should be used efficiently.

~~~
Dylan16807
It's not just "roads". There are arterial roads, collector roads, and local
roads. Everyone is allowed to use them, but everyone is supposed to use them
for their actual purpose. The lowest tier of road is only supposed to be used
for the first/last mile of a trip. It is not "efficient" use to pretend all
roads are arterial.

------
i_am_proteus
I'm always surprised when people blame L.A. traffic on Waze rather than a lack
of transportation infrastructure in the city. After all, maps existed before
Waze and people could have used these shortcuts the entire time.

------
valiant-comma
When these articles show up now and again, it’s not clear to me why the
various impacted cities don’t choose to ban through traffic. Some articles
have implied that this is not possible. Los Altos did this a while back[1]. Is
there a legal issue the communities surrounding Los Angeles want to avoid,
that Los Altos simply took the risk on?

[1] [https://slate.com/business/2017/06/suburbs-finally-
figured-o...](https://slate.com/business/2017/06/suburbs-finally-figured-out-
a-way-to-get-rid-of-pesky-drivers-on-waze-shortcuts.html)

~~~
chrisseaton
> it’s not clear to me why the various impacted cities don’t choose to ban
> through traffic

Can you physically turn the streets into cul-de-sacs? Where I live a lot of
domestic streets are cul-de-sacs presumably to prevent too many people driving
past.

~~~
swsieber
Speed bumps go a long way too by dropping the effective speed.

~~~
Scoundreller
My city seems to do this with more unorthodox methods: cheap out on road
maintenance and engineering.

Oh sure, take that side street with all of the sunken sewer grates.

My mom’s street was riddled with potholes. We were happy when they repaved it,
but blew it when they put up speed bumps.

~~~
megaremote
This is partly because drivers aren't actually paying there way, and are
subsidised by others a ridiculous amount.

------
Hitton
You can blame traffic apps, but in reality it's just a democratization of
knowledge. Locals already knew the best way to evade a traffic, now outsiders
know it too.

------
Nasrudith
I'm not sure if it is a cultural thing or different problem scales but the
whole complaint strikes me as massive narcissistic self-entitlement to public
resources.

In my northeastern experience everyone uses neighborhoods as shortcuts when
the normally faster roads are congested enough that it is faster in spite of
the lower speed limit and increased stops.

------
msluyter
I try to minimize not total driving time, but something I call "agony" (term
borrowed from Hipmunk). So, I'll take meandering side streets over a stop-and-
go highway if it means I'm moving most of the time, even if the total
wallclock time is greater. Or I'll take 3 right turns to avoid a harrowing
left hand turn. Anything that keeps my blood pressure down. AKA, "long cuts."

Assuming there are at least some out there who feel the same, it occurred to
me once to try to publish/monetize these agony free routes but I realized it'd
pretty much instantly lead to the Waze problem.

~~~
waylandsmithers
Yes! Something here in Boston that Google and Waze never take into account is
that there are some left turns that at rush hour that can really only be
accomplished by the most aggressive drivers. Sorry, I'm not doing that.

~~~
perl4ever
I don't understand why they don't fix either one so it stops giving you left
turns onto busy highways at intersections without traffic lights. It's just
idiotic. And surely there are already guidance systems for delivery companies
that optimize routes with all right turns. That would be a nice checkbox
option along with avoiding tolls.

------
parsimo2010
The comedian Pete Holmes has a bit about Waze that is extremely relevant to
this article:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuDCxQdsbmc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuDCxQdsbmc)

~~~
chillwaves
Not often you see Conan upstaged. Great bit, appreciate the sentiment of
enjoyment over efficiency. I have been seeing that reflection more and more
lately.

------
s_Hogg
LA is a very strange place to me - I read about all this havoc, but whenever I
fly in there and do stuff it seems fairly quiet and almost somnabulent.

~~~
TimTheTinker
Try commuting into the greater LA area during rush hour. It’s really something
else.

Once I was taking my then-fiancé to LAX for an 11:30am flight. About 2-3 hours
into the drive, we were on the 105 in completely stopped traffic. A man in a
convertible next to us began to absolutely _lose_ it, smacking the steering
wheel with loud, desperate yelling “ARRGH!!” again and again. We decided he
must have been late to a mandatory child custody hearing and would lose the
right to see his kids—or something equally life-shattering.

There’s nothing like LA gridlock to give you a sense of utter powerlessness.

~~~
perl4ever
I have never tried to drive into NYC, but when I think back on being there,
there were a lot of cars...I guess. So _someone_ drives there, and lots of
them. I don't want to, but I wonder what it's like, and just how the people in
the parking spaces managed to obtain them.

~~~
jborichevskiy
The traffic in NYC is bad but I think there is more of a natural equilibrium
that arises from the fact that if traffic gets bad enough, some portion of
people will switch to the alternatives (public transport, biking, even
walking), making traffic less terrible and equalizing everything. People don't
really have that option in Los Angeles so it seems everyone is just stuck
driving.

------
taurath
Not talked about here - that the upper (and middle) class intentionally built
their communities to be minimally accessible to keep the riffraff out. That of
course making the traffic hell that people are trying to get away from. Nobody
can live near where they work because they can’t afford it. Traffic is as much
a housing and economic problem as it is an engineering one.

~~~
Rebelgecko
Or because the communities were built before car culture totally took over the
area. I think it's more dependent on geography/geology.

Some of these gnarly streets are in places like the Hollywood Hills, where
people try and get around the chokepoint that is created by the Sepulveda
pass. But plenty of them are in working class neighborhoods like Echo Park,
like this very steep street: [https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-
lopez-echo-pa...](https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lopez-echo-
park-traffic-20180404-story.html)

------
bparsons
This is a function of living in an unlivable city -- not technology.

It is physically impossible for there to be enough roads to move 14 million
SUVs to and from home each day.

~~~
baq
more like a function of driving in a place that physically can't accommodate
the sheer number of cars. the city could be very livable if public transport
was the better option than a private car.

------
RichardCA
I did a quick search on the relationship between traffic systems and Nash's
Equilibrium and ran across this. A good read.

[https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-
book/netwo...](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-
book/networks-book-ch08.pdf)

------
lemmox
I had no idea Waze was powered by anon crowd sourced map editors. If anybody
here is doing it, what's the motivation? Personally I'd never disclose my
shortcuts or free parking spots.

~~~
somehnguy
Not quite the same thing but I've contributed a correction to Google maps
before. My motivation was that my address on maps was in the middle of a
cornfield and I was tired of explaining exactly where my house really was when
new people came over.

~~~
davinic
Have you tried using Plus Codes as a solution to this?
[https://plus.codes/](https://plus.codes/)

------
lucas_membrane
L.A. has been a shortcut city for a very long time. It is almost 50 years
since I resided there; back then good shortcuts got mentioned in the gossip
columns, and magazine articles were written about great shortcuts. The
difference now is that the solutions are newer, high-tech, and more expensive,
but the problem is much worse.

------
devit
The obvious solutions seem to be either:

1\. Add enough speedbumps, unsynchronized traffic lights or even unnecessary
timed barriers to make the route slow enough that it's no longer optimal

2\. Add cameras that fine anyone who doesn't have a permit to pass, which
would be given to residents for free and anyone who pays a sufficiently high
price

~~~
pie420
that would make sense if those were private roads. public roads belong to the
public. I have the right to use the road in your neighborhood just as much as
you do.

~~~
perl4ever
As is well known to any homeowner, typically anyone who owns property has
certain responsibilities to care for the public property adjoining it. For
instance, you have to clear snow off in a timely manner where I live. Isn't it
logical that if you have responsibilities for public property next to where
you live, that you may also have some rights as well?

I think you are assuming a naive dichotomy between public and private that
doesn't reflect the way things actually work.

------
apexalpha
Yes, the same thing happens in Belgium and the Netherlands. Waze, Google Maps
et al. will route traffic through any road they can find if it saves times.

But neighborhoods are left with all the negatives. Is it really worth it to
route hundreds of vehicles through a small street with a school just to save
drivers 1 minute of their time?

------
thehappypm
I often wonder if we ought to try to double the US's highway capacity. It's
pretty obvious that the American appetite for public transportation is pretty
low, and that car ownership in our continent is here to stay. Why not lean
into that, focus on the roads, build bus lanes for public transit?

~~~
perl4ever
I remember a long time ago reading an article about the bus system in
Curitiba, Brazil, which supposedly was innovative and worked particularly well
at a much lower cost than subways, but more efficiently than most buses.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rede_Integrada_de_Transporte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rede_Integrada_de_Transporte)

------
ilamont
_A Waze spokesman, oblivious to the irony, reflexively sneered that “a group
of neighbors can’t game the system.”_

 _[Ryu] told constituents that Waze would designate a liaison to work with the
city, and then the company stopped returning calls._

 _Krekorian’s office reached out to Waze and the operators of similar apps and
got “a complete stonewall,” he says._

 _Why the pseudonyms? “They all fear legal liability in case of a bigger
accident or traffic situation,” suggested one Level 1 editor, who tried to
obtain the email and contact information of a higher-level editor to no
avail._

The time for "partnering" with arrogant/dismissive/evasive app companies is
over. Municipalities and state governments have been dealing with this problem
for 5+ years. Why is it taking so long to legislate?

------
asdfadfadsf
The one solution that no one will fucking mention is to increase road capacity
to zoning ratios. The city planners are allowing congestion by allowing
density that is too high, then everyone has to fucking drive with 1 million
other people in the same space. Also, it doesn't have to be JUST road
capacity. Putting in some actual subway capacity would allow the higher
densities, but you have special interest groups fighting that shit NON stop.

No one WANTS to take a side street over a freeway. You do it because the
freeway is jammed. This means the city planning has FAILED. The money has been
misused. I read somewhere that homeless in LA are having housing built for
them. Sounds great, right? The cost per unit of housing is something like
$450,000 .

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Capacity and congestion is the wrong way to think about traffic planning. The
natural response to capacity increases is to accept a longer-distance commute
in exchange for lower housing costs. Instead, it's better to think in terms of
accessibility - people need to go to work, buy groceries, etc, and the system
must be able to accommodate those goals within reasonable amounts of time.

Crucially, this means that it's just as valid to ensure that people live
within a fifteen minute walk to a grocery store as it is to ensure that
traffic can allow people to drive five miles to the grocery store within
fifteen minutes. Density itself can _help_ traffic, so long as it is properly
located with respect to jobs and various amenities.

------
k3oni
As a side note just want to point out that I had Google Maps route us thru
side streets marked with "No Thru Traffic" in a newer neighborhood last week
in Myrtle Beach SC area to save 1 min. This was the first time i encountered
this case.

------
iamtheworstdev
It's interesting to see you post that because I feel like I've read articles
where cities in the US have tried the same approach with Google and they
generically responded with "Formally change the rules/laws/speeds/whatever and
we will follow that but we don't make random, single changes for the whims of
the city" (my rephrasing of what they said).

I'm having trouble finding the source but I believe I saw the link here on HN
and it was to an article about a city asking for Google's cooperation in
regards to a sharp/blind downhill turn or something? Hope that jogs someone
else's memory.

------
HillaryBriss
If the city's failure to prevent gridlock at major intersections across the
city is any guide, LA will never get a handle on this problem. It will never
have enough DPT and police to enforce any proposed solution.

------
nickfromseattle
Can confirm.

When I compare LA traffic to Seattle traffic, I describe the comparison as
they are both bad - but LA is much more active driving. You can always get
somewhere quicker by zigging left, then zagging right (usually through a
neighborhood) because it's built on a grid, where Seattle is more passive
traffic because there are choke points everywhere due to water / bridges /
non-grid roads, which means zig zagging is not likely to save much time, or
possible at all.

------
pkaye
This happens in Fremont in the bay area. Its right between 880 and 680 so when
one freeway backs up people flood onto the streets to save a few minutes. Also
there is a section of Mission blvd that runs parallel to 680 that people
started taking as a shortcut. Many of these streets are not designed for that
level of traffic. The city resorted to strategically adding some stop signs
and "no right turn" signs from what I heard.

------
blablabla123
Since years I'm surprised that Google maps suggests routes through small
roads. This makes no sense, maybe I see a minute but it's so much more
stressful to navigate. Big roads are actually built for traffic, there is no
point to use small roads for transit traffic. Also it is much more likely to
compete with bicycle drivers and pedestrians for road space.

------
sheepybloke
This is an issue on country roads as well. I was driving down to Cinci and
Google had me cut from one freeway to the next via some county side roads. We
got flicked off by some guy at his house, and from the traffic, it seemed like
he was frustrated how many cars were now going down his once quiet road.

------
Simulacra
This is not the fault of Waze. This is the fault of city planners and the
people who live in those houses who have opposed mass transit expansion, and
highway expansion. If all else fails we will just go back to making our own
routes through neighborhoods and side streets.

------
madisfun
Living in Europe, I have yet to see a smart navigation app, which would allow
to take into account:

\- tolls and fuel consumption (Via Michelin is great at offering 2-3 routes
with different and realistic costs, but the app is an ad-nest and their
navigator is bad; Here can avoid tolls but the UI is bad; Google Maps is
useless if you want to optimize the costs).

\- altitude changes (a marginally shorter road which has to climb and descent
1000 m / 3000 ft is not the same as doing extra distance on the flat ground).

\- the shape of the road, prefer wider and more direct roads (there are many
narrow and extremely curvy roads that can't be driven fast, and some may be
very stressful to drive).

\- the realistic median speed as an estimator (not the speed limit; sometimes
it is set unrealistically high; also do not assume that all tarmac roads are
equivalent).

\- local and temporary traffic restrictions (respect car-free hours in some
areas and restrictions on a particular kind of vehicle or engine).

\- eventual stops during long trips

Google Maps is far from an ideal navigation app at this point. The only reason
it is used, IMO, is the abysmall UI experience in built-in car navigators.
(Anecdotal evidence: I rented a car last week, it took me five minutes to
enter destination, and then I couldn't figure out how to interrupt navigation.
Eventually just used the phone to drive around).

Tl;dr: Dear Google, Waze, etc., distance is not everything.

------
auslander
GPS jammers?

------
geofft
I feel like I must be missing something because the following potential
solutions seem obvious to me:

\- Mark a street as "No thru traffic," or charge tolls (via video camera) to
vehicles not registered in the neighborhood and not stopping on the street.

\- Suspend the driver's license of anyone using Waze, and use that as
negotiating leverage with Waze to give edit access to city planners.

What's preventing local/state government from doing so?

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ec109685
Suspend the driver license of someone using an app?? That hardly seems legal.

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geofft
Why? It's legal to suspend the license of someone using a cell phone _at all_
, is it not? Saying "You can use cell phones, but only if ___" seems at least
as legal.

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someguydave
If the government wants to be the big daddy of traffic control then it should
also build sufficient lanes to keep the roads moving.

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0xB31B1B
Traffic doesn’t work like that. You seem to have a mental model where traffic
is modeled like a liquid (traffic has a definite volume and does not expand to
fill its container) while many studies show traffic behaves more like a gas
(traffic expands to fill its container). Basically, more lanes doesn’t mean
less traffic, it generally means the same amount of traffic.

~~~
someguydave
That research is wrong.
[http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=9781](http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=9781)
[https://www.cato.org/blog/debunking-induced-demand-
myth](https://www.cato.org/blog/debunking-induced-demand-myth)
[http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=5583](http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=5583)

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paggle
Can't this just be banned? "It is illegal for any individual or corporation to
offer a driving route that uses streets designated as "Local" when the travel
distance using streets marked as "Express" is shorter. Violators will be
assessed a fine of $1000 per route offered."

