
The War on Waze - Fins
http://reason.com/blog/2018/04/25/the-war-on-waze
======
thinkingemote
I think Waze uses psychology more than their competitors, and I'll tell you
how.

They give the appearance of being quicker. Journeys with Waze _feel_ faster.
Your brain is more active when driving a Waze route. You remember driving
along a Waze route.

Most people when they commute enter autopilot mode. They often can't remember
the details of what they were doing 20 minutes ago when they arrive at their
destination. People commuting often do not need Sat Navs - they will be
driving the same way twice a day for months if not years. To change to an
active mode of driving where you pay attention and are out of auto pilot makes
it feel more faster. Magicians and story tellers will tell you that it's the
memory of the performance or story which counts the most - what the user takes
with them after is important, and can be shaped.

More turns, more intersections. More fast stretches of road (and more stops)
makes for a more exhilarating experience driving. It might not be more
quicker, or it might be. Most (i.e. not HN readers) people won't notice, or if
takes a little bit longer, they will feel that it's quicker.

Remember - Waze had gamification built right into the platform. Drivers were
encouraged to go out of their normal way, to engage with the platform for
years. They know what gamification means at a psychological level.

Regular routing considers shortest path, quickest route, simplest paths, stick
to highways etc. Waze prioritises driving that makes the user appreciate Waze
more.

~~~
gnode
I haven't used Waze, but this is something that I do consciously. I find it's
more beneficial for my mental well-being to choose a less direct, longer
route, that I can drive continuously on, over a quicker but more congested
route with lots of waits in queues and at traffic lights.

I'm reminded of a comment I read on HN the other day, which expressed that
anger arises from being blocked from progressing by things outside of your
control but not outside of possibility. People generally don't care if
something takes a long time, they care when they notice reasons why it need
not take as long a time as it does.

~~~
garyrichardson
I also experience this. When I'm actually driving I feel like I'm actually
doing something. My blood pressure rises if I'm queued up at a light for 3
cycles. In theory, I want more roundabouts in my area but I don't know if it
actually increases flow.

------
9erdelta
In LA all you need is a train from Sherman Oaks into one of the stations in
Santa Monica or Culver City. That would cut way down on the 405 congestion. It
gets tedious reading articles that come up with "stop funding public transit"
as a conclusion. In math class that would be the "trivial" therefore useless
answer. Seeing as how cities have more roadway now than ever, yet congestion
is arguably getting worse...Clearly, building more roads doesn't work. Because
WE HAVE built more roads. The Sepulveda pass in LA is not that old, yet it is
so congested as to be useless every single day of the week, at almost every
hour of the day (ok maybe this is an exaggeration).

One thing I have noticed is Google Maps will suggest going off a main street
for a few blocks then merge back into the said main route. This cuts off
everyone who's been waiting in line, and potentially puts me in a situation of
having to make a left across perhaps 4 lanes of congested traffic, with no
light or turn signal. This _IS_ kind of assinine, and it certainly wouldn't
hurt for Google/Waze et. al. to feel some pressure to cut these suggestions
out.

~~~
cleansy
> Clearly, building more roads doesn't work

There is a great video[1] by Wendover Productions about how to fix traffic,
explaining exactly this effect. tl;dr: The more road capacity you supply, the
more traffic will come since potential demand will "always" outstrip supply.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4PW66_g6XA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4PW66_g6XA)

~~~
pfranz
Citizens care a lot about travel time (but not enough to live closer, move, or
take another mode of transportation), cities and governments care about
throughput (economic opportunity and growth). I think often they ignore each
other.

I'm also curious how those traffic issues apply to subways. I feel like I've
seen similar problems where subways exceed capacity. I wonder if the
cost/benefit or travel time/capacity is better or worse?

------
dkural
It's ironic that the article seems to think building more roads, thereby
improving road-to-miles-driven ratio will ease congestion.

It also takes as fact that it's "as inefficient" to use Waze. My experience is
Waze often does cut commute time down; not always; but on the aggregate it
demonstrably, scientifically, provably does. That's why it's a huge success
and people use it.

I do think there are problems with drivers disregarding the law (speed limits,
signs etc.) on smaller streets, and perhaps they need to be more aggressively
punished for doing so. In general I am for more aggressive fees, sentencing
and punishment for violating driving rules.

~~~
AmericanChopper
When it comes to roads, why is increasing capacity to resolve the capacity
problem always automatically dismissed? I know building roads is not
politically fashionable, but the alternative is to invest billions into poorly
designed public transport, and (even worse) cycling infrastructure. Spending
which over the course of decades barely manages to move public transport or
cycling adoption by a few percent, where ever its implemented. Poor zoning
regulation always seems to be a major contributor (to both transport and
housing issues), but when your population increases by millions, you need to
increase the capacity of your infrastructure, especially roads.

The problem is a lack of rationality. A politician that says "I'm going to
spend billions on new cycle paths" is somehow going to be more popular than a
politician that says "I'm going to spend billions on new roads". Even in
cities where cyclists make up <5% of commuters.

~~~
nickles
> When it comes to roads, why is increasing capacity to resolve the capacity
> problem always automatically dismissed?

There's a large body of evidence [0][1] indicating that adding road capacity
does not alleviate congestion. In the short run, one tends to see immediate
rises in traffic on the new infrastructure. Over a longer period, the amount
of traffic utilizing new infrastructure increases until all added capacity is
being consumed. This is known as induced demand [2].

Congestion pricing [3] is a more economically viable manner of reducing
congestion on shared infrastructure, but it comes with its own set of concerns
[4].

[0]
[https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/11/californias-d...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/11/californias-
dot-admits-that-more-roads-mean-more-traffic/415245/)

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-
demand/](https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing)

[4] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/nyregion/congestion-
prici...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/nyregion/congestion-pricing-
manhattan-albany-fail.html)

~~~
AmericanChopper
All this means is that capacity is so far behind demand that current spending
doesn't come close to establishing a reasonable equilibrium. Which is what
you'd expect after decades of major population growth, accompanied by
infrastructure neglect.

~~~
hcurtiss
Exactly. I live in a small town. We have no traffic jams, and never have. I
believe that proves it’s possible to build sufficient infrastructure to
eliminate or reduce traffic jams. It’s just that most large cities elect not
to.

~~~
quotemstr
Yep. Induced demand is a nuanced concept that's been perverted by a certain
community of activists into "science says you can't build enough roads so
let's not build any!!!!1111".

The truth is that you can, in fact, build enough roads to reduce congestion.
It may be too expensive. The road land use fraction may be too high. There may
be political problems. All of these factors have to be taken into account
before deciding to build more roads.

Nevertheless, it is _physically_ _possible_ to build enough roads, and anyone
who doesn't acknowledge this basic reality isn't having a serious
conversation.

~~~
flukus
> Nevertheless, it is physically possible to build enough roads

Sure it's probably possible, but by the time we've built that many roads we'd
need to cycle from the carpark to the building anyway.

------
ndaiger
I live in Los Angeles near a lot of the construction going on for the new
subway line running down Wilshire Blvd.

My neighborhood (Carthay) has been getting a lot more cut-through traffic.
There are days that seem particularly "Waze-y", when it's basically just
gridlock on our little streets for an hour. I imagine it's due to apps re-
routing people.

But I don't really think it's any faster for the commuter. I'm reminded of
this article (seemingly now password-protected, so I'll link to a summary)
that Waze chronically underestimates your travel time, while Apple Maps
chronically overestimates (and therefore overdelivers):

[https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/02/22/informal-
testing-...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/02/22/informal-testing-
finds-apple-maps-arrival-times-are-intentionally-conservative-to-provide-a-
good-user-experience)

From my anecdotal experience, Waze does vastly overestimate the benefits of a
crazy route, like making a left turn from a stop sign across 6 lanes of rush-
hour traffic.

~~~
wyclif
It's ludicrous that Los Angeles politicians are blaming Waze for this, when
it's their own fault for failing to approve and build higher-volume and better
roads. I smirk every time I read some bureaucrat blaming apps that
demonstrably make our lives better instead of owning up to their own impotence
and incompetence.

~~~
bsagdiyev
Have you been to Los Angeles? On what space do you expect them to do this on,
without interrupting the already bad traffic and with what money? I'm
genuinely curious as to your idea and how it would work.

~~~
wyclif
I've been there several times, and I'm aware of how difficult it would be. My
comment wasn't predicated on the idea that improving traffic in LA would be
painless—quite the opposite. In order to commit to proper urban planning,
there are tradeoffs and the construction is disruptive and inconvenient for a
time. But it must be done. And LA can afford to do it.

~~~
bsagdiyev
Inconvenient for a while is an understatement. It took them nearly 10 years to
expand a portion of freeway from Temecula -> Riverside and it's honestly not
helped at all, made it worse if anything. California may be good at some
things but completing road work is not one of them. A recently repaved and
widened portion of the 52 near me in San Diego feels like riding a roller
coaster with all the dips it has.

------
jakecopp
I wish it was politically possible to make more dedicated bus lanes. When I
see a couple of private cars blocking 3 buses with ~100 people in each I get
so angry.

From a utilitarian point of view bus only lanes are a no-brainer, at least in
peak.

A visualization:
[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tfJHpDfakqo/Up_mmjALPtI/AAAAAAABQM...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tfJHpDfakqo/Up_mmjALPtI/AAAAAAABQMI/0HglbuZ67Ss/s1600/1450162_455633184542419_1077834738_n%5B1%5D.jpg)

~~~
KineticLensman
Bus lanes can be controversial. I cite the bus lane on the M4 motorway in the
UK [0], on the stretch that connected Heathrow airport (UK's major air hub) to
central London - one of the busiest road sections in the UK. As someone who
used this motorway as a single occupancy car driver, it was deeply frustrating
to sit for ages in stationary traffic in the remaining two lanes with
occasional vehicles (buses, coaches, taxis and motorbikes) going past on the
bus lane, sometimes with minutes between them.

Removing the bus lane was specifically mentioned in the 2010 Conservative
party conference and was a controversial point on programmes such as Top Gear.
It was suspended in 2010, reopened temporarily for the 2012 Olympics and then
completely scrapped.

Anecdotally, bus lanes are still widespread on non-motorway roads in UK towns
and cities. I have no problems with these lanes, since they seem to have a
better ratio of full, frequent buses to cars than on the M4 motorway.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_bus_lane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_bus_lane)

~~~
gchadwick
Do you find you sit in stationary far less now the bus lane has been removed?

~~~
KineticLensman
Good question! I don't drive the route often enough to give a proper
assessment although it doesn't seem worse.

Getting off-topic, but I've been a heavy user of the M27 / M3 for approx 25
years. In that time, the main delay that I encounter routinely is now the
stretch from Southampton to Winchester whereas it used to be the top end of
the M3 (around Junction 4a). More generally, although the UK's traffic density
has increased this (anecdotally) seems to have been offset to some extent by
significant improvements in several key motorway junctions (e.g. M27/M3,
A34/M4), which I feel that I can often get through faster than I used to.

------
YokoZar
> This description fits Los Angeles pretty well. In 2001, Los Angeles County
> boasted 21,085 lane miles of maintained highways. In 2016, that number had
> not budged much, growing to only 21,826 lane miles. In the same period of
> time, the number of vehicle-miles traveled by Los Angeles commuters rose by
> some 10 million per day.

A major reason why vehicle-miles traveled increased is that constructing new
housing in Los Angelos is illegal. People still wanted to join the city, but
now they must commute in from further and further away.

Congestion is the inevitable result. Housing policy and transportation policy
are inextricably tied.

------
quotemstr
I'm a fan of applying congestion charges to _every_ road, not just arterials.
Why not? We have the technology. The price mechanism is what lets us allocate
scarce resources to their most efficient use, and applying it to the very
short term real estate market for road space can only ensure that we get the
maximum economic value out of a fixed number of lane miles.

~~~
jayd16
Well its pretty regressive as far as taxes go. Plus, now even if
gentrification doesn't price you out of your own neighborhood you might get
priced out of your own road if you happen to be between residential and
commercial zones.

~~~
r00fus
So is a gas tax if you assume the only way to move around is petroleum based.
Likewise this assumption of yours is based on the fact that people can't get
around except via vehicles.

However, it could be done such that residents are exempt and even strayers
will only get charged after X trips.

~~~
quotemstr
All user fees are regressive --- yet we don't seem to have a problem with the
rich and the poor paying the same for a beer or a gallon of milk.

The kind of thinking that concludes that it's somehow wrong to charge two
people with differing incomes the same amount of money for the same good is
the kind of thinking that taken to its logical conclusion leads us to forcible
leveling of material wealth and central economic planning. The experience of
the 20th century demonstrates that this approach does not work.

~~~
jayd16
>gallon of milk.

What? We subsidize food all the time.

~~~
quotemstr
We do, and I can imagine subsidizing road miles for the needy too. But the
_price_ remains the same and we apply the subsidy to the supply side!

------
rootlocus
> [...] Waze, a navigation app that alerts motorists to alternative routes on
> residential roads, away from the clogged and congested highways.

> Last week City Councilmember David Ryu imploring the city's attorney to take
> some form of unspecified legal action against the app.

So they want to take legal action against an app that tells people they can
use public routes which they didn't know about because the locals along those
routes don't like the additional traffic?

Sounds like they're saying "We don't want you to know you can use this road
because we don't like having additional traffic". And they want to take legal
action to enforce it.

What a joke.

~~~
dfxm12
This is probably 99% NIMBY complaining, but there are legit concerns that

1\. Some side street isn't designed to handle the volume of traffic caused by
this and is likely to wear out the roads much quicker

2\. People coming off the highway might not know they're entering a
residential street and don't respect the slower speed limit

3\. Increased traffic in a residential neighborhood in general leads to less
safe streets, poorer air quality, etc.

Of course, the fixes should probably be along the lines of a speed trap,
additional public transportation, putting some forethought into city planning,
etc. and not a lawsuit.

~~~
rootlocus
Those are sensible concerns, thank you for pointing them out.

------
d0ugie
I drive from Connecticut to Manhattan and back during rush hour and have been
reliant on Waze's aggressive and inventive routing decisions that often take
me through quiet neighborhoods to hop from one highway to another, dodging
traffic jams I presume. It almost always gets me there by its eta.

On one hand I'm sympathetic to these people (my wife and I are house-shopping
and one of our factors is the house being on a quiet road, also I don't
particularly like out-of-state drivers in my town, for example New Yorkers
don't realize you can turn on red in Connecticut, drives me nuts), on the
other hand I can't be late to my shrink sessions - my guy ain't cheap!

~~~
psychometry
>I drive from Connecticut to Manhattan and back during rush hour

My first instinct is to want to punish people like you for choosing a
lifestyle that is so outrageously unfriendly for the environment, but my
frustration is tempered by the fact that your hellish commute is probably
punishment enough.

~~~
d0ugie
No, your first instinct was right, as I have other options, greener options,
that include mass transit as well as, I suppose, video conferencing, but
opting instead to drive, that makes me part of the problem.

I don't know why but that never occurred to me until now. So surely this isn't
the only related area in which I have room for improvement.

------
1ris
>Their bizarre strategy: making those neighborhood streets worse to drive on.

What is bizarre about this? This is the empirical approved solution for this:
More and better streets have cause more traffic, fewer and worse have less. If
you want less trafic this strategy is as good as it gets. And if people want
few trafic that what politics should do. I'd guess a website called
"reason.com" would like empirical data, and science, but they seem to care
about some anecdotes.

[https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/06/21/the-science-is-
clear-...](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/06/21/the-science-is-clear-more-
highways-equals-more-traffic-why-are-dots-still-ignoring-it/)

~~~
BlackFly
Yeah, the article claims that everything backfires but it seems to me the
issue is that they are not using the strategies in tandem. Look at the
Netherlands: residential areas are designed so that it is not possible for
through traffic to have a shorter route (or a route at all) through them. You
may be 100 meters from your school if you walk your kids there, but 3 km if
you drive. Then they make a plethora of bike and bus lanes to entice people to
drive less and reward people who do not. These strategies work: neighbourhoods
are safe, the roads are congested (they always will be) but people have viable
alternatives.

------
hprotagonist
I remember reading some years ago about a village in the UK that wanted to be
removed from satnav maps.

At that time, most of the people who used them were truck drivers, and the
12th-century village's main road was about 3 inches too narrow to allow a
truck through.

A wedged truck on main street a week for 8 months, and people got pretty
cranky about it.

I'm not sure what ever happened, though.

~~~
reificator
> _A wedged truck on main street a week for 8 months, and people got pretty
> cranky about it._

I think you accidentally a word there.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Not sure it's actually wrong, but it does read weird.

"A wedged truck on main street [each] week for eight months" reads a little
better, but I don't think what the parent comment said was technically
incorrectly written.

~~~
hprotagonist
Perhaps I should’ve said “One truck” instead of “A truck”.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
That would've read a little easier as well.

~~~
hprotagonist
the fancy-pants term for this, i think, is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence)

------
jcranmer
For city planners, there's a natural hierarchy of roads: limited-access
freeways, arterials, collectors, and residential streets. Moving high volumes
of cars is intended to use arterials and freeways, whereas collectors and
residential streets are deliberately designed for lower speeds as they may
have a higher likelihood of pedestrians randomly entering the street (the
child racing after his ball, to use the proverbial example).

In a nutshell, the problem with Waze is that it encourages drivers to shift
from arterials to collector roads, where they very often proceed to drive in
flagrant violation of safety standards. Getting drivers to not do that is
challenging (and this problem predates Waze). Speed bumps don't meaningfully
slow people down. Even prohibiting the through movement in a T intersection by
means of an island doesn't work--people will happily drive over the curb to do
so. By routing people down roads that are not designed for this traffic, Waze
is pretty close to being complicit in these safety violations.

The proximate cause of this furor is that there is a street in LA that is too
steep to be safe for through traffic, yet Waze is happily routing people along
the street. Waze's response is, effectively, it's legal for through traffic,
so Waze doesn't have to do anything, with the underlying reasoning being that
it doesn't want to have to deal with everyone demanding special treatment.

Waze's attitude is, quite frankly, irresponsible. What they could do--and
should be doing--is to look at potential factors that impact safety and update
they app to not route people on roads that are clearly unsafe (Google's maps
already have the ability to report grade on roads, for example). In fact,
that's what the LA council is basically doing: they're looking to see if Waze
could be doing more, and in the likely case they find that Waze is indeed not
doing enough, finding some mechanism to compel Waze to do more.

The other element in play here is a complete about congestion. The truth is...
you can't fix congestion. In transportation theory, there's an element called
induced demand: if travel time improves in a corridor, then that induces
people to take extra trips, often returning it fairly quickly to the same
level of congestion. What many cities have realized is that trying to provide
sufficient road capacity to meet demand is a game lost before they've even
begun, and instead focused their efforts on trying to coax better utilization
of current corridors (single-occupant vehicles on roads are basically the
lowest-throughput transportation measures devised, except for Elon Musk's
proposals which somehow manage to be even worse).

~~~
quotemstr
If you think Waze-style routing is a problem, use the social technology we've
developed for solving problems to solve this one. Draft a law refining the
traffic rerictions for local road access. Debate the benefits and draebacks of
your proposed rule in public, then have an honest vote on whether we as a
society should adopt this rule change.

Don't go around calling companies irresponsible for doing legal things for the
benefit of their customers and themselves. Social pressure is a terrible way
to run a society.

~~~
CaptainZapp
"Social pressure is a terrible way to run a society."

I'm currently in Japan and can assure you that about 126'000'000 Japanese
definitely don't share your opinion.

As a visitor I can observe that this system, which is strongly based on social
control, seems to work pretty well in a really crowded environment.

~~~
paganel
> I'm currently in Japan and can assure you that about 126'000'000 Japanese
> definitely don't share your opinion.

I think the OP was talking about Waze, the company (so about Google, which
owns it). Looking at Japan I can see that the Tokyo Electric Power Company,
the company behind the Fukushima nuclear disaster, hasn't cared almost at all
about this famous Japanese "social pressure".

------
sho
From the article:

> In 2017, the average L.A. commuter spent 102 hours in rush hour traffic,
> making it the most congested city in the world

Having lived in Jakarta and Bangkok, this is extremely hard to believe. LA is
horrible for a supposed first world country, sure, but it's nothing like some
of the asian megacities. 102 hours a year? I'd wager many jakartans spend 102
hours per month!

Very questionable reporting IMO.

~~~
lyqwyd
My suspicion is the statistic is too vague to be meaningful. I would bet that
the key here is the average person in LA commutes every day, but I suspect the
person in Jakarta does not commute in a way that is easily measured for the
purpose of this statistic.

~~~
sho
Very possibly. They perhaps simply don't have the numbers. But regardless, for
anyone who has travelled, the assertion that LA is

> the most congested city in the world

is simply laughable.

------
quotemstr
It's amazing how so many people jump immediately to censorship as a way to
solve problems. The idea that Waze can be sued merely for giving people
information about routes is absurd, yet here we are.

------
Simulacra
I use Waze primarily to avoid police traps, and to give certainty to my
commute. If it says I will be there in an hour, it’s usually right. That makes
it much easier to plan that commute, for example stopping to get gas or
breakfast etc.

------
ghaff
Waze is actually only one of the topics the article covers. But it’s hard to
see what anyone can do. It’s arguably obnoxious to routinely route people on
quiet residential streets to save a few minutes. However, they are public
streets and experienced commuters might well do the same routing.

~~~
GCU-Empiricist
So does Waze do something more aggressive than Gooogle's faster route option.
This is the second article Ive seen blaming Waze, but I get similar
recommendation's as a casual Google Maps user who checks which of three routes
is fastest in each morning.

~~~
addicted
I always assumed that Google used Waze data/algorithm for their maps?

I would be surprised if they bought Waze, but didn't integrate it with Maps at
all.

~~~
Bedon292
Waze is definitely more aggressive about its neighborhood routing. Though they
could be using the same underlying code somewhere, its definitely tuned
differently. The main integration point into Google Maps is the accident
reporting and active traffic data.

~~~
sjwright
In my experience, I find that Waze seems to underestimate the time cost of
intersections. I think that's why it is more willing to route you through
local streets than its competitors.

~~~
TheAdamist
I find it overestimates traffic lights sometimes, on a medium road next to a
grid neighborhood to turn right on another medium road, generally has you cut
the corner by one block to avoid the light, even if you can't ever make it out
into traffic before the light changes anyway.

Try and safely pay attention to wazes route and ignore it sometimes, but it's
generally correct.

And you can send audio prompts to a phone speaker instead of Bluetooth, unlike
gmaps, so that's also useful.

------
enoch_r
As someone who leans quite strongly libertarian, I do not understand what
seems to be the default libertarian position on roads.

The default view seems to be that government-funded highways are essentially a
god-given right. If I want to travel 30 miles every day from home to work,
well, somebody had better build me a 8-lane highway to get me there with a
minimum of congestion. (Sure, maybe sometimes we'll implement congestion
pricing that will cover a miniscules portion of the cost of building and
maintaining the highway. This is still a _massive_ government subsidy for
people who drive.)

Bike lanes, on the other hand? Public transit? Those get the more typical
libertarian viewpoint on government spending. How dare the government try to
distort our incentives by spending millions of dollars to provide bike
infrastructure?! (Fun fact: As of 2008, the replacement cost for all of
Portland's bike infrastructure was estimated at $60M, the rough cost of _one
mile_ of urban freeway. I'm sure it's gone up by then--it's still a rounding
error.)

It's genuinely _weird_ how libertarians--generally not ones to ignore the
effects of government spending on incentives--don't appear to notice that
spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a transportation system that you
can only use if you're in a car might actually, you know, cause more people to
drive.

~~~
Analemma_
> The default view seems to be that government-funded highways are essentially
> a god-given right.

What sort of libertarians are you hanging out with? I'm not a libertarian
myself, but most of the ones I have talked to about roads wouldn't agree with
this. Their usual position is that roads should be privatized and tolled, and
that this would help fix the externalities (traffic, concrete deserts,
suburban sprawl) caused by "free" access to roads, if people had to pay their
true cost.

~~~
mundo
> (Libertarians') usual position is that roads should be privatized and tolled

Do libertarians think this will lead to rich neighborhoods having much better
roads than poor people and think that's fine, or is there some reason to think
that wouldn't happen? To my mind, the fundamental the difference between a
free-market approach and a socialist approach is: if you want something to be
cheap more than you want it to be fair, you privatize it and let the free
market work its magic, and if you want something to be fair (for some
definition of "fair" defined by the legislature) more than you want it to be
cheap, you socialize it and put a bunch of inefficient bureaucrats in charge.

We as a society use the former system for things like pants and potato chips,
and the latter approach for most types of infrastructure, and I wonder if
anyone can really predict all of the things we'd lose from abandoning that. If
every road I personally drive on were kept in good repair but a lot of the
other roads in my town went to shit, I would be adversely affected in a lot of
subtle and impossible-to-send-someone-a-bill-for ways.

~~~
pdonis
_> Do libertarians think this will lead to rich neighborhoods having much
better roads than poor people and think that's fine, or is there some reason
to think that wouldn't happen?_

Rich neighborhoods often have much better roads than poor neighborhoods under
our current system. I don't know that it would be any worse under a system
where roads were privatized.

Also, you seem to be assuming that rich people and poor people never use the
same roads. But they do; most roads are not internal to rich or poor
neighborhoods but are connecting different areas, and both rich and poor
people (and everyone in between) end up using them to get where they want to
go. So the question isn't really whether rich or poor people are using a road;
it's a question of how much potential revenue there is from road users overall
vs. what it takes to build and maintain the road.

 _> if you want something to be fair (for some definition of "fair" defined by
the legislature) more than you want it to be cheap, you socialize it and put a
bunch of inefficient bureaucrats in charge._

The problem with this is that it doesn't make the thing fair; it just means
that the unfairness is based on political power instead of on economic power.
And experience strongly suggests that unfairness based on political power is
_worse_ than unfairness based on economic power.

~~~
mundo
> Rich neighborhoods often have much better roads than poor neighborhoods
> under our current system. I don't know that it would be any worse under a
> system where roads were privatized.

Do they? Better how? Maybe they're slightly better in the "potholes get fixed
sooner" sense, but I'm worried more about poor/rural roads being abandoned
because they're not profitable to maintain. Or worse, shunted back to
government in a "privatize the profit, socialize the costs" scenario.

I'm curious to see a detailed plan if there's one floating around that has
some steam behind it, as a lot of this of course depends on the details of how
privatization is implemented. But if the argument starts and ends with "Well,
privatizing things is inherently good, why should roads be different?" then
I'm strongly against. If you want to up-end a perfectly functional transit
system in a radical and poorly-understood way, the upside has to be a lot
clearer than "I don't know that it would be any worse under a system where
roads were privatized"!

------
saosebastiao
Braess' paradox, where increases in road capacity can actually reduce traffic
capacity, relies on an important assumption: that people are acting rationally
with perfect information. In other words, it is that individually optimal
behavior causes the breakdown for the system as a whole.

Funnily enough, the blame on Waze might be on point: we might actually be
experiencing Braess' paradox more often now, not due to building roads, but
because people are more likely to optimize their routes due to traffic-aware
GPS systems. And in that respect, Waze could be causing network-wide
congestion while simultaneously providing the best possible service for its
users.

Of course if that were true, it would also mean that you could also blame the
road network and that Waze is merely using it as it was designed. Then we get
into the the philosophical argument about the drunk jaywalker being hit by a
speeding car: You can blame either party for 100% of the blame, 0% of the
blame, or arbitrarily apportion blame between the two parties in any way you
want, and no matter what, your judgment will be a pure reflection of your
biases.

~~~
jaysonelliot
And equally true, the real question is not who was at fault, but how to best
solve the problem.

------
w-m
What a fun read. Interesting to see how often within a single article the
author can push the same agenda, without any arguments to support it or
objectivity of any kind. Why would you read a magazine full of stuff like
that?

Quick peek into the finance of the reason foundation:
[https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Reason_Foundation](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Reason_Foundation)

And for a good laugh, their headlines on public transport:
[https://reason.com/tags/public-
transportation](https://reason.com/tags/public-transportation)

~~~
snikeris
What agenda was being pushed in the article?

What's your agenda in posting this comment?

~~~
w-m
Agenda I felt being pushed in the article:

Agenda a): building more roads and highways is the only possible solution to
congestion issues, either implied or directly called for:

> The cause of worsening congestion, says Moore, is pretty simple: more people
> wanting to drive on the same amount of road.

> In 2016, that number had not budged much, growing to only 21,826 lane miles.
> In the same period of time, the number of vehicle-miles traveled by Los
> Angeles commuters rose by some 10 million per day.

> Doing this, says Moore, requires a mix of road redesign to better handle
> thru traffic, congestion pricing (whereby drivers pay a variable toll
> depending on the number of cars on the road on existing road capacity), and
> building new roads to meet demand.

> Some metro areas are already putting these ideas to the test. Washington,
> D.C., has built what are known as queue duckers...

> Ultimately, Moore says, Los Angeles needs to redirect its transportation
> dollars away from a little-used public transit system—which eats up about
> half of the city's transit budget—and into building more roads and adding
> lane-miles to meet increasing demand.

Agenda b): reducing car traffic kills local business (several places as well,
please go through it if interested).

I posted the comment to highlight that this is not a researched journalistic
piece, but one-sided article from somebody who makes the same point over and
over, completely unsubstantiated. My agenda was to discredit the source as I
don't think it's well written enough to be a good starting point for an
interesting discussion.

~~~
Fins
And what would be your arguments for them being wrong?

If you want something really laughable, California's HSR would be it.

------
yingbo
Waze did nothing wrong here. As long as the road is owned by public, and was
built and benign maintained by all tax payers, all of us have the right to
drive on it. It's selfish and unfair to even try to stop others driving on
them.

------
squozzer
In the ATL, a common antidote to residential cut-throughs - where drivers also
routinely exceed the posted speed limit - is speed bumps. Not the ones
normally seen in shopping center parking lots, but _ramps_ that will send a
car airborne when they go too fast. They probably don't work on Dukes of
Hazzard fans but on most others they at least slow them down.

Another solution would be to ban subdivisions from connecting to two or more
larger roads. The downside might be that delivering US Mail - or garbage pick-
ups - would become less effcient.

------
dandare
> In 2001, Los Angeles County boasted 21,085 lane miles of maintained
> highways. In 2016, that number had not budged much, growing to only 21,826
> lane miles. In the same period of time, the number of vehicle-miles traveled
> by Los Angeles commuters rose by some 10 million per day.

Sloppy argumentation. Just becuase 10 million is a large number it does not
mean the increase is more than the 3.5% increase in available lane miles.

------
CarVac
I live in Leonia, as mentioned in the article, and while I'm unsure of how
much less traffic businesses are actually seeing, I do notice that when I'm
navigating to places out of town, Google Maps and Waze never route me on local
streets inside town anymore, preferring to go on the main thoroughfares until
outside the town, and then crossing between them on other towns' local
streets.

------
mannykannot
It used to be that if you could use a map, you could often do significantly
better than average, but these days, you are likely to be caught in Waze-
directed traffic whatever you do. Nowadays, a route that is longer but less
frustrating is usually the best you can hope for, and that not so often.

------
praptak
There is a solution for this, although it does not necessarily apply to
existing situations, it's from "A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings,
Construction" A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, the
architecture book that spawned the Software Design Patterns movement.

" _49 Looped Local Roads_

 _Nobody wants fast through traffic going by their homes.

Through traffic is fast, noisy, and dangerous. At the same time cars are
important, and cannot be excluded altogether from the areas where people live.
Local roads must provide access to houses but prevent traffic from coming
through.

This problem can only be solved if all roads which have houses on them are
laid out to be "loops." We define a looped road as any road in a road network
so placed that no path along other roads in the road network can be shortened
by travel along the "loop.''

The loops themselves must be designed to discourage high volumes or high
speeds: this depends on the total number of houses served by the loop, the
road surface, the road width, and the number of curves and corners._ [...]"

~~~
organsnyder
This design—which is fairly common in suburban areas—leads to huge headaches
when the road is constricted due to construction, accidents, special events,
etc. A grid system is much more efficient at adapting to varied conditions.

------
rhinoceraptor
The only ticket I've ever gotten was from taking a Waze shortcut through a
neighborhood, where through traffic wasn't allowed.

------
sevensor
So a writer for _Reason_ , the supposedly libertarian magazine, comes out in
favor of government-funded road building instead of government-funded transit?
Way to stand on principle there.

------
atomical
Has no one reverse engineered the Waze API to add artificial slowdowns in
their neighborhood?

~~~
shagie
Yes, they've tried. Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war, again. Guess
who’s winning? - [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/traffic-weary-
homeowner...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/traffic-weary-homeowners-
and-waze-are-at-war-again-guess-whos-
winning/2016/06/05/c466df46-299d-11e6-b989-4e5479715b54_story.html)

The conclusion to the story:

> Soon after, Connor went rogue. He experimented with Waze, confirmed it was
> sending drivers down his street and began filing his false reports.

> “It didn’t do much and within two weeks they stopped showing up on the map
> all together,” Connor said. “They were on to me.”

> The traffic flow began to wane when the road construction ended, Connor
> said, but remains three or four times higher than before it began. For some
> drivers, their app-inspired shortcut became a permanent route.

HN on the WaPo article from 2 years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11846722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11846722)

~~~
stergios
There's an easier way to hack waze if you live on a small residential street.
All one has to do is buy a $500 dollar car. Then have it "break down" in the
middle of the road, essentially blocking the road. Suddenly your car starts up
10 mins later and moves, but after legit waze users report a problem. Repeat
until traffic is reduced.

You can coordinate with your neighbors to take turns. Civil disobedience can
go a long waze to reduce traffic.... I gotta go!

~~~
largote
Until you find something else to be up-in-arms about.

------
rhacker
I lived in Portland for about 4 years (this was 4 years ago). Recently moved
back there for a period of 6 months and then moved away again. The entire area
changed traffic wise to what I would call insanity. If you use Google Maps or
whatever it routes everyone off the main freeways now, and dumps everyone into
the farm communities. It's really sad because people don't change their
asshole driving behavior. The people in these farms now have to listen to BOOM
BOOM BOOM of radios all the time because of the rest of the infrastructure
being totally blasted.

I personally don't believe Waze is to blame, I'm pretty sure it's google maps
(same company) but only Alphabet has the numbers on both.

~~~
tjr225
I see this in the Seattle area as a commuter as well. By the time you've been
redirected to the surrounding rural communities it's too late - so have
hundreds of other drivers. To pretend that these two lane roads are built for
the traffic of I5 IS insanity.

Sometimes I see a suggestion from Waze and can't help but laugh at my phone.

~~~
dte22
Waze does distribute redirected traffic if there are other alternatives. I've
seen it first hand on the 401 in Toronto; an accident occurred, I was routed
one way to clear it and the person beside me had Waze went another way.. 20km
later.. we are both back on the 401! Same car, same person, both using Waze.

~~~
tjr225
That's one of the difficulties of commuting the I5 corridor. We're stuck
between a huge body of water and a mountain range - there really aren't that
many alternatives - and the ones that do exist are already heavily trafficked.

------
PeterStuer
Driving on neighborhood streets is asocial and callous. Wether you use an
"app' or not is irrelevant, you're still wrong. As social community feelings
have eroded, I guess we now must use technology to combat those that are not
polite enough to comply. Make all but the roads designed for transit
prohibited to all but local traffic, enforce by cutting streets or ANPR
cameras.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It’s all good if your roads are privately funded. If they are funded by
taxpayers though...

~~~
maxerickson
If they are funded by taxpayers taxpayers can set rules for their use?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Yes, as long as the minority doesn’t rule the majority.

------
several
I'm glad to see that one of the neighboring towns of Leonia NJ (the town that
attempted to restrict the use of public roads to residents only from 6-10AM
and 5-9PM) is suing the town over the constitutionality of the restrictions:

[http://thepressgroup.net/concerns-over-leonia-road-
closures-...](http://thepressgroup.net/concerns-over-leonia-road-closures-
local-residents-only-rule-draws-backlash-lawsuit/)

