
Waze Hijacked L.A. in the Name of Convenience - overwhelm
https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/waze-los-angeles-neighborhoods/
======
nostromo
> No street, certainly not your residential 25-mph variety, is safe from being
> Wazed into a makeshift freeway or thoroughfare. ... These thousands of
> homeowners and renters have arguably been injured by Waze’s and Google’s
> successful privatization of formerly public streets.

This is exactly backwards.

The streets were effectively privatized before, via obscurity. It is Waze that
has made formerly private streets public.

~~~
wcarron
That's complete BS. The roads have always been there, fulfilling their
designated purpose; which is to handle the small amount of traffic the
neighborhood residents generate in a safe manner. They were never meant to
handle massive amounts of traffic, which actually does damage property values
when potential buyers are scared off by unsafe streets.

~~~
scarejunba
Your property value isn't my problem. I have a right to that street that is no
less than yours.

~~~
Doxin
Sure, But people have a right to not unexpectedly live next to a highway as
well. There's a balance here that needs to be struck and that balance is not
doing whatever you like with disregard of if that bothers anyone else.

~~~
prepend
Not if they live next to a public road. As long as folks follow the speed
limit there’s nothing you should do.

I mapped out the roads around my house before buying. If you live on a
shortcut public road you’ll get lots of traffic.

~~~
Doxin
> As long as folks follow the speed limit

Right but isn't that the entire point? People following these shortcuts _don
't_ follow the speed limit. They _don 't_ drive carefully, and _even if they
did_ the increase in exhaust fumes will cause premature deaths of the people
living in these streets.

Just because the infrastructure is built poorly to the point where driving
through someones neighbourhood is faster than using the appointed
thoroughfares doesn't mean the solution here is to just saddle those people
with the problem. The solution is _improving infrastructure_ to where people
don't feel the need to follow shortcuts, or at the very least to make sure
there are no shortcuts that disadvantage some random part of the population.

To me at least it doesn't seem fair that waze et al individually get to decide
to make some streets unlivable. That's not freedom, that's a tyranny of those
with power over those without.

~~~
prepend
Then the issue is the speeders. Problem solved. Ticket them.

The complaint in my neighborhood that I hear is that the speed limit is 25 and
35 and it’s followed. They just don’t like the traffic.

~~~
Doxin
The issue is speeders. And noise pollution. And air pollution. And risk of
getting hit. Driving a car on a street has externalities that need accounting
for.

~~~
prepend
Only speeding is against the law, all the others are part of living on a
public street. Risk of getting hit goes up with speed but isn’t eliminated in
lawful speed followers.

------
koboll
>This has created fascinating potential legal issues that may one day be
litigated in lawsuits or class actions. These thousands of homeowners and
renters have arguably been injured by Waze’s and Google’s successful
privatization of formerly public streets.

So it's illegal to tell people that a public road might make for a faster
route than the one a person is currently driving on?

It seems like the real problem here is shitty urban planning. This is clearly
a huge problem plaguing Los Angeles, in many ways beyond just this one. If you
want to keep people off streets, pass ordnances that say non-residents can't
cut through them. Otherwise, there's not much of a case against Waze here.

~~~
jcranmer
> So it's illegal to tell people that a public road might make for a faster
> route than the one a person is currently driving on?

If doing so is encouraging reckless driving and causing public endangerment of
the residents on the streets, why shouldn't it be? They're clearly
contributing to a loss of safety. Especially consider that the kind of person
who is willing to shave off 30 seconds a commute by cutting through a
neighborhood is unlikely to be the kind of person who would travel the
appropriate speed on said street without a cop and radar gun verifying it.

~~~
koboll
I fail to understand how merely directing people toward a certain street
amounts to encouraging reckless driving.

~~~
jcranmer
For one thing, Waze is using the actual speed of drivers instead of the legal
speed limit to determine the travel time of a route. If drivers are speeding,
Waze is basing its time savings on drivers violating the law.

In some of the conditions that are brought up in these stories, it's not even
really safe to travel the legal speed limit. (And reckless driving includes
travelling too fast for conditions). Given the resistance of Waze to merely
cut out those routes that are not safe for through traffic, it's clear that
they do not value safety and I hold little sympathy for them.

~~~
solveit
I strenuously object to the idea that the government should be able to stop
the spreading of publicly available truths in the name of public safety,
especially over a justification as flimsy as "encourages reckless driving". I
would be willing to revisit this debate when somebody figures out how to build
nuclear weapons in their garage, not so much before that.

~~~
paggle
How do you feel about government setting up speed cameras at all of these side
streets and issuing citations to all speeders, even those 1mph over the limit,
through dragnet surveillance?

~~~
thrower123
They'd have to collect a lot of tickets to justify the cost.

Are there really not more important things the legal system could be using
it's resources to combat? There are child molesters and drug dealers out
there.

~~~
paggle
The government is big and can do multiple things at once. Ensuring safe
streets is an important responsibility. Vehicles kill many more people than
child molesters and drug dealers combined.

~~~
thrower123
Opiods are giving car fatalities a run for their money.

------
PeterisP
A nice quote from the article - "The mayor spoke proudly of this shining
example of the city’s “data initiative,” and how the Waze partnership would
“get people where they want to go, faster.”" followed by a dissatisfaction
that it did not result in people getting sent to the roadways that the traffic
planners wanted to.

Guess what, people would absolutely get sent to the major roadways if (and
only if!) those roadways would actually get people where they want to go,
faster. If those roadways suck compared to the alternatives, then that points
towards a duty of the major to improve those major roadways (which are
obviously overwhelmed even after Waze helps by redirecting some traffic off of
them), not a duty to drivers to simply suffer every day while sitting in a
traffic jam on the "gov't recommended" route or the likes of Waze to keep mum
about better alternatives.

The article mentions the 'LA Complete Streets Official Guide' listing which
streets the planners designated as arterial vs non-arterial - guess what, if
there's a mismatch between the plan and how people can reach their
destinations most efficiently, then _it is the plan that 's wrong and needs to
change_, not the drivers. If you plan and build a wider, "faster" arterial
route that's actually a huge diversion and drivers take shortcuts instead of
following your route, well, too bad you wasted a bunch of money building a
road noone needs based on a bad plan, it's not the fault of drivers that this
road doesn't suit their needs.

The city was free to use its partnership with Waze to determine where to
_build_ (improve/widen/regulate) roads and intersections that would be a
better fit for how people want to travel. However, instead of _listening_ to
the people through that data, they wanted to use it to _tell_ people how to
get where they want to be in a way that suits interests of city planners
instead of the driver - and that's not how it works.

~~~
amluto
> Guess what, people would absolutely get sent to the major roadways if (and
> only if!) those roadways would actually get people where they want to go,
> faster. If those roadways suck compared to the alternatives, then that
> points towards a duty of the major to improve those major roadways

I strenuously disagree. You seem to be saying that city planners and traffic
engineers have to design with the constraint that a large subset of drivers
will take the instantaneously fastest route rather than sticking to intended
high-throughout roads.

I suspect that this would have rather poor implications. It means that little
residential streets that happen to parallel major streets will get used at
their full capacity whenever the major streets drop below 25-ish mph.

This, in turn, likely means that the little streets can’t safely be used by
pedestrians and become unsafe for people trying to cross or exit driveways,
let alone for kids who want to play.

This sucks. It’s not clear what cities can do about it, but blaming the cities
and saying that every last through street needs to be widened is not the
answer.

~~~
enoch_r
In Portland the city has put up "diverters," which block cars from continuing
along a neighborhood street while allowing pedestrians and bikes through. It
makes the street useless as a cut-through. I love this model and wish they'd
sprinkle them every few blocks on every neighborhood street in the city.

~~~
WWLink
I only ever see shit like this in affluent neighborhoods.

------
JMTQp8lwXL
The problem isn't Waze. It's the sprawl and failure of urban planning. More
dense, more mixed use development is what LA needs. Less cars implies less
traffic. Make cities walkable. But, it is too late for that. Homeowners have
decided carte blanche to oppose new development. This is the price they pay.
LA will never return to being a city with one-tenth its current population,
where every family gets a 6,000 square foot lot, a car and 2.1 kids. Plan for
it.

------
ageitgey
This is a well-researched traffic problem called induced demand [1] - building
more roads in a congested city always makes traffic worse, not better, in the
long term. Waze is giving people more roads to use, so they are in effect
'building more roads', which causes more total people to drive, which makes
traffic even worse for everyone. There is no possible outcome here other than
everything being worse for everyone involved, despite whatever libertarian
views you might hold. Waze can only be a net loss for everyone for LA in the
long term despite whatever benefits the early users got for a few years.

But banning Waze is just a band-aid. The real problem is that the only way to
get around LA is to drive. The real solution for LA is to re-think itself as a
walkable about city with real public transit options. There isn't enough
physical space for everyone in LA to get to where they want to go in a giant,
personal automobile while still leaving room for dense housing.

If you are interested in exactly how to redesign a city to make all transit
more effective, check out the book 'Walkable City Rules' by Jeff Speck.

[1] [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/09/citylab-
unive...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/09/citylab-university-
induced-demand/569455/)

------
scarejunba
Everyone wants to drive through other people's streets and wants no one to
drive on theirs. Waze made it so this was evenly distributed. Of course the
erstwhile privileged fear loss of privilege.

~~~
nullc
This isn't a fair read on the situation, the tension isn't between my streets
and your streets, it's between major arterials and light residential streets.

In many cases the arterials don't have anyone directly on them (or only
commercial/industrial property)... specifically as part of their intended
purpose.

In fact, if the situation isn't addressed in a fair and intentional manner a
my vs your issue will be created: wealthier residents will erect gates, block
traffic, privatize roads, or move to other locations ... and leave everyone
else to contend with the mess on their own access roads, without the political
air cover of wealthier people also suffering the same roadway misuse problem.

~~~
scarejunba
They cannot privatize by California law unless there is no current or
prospective public use. Existing roads will remain. They can build new roads
and keep them private. So be it. This is a trade-off I am willing to accept.

The navigation apps have no incentive to give you a worse experience by
sending you down narrow roads.

------
RhodesianHunter
Technology is created to solve a problem.

Technology has unintended consequences.

Technology owners have feduciary responsibility to continue producing
technology.

Negatively affected citizens make a fuss, claim they deserve more rights than
other citizens.

Media creates hit pieces, painting the most negative possible picture in an
attempt to look like investigative journalism.

Government either ignores the problem, or grossly overreaches, leading to
further unintended consequences.

~~~
lidHanteyk
Oh nice! This is Discordian 5-act structure.

Chaos: Our protagonist, New Tech, arises.

Discord: As a consequence, the first antagonist looms: Unintended
Consequences.

Confusion: New Tech is not dissuaded. It moves boldly, embracing what it sees
as positive change in the world.

Bureaucracy: Unintended Consequences summons the evil power of Somebody Else's
Problem, and reveals their true face: Angry Mobs.

The Aftermath: The Government steps in. They ban New Tech, establish a
Committee to Study Somebody Else's Problem, set up a fund for Unintended
Consequences, and violently suppress the Angry Mobs.

Recall that, in Discordian 5-act, the protagonist is arbitrary, and usually
chosen to maximize irony, bathos, or confusion. Our goal is to remind the
audience of how silly it was to think of anything or anybody as morally
absolved.

------
PaulHoule
I grew up in Southern Hew Hampshire, one of the sprawliest places in the U.S.

The architectural principle of Southern NH is that streets are not organized
in a grid but rather in a hierarchy. They add more suburban "pods" at the leaf
nodes with resulting uncontrollable traffic increases at upper levels.

A street grid scales in an entirely different way in that if you build more
grid you add both short- and long-range access at the same time.

A town I live near added "traffic calming" measures, in some cases draconian.
(e.g. When the cop catches you turning towards the supermarket when you
shouldn't be you tell him that you're entirely confused by the streets in the
area, you blow 0.0, and he says he is confused by it too.)

As soon as traffic calming went into place, traffic got much worse on nearby
arteries, particularly wait times at street lights.

My current theory is that a good traffic route avoids stop lights like the
plague. It's inevitable that you will hit stop lights, wasting your time and
fuel. If you go to places where traffic concentrates, traffic will eventually
outflow the ability of cars to clear the intersection during the green cycle.
So a single traffic light causes you to be stuck for several cycles.

If you think for yourself you realize that you can clear 10 stop sign
intersections in the time that you can clear a bad pair of lights.

I don't apologize for any of this behavior because I am making life better for
people in the herd by getting out of it.

