
In L.A., One Way to Beat Traffic Runs into Backlash - thehoff
http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-l-a-one-way-to-beat-traffic-runs-into-backlash-1447469058
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scurvy
I've noticed some of the "Waze shortcuts' making their way into Google maps.
Some of these are pretty hairy. For anyone familiar with SF, here's an
example:

To get from 8th & Bryant to 3rd & Bryant, Google Maps/Waze wants you to get on
I-80 at 8th and exit at 4th. That would be OK but you enter 80 from the left
side of the interstate and must exit within a _quarter mile_ to the right side
of the interstate. This means crossing 4 lanes to get there. It's actually do-
able in bumper-to-bumper gridlock but when traffic is moving it's pretty
dangerous. Why not just go down Bryant Street? The "shortcut" can't save more
2 minutes at best and at worst costs 10+ minutes.

Waze used to be good for spotting cops and speed traps. Now it's just a
collection of bad "short cuts".

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mg1982
A shortcut is supposed to be difficult; if it was easy, it would just be 'the
way'.

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scurvy
Dangerously so?

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WildUtah
This problem is solved in Berzerkeley and for cheap. [0]

[0]
[https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8633369,-122.2652156,3a,75y,...](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8633369,-122.2652156,3a,75y,77.61h,70.47t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sjqjUFjtnBrzM0np-
WUZa-w!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DjqjUFjtnBrzM0np-
WUZa-w%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D191.48755%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656)

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Tokala
This seems to be really common in the Bay Area and was one of the reasons I
absolutely hated the city of Berkeley when I was there. You just can't direct
traffic like this if your infrastructure can't handle the load to begin with;
it's selfish beyond belief.

In Los Angeles, people were using Fullerton Road like this for years. The
county finally got funding and actually realigned it to a proper road for
people to use to commute on and the original Fullerton Road is back to what it
was -- a small residential street.

~~~
Symbiote
It's called filtered permeability, and is a common retrofit in some countries
in Europe. Wealth doesn't come into it — you will find it in some really poor
parts of London, as well as the City (financial district) and some very rich
neighbourhoods.

The point is that the non-arterial road can't handle the load, so the barrier
returns it to its original purpose — the residents of and visitors to that
street.

The intention is that the people who were using this route either \- use the
main road (slightly increasing the traffic there) \- use public transport or a
bicycle instead \- stop making the journey altogether

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeability_(spatial_and_tran...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeability_\(spatial_and_transport_planning\))

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TulliusCicero
Add diverters so it's not practical to use a street for through traffic.
Portland is starting to do this on certain "neighborhood greenways".

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wyclif
LA has always seemed like a terrible quality-of-life city to live in because
of the traffic. The amount of time spent commuting makes me wonder why tech
people, at least, don't want to move out of there.

~~~
brianclements
I wouldn't call it terrible, life is nice in your car compared to say walking
around in an east coast city during the winter if you have no car. Especially
when it comes to grocery shopping. So I'd call it a trade off. Maybe SF is
exempt from this a bit, but city living in a city that has some real weather
(my experience was on the east coast) always struck me as very hard on it's
human inhabitants compared to the car centric LA lifestyle.

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mc32
Bollards. Give residents proximity sensors which allow them and only them
access thru the bollards. Piggy backing will happen but they'll be waiting a
log time.

Not saying place them everywhere just make it so the open streets are more
mazelike so when friends need to visit there is a way in, it just happens to
be byzantine, frustrating interlopers who want to cut through.

~~~
superuser2
That's called a gated community and you _don 't_ get to fund them with
taxpayer money. If you don't want to deal with plebeians on your roads, then
you need to pay a developer to build private roads.

LA streets do not belong to the neighborhoods, they belong to the city. If
neighbors are concerned about congestion, perhaps they should support policy
that promotes density and mass transit.

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thaumasiotes
> That's called a gated community and you _don 't_ get to fund them with
> taxpayer money.

Sure you do. All you need is to make up a majority of the local voters. Won't
work in LA; might work in, say, Long Beach.

Residents pass traffic ordinances screwing over drivers for practically no
gain to themselves all the time. You're only allowed to vote on policies for
where you _live_ , not where you drive.

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superuser2
The city is the functional unit for making that distinction, though, not the
neighborhood. LA could vote to exclude non-LA residents, but a specific
neighborhood or block could not vote to exclude other city residents.

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djcapelis
But isn't that exactly how neighborhood parking permits work?

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superuser2
Neighborhoods (and universities) that reserve space for permit-holding
affiliates usually have some paid street or garage parking for visitors. Or
street parking is allowed to visitors for a few hours, or for a fee, etc.

Entirely denying _passage_ to outsiders (or charging a toll) is much more
extreme. A better analogy might be the Seventeen Mile Drive in Monterey.

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azernik
Apps that change their users' behavior can have massive public policy effects.
Whether you think this change in traffic patterns is okay or not, it was not
made with the public's interests in mind, nor with the input of
democratically-elected representatives.

~~~
WildUtah
"nor with the input of democratic..."

Really? The public and elected officials never decided to build and open
public streets that everyone has a right to travel on?

A republic isn't a place where every new decision and idea requires government
approval -- that's a totalitarian dictatorship. A republic is where we elect
people to set and enforce the rules for us and then we work within the rules
absolutely any way we please to fulfill our own individual visions without
asking permission from anyone.

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acdha
What if you phrased it differently: “the roads were designed under different
assumptions”?

In the past it was often assumed that most people would stay on major roads
because only locals memorized chains of streets and even the people who
planned routes (Thomas Brothers maps were a hallmark of the SoCal commuter,
after all) would chain a few routes together but generally still kept it to
what a human could remember since you couldn't safely read a map while
driving.

Now that that has completely changed, it's probably true to say that the
majority of local roads and traffic flows need to be reconsidered to see
whether the signage or structure should change to enforce the way it was
previously assumed they'd be used.

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theheck
Congested streets are the result of them being managed by the government, they
aren't caused by poor road design.

All roads should be privatized, and consumers should pay for them like every
other good and service they use.

How do popular restaurants, sports stadiums, and every other aspect of the
economy deal with massive demand and limited supply?

Raising prices, and in the long-term making capital investments to increase
supply.

Street congestion should be the quintessential textbook example in Econ 101 to
explain the concepts of economic shortages.

Can you imagine any other good or service whose price never changes based on
demand NOT having shortages?

Imagine a concert hall that charged the same price for seats whether the
Rolling Stones or Vanilla Ice is playing?

The experiment with public streets has been a massive failure, and it's time
to be ended.

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theheck
Why down votes? At least explain why you're down voting.

