
Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war - ericcumbee
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
======
FroshKiller
I'm a homeowner and an active Waze user. The street I live on is not "my"
street. It's a public street that any licensed driver may use.

I did have an issue with drivers coming around a blind curve too quickly to be
safe, though, so I did what these homeowners ought to be doing and contacted
my local government about getting my street assessed for a traffic calming
project.

The city created a three-way stop before the curve that has slowed traffic on
the street and seems to have reduced non-local traffic.

Sure, that project took time and may not have even happened in the first place
if the city hadn't judged it worth doing, but that's the appropriate course in
my opinion. Anything else just feels like NIMBY entitlement.

~~~
pnathan
> I'm a homeowner and an active Waze user. The street I live on is not "my"
> street. It's a public street that any licensed driver may use.

This is the correct analysis. Unless it's a gated subdivision, the streets are
operated by the government for the broad public benefit; not the local benefit
of the homeowners.

~~~
niccaluim
It's the correct _legal_ analysis, sure, but does it encourage considerate
behavior? Does it help or hurt the goals behind zoning laws and traffic
engineering? I think it's one-sided to write the whole problem off this way.

~~~
Dr_tldr
The implication that people who have more knowledge about a local area have
more right to publicly maintained resources than those who don't is even more
troubling. Maintaining unequal access to public resources is a form of
corruption, discrimination, or both.

A traffic engineer whose designs are only effective when there's information
asymmetry is either

A) dealing with impossible project restraints/requirements B) terrible at
their job

~~~
shivsta
I agree that all information should be free for everyone, but your assessment
is too harsh. Impossible projects are probably pretty common in many dense
cities.

~~~
Dr_tldr
100% agree, it's usually not the fault of the engineers. But in a better
system, they wouldn't face political pressure to tell people that indefinite
growth without inconvenience or long term investment is possible.

------
gooseus
As a Waze user, this has actually been a source of increasing frustration for
me.

I do not want to save 1-3 minutes on a commute by cutting through unfamiliar
residential areas where deaf kids play and homeowners give me dirty looks as I
go over their oversized speed bumps.

I use Waze not so much as a super-optimal routing tool, but as an aggravation-
avoidance tool. Traffic and speed-traps aggravate me, sure... but not nearly
so much as trying to make a blind left from a stop sign at the top of a hill
in my manual transmission.

Just yesterday I was in a somewhat unfamiliar area during crazy rainstorms
near NYC... I used Waze since who knows what traffic looks like in those
conditions.

In order to avoid 20-30 seconds of waiting at a traffic light it routed me to
the next street over to make the left turn... which was on a curve with lots
of parked cars and, in that weather, made it impossible to see if anyone was
coming. If it hadn't been a one-way street I'd have considered turning around
and going back to the light... but instead I used my best judgement and BARELY
avoided getting nailed by another car.

Waze is great technology, but is still pretty naive about solving the problem
I want solved. All the aggregated minutes of driving it has saved me over the
last couple years would not have been worth it if yesterday's single poor
routing decision had ended with me in the hospital/dead and/or my car totaled.

</rant>

~~~
cmurf
I stopped using Waze because of its nutty directions: deep dives into
neighborhoods, stop signs every two blocks, piles of turns, circuitous routes,
etc. I do not like coming to a complete stop every two blocks, I'll take 5mph
continuous over that. I do not like dumping my traffic annoyances onto
neighborhoods who didn't voluntarily agree to increased traffic just to make
my commute shorter, this is free loading and their roads are for them to get
to and from their home, not for me to cut through to avoid bad infra
elsehwere. And I don't like going even 20mph in neighborhoods with children
where parked cars hide kids and pets.

All of that grief for 3 minutes of savings. It's just nonsense. So I deleted
the app after a week of annoyance.

~~~
Jacqued
> neighborhoods who didn't voluntarily agree to increased traffic just to make
> my commute shorter, this is free loading and their roads are for them to get
> to and from their home

It's nothing against you but is this a common opinion in the US? People in
neighborhoods "own" the streets? As a Frenchman saying this is astonishing as
I would naturally consider that I do own the street just as much as they do
and it's my right to use it to cut traffic as I see fit.

I would go so far as saying they're abusing the system by having unwarranted
traffic stops and outsized speed bumps placed around their property. It's like
having their cake (single-family home with a parking space) and eating it too
(avoiding traffic nuisance which they impose on others).

Just a cultural difference that I had not spotted before

~~~
zippergz
Portraying this as a sense of "owning" the street is unneccessarily
perjorative, IMHO. I don't think that many people would argue with the idea
that, all else being equal, having less traffic on the street in front of your
house is a good thing. Less noise, less polution, less risk of pets and
children getting hit by cars. So it shouldn't be surprising that people
dislike it when traffic in front of their houses increases, and I also think
it's pretty uncharitable to assume that this is because they're NIMBYs or
otherwise have bad motivations.

In the broader sense, I think this relates to the tragedy of the commons.
There are certain societal conventions that tend to make life better on the
whole. Keeping traffic to main streets is one of them. Yes, I might gain a
minute or two by cutting through your neighborhood, and you might make up a
little time cutting through mine. But I don't take that shortcut, because I
know it's determintal to the neighborhood and my benefit will be very small.
Part of that comes with the expectation that others will in turn do the same
for me.

Maybe this is a USAian way of thinking, but I believe that if everyone behaves
in the most selfish possible way ("you don't own the street, so you don't get
to complain if I use it to save 15 seconds"), life becomes worse for everyone.

~~~
tormeh
I think the point was more along the lines of "you don't get to appropriate
the road that I helped fund with tax money and that belongs to everyone". I
support that, actually. If it's a public road and I drive legally and
responsibly then there's no problem. Just because your house is big doesn't
mean that it's a farm where all surrounding land belongs to you.

~~~
chrisbennet
I guess I can understand that feeling. Let's break it down though:

 _" you don't get to appropriate the road that I helped fund with tax money
and that belongs to everyone"_

When Waze sends _me_ off into some neighborhood it's not usually someplace I'm
familiar with, certainly not even the same town I pay taxes in i.e. I didn't
help fund that road.

 _" If it's a public road and I drive legally and responsibly then there's no
problem."_

The thing is, people often _don 't_ drive responsibly except in their own
neighborhood (and maybe not even then). I saw a sign once that said something
along the lines "Please drive like your own kids play here." The people who
take a short cut to save time are probably not the ones who are willing to go
20 miles an hour looking for kids on bikes, house cats in roads, etc.

~~~
mturmon
_" The people who take a short cut to save time are probably not the ones who
are willing to go 20 miles an hour looking for kids on bikes, house cats in
roads, etc."_

This is the problem.

Where I live, people taking shortcuts roll thru stop signs and bomb down side
streets, peering at their phones, speeding up as needed to validate their
choice of this time-saving shortcut.

The local cops (LAPD) have bigger things on their plate than traffic
scofflaws, so it leaves residents with little recourse.

The abstract principles here ("it's a public road") don't translate well into
what is in reality a complex situation.

------
JoshTriplett
This quote seems very telling:

> It used to be that only locals knew all the cut-through routes, but Google
> Maps and Waze are letting everyone know

So they don't have a problem with people cutting through as long as they're
"locals"; it's when the outgroup starts doing the same thing that people get
up in arms.

If the through traffic is breaking traffic laws, that's a solvable problem. If
the street has insufficient safety measures on it, that's also a solvable
problem; see the comment at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11846812](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11846812)
for an example of getting the road improved.

But if the problem is that the neighborhood street is actually a better route
than the arterial roads and highways, then solve _that_ problem; don't blame
mapping software for noticing.

~~~
astrodust
There's a certain amount of irony here that people are complaining about cars
clogging up _their_ streets but think nothing of what they do when they're
driving through other neighbourhoods, especially more urban ones.

Suddenly they get a taste of why people living downtown are not too enthused
about highways bringing in more people.

A lot of this mess stems from the absurd designs of modern American
subdivisions with their pointlessly twisty roads. A grid-based layout might
mean more through traffic, but the traffic can filter through many, many
different cross-routes rather than funnelling through the singular optimal
route.

~~~
djrogers
> A grid-based layout might mean more through traffic, but the traffic can
> filter through many, many different cross-routes rather than funnelling
> through the singular optimal route.

That singular optimal route funnels traffic away from my kids riding bikes,
playing street hockey, drawing chalk cities, or anything else their little
minds can come up with. It's why houses on a 'quiet street' are coveted, and
sell for more than the same house on a busy street.

To call a design like that 'absurd' you'd have to completely ignore all of the
reasons people want to pay more for it...

~~~
CWuestefeld
About a year ago, a traffic accident caused Waze to route me through a
residential area. I actually respected the speed limit as I went through, and
at one point saw kids playing in the street just as I was making a turn, so I
slowed further.

That didn't stop some busybody dad from flagging me down. I opened my window
and he told me I'd better slow down (I had) because there were kids playing.
My response to him was that he oughtn't let his kids play in the street. He
started ranting, so I pulled away, and he shouted after me "SLOW DOWN YOU
ASSHOLE!!".

When I got home, upset by this, I went back and looked at my logs. I also use
an app called Torque that logs all the data from my car's OBDII port, and GPS
data as well. So I was able to verify that at no point was I going more that
5mph _below_ the posted limit, and from the point where those kids were
visible, I was going far slower than that.

My conclusion from just one datapoint is that people are irrational about what
they allow their kids to do (play in the road) while expecting _other_ people
to accept and mitigate the potential risk; and also that people have little
ability to estimate vehicle speed accurately.

~~~
street
Why can't kids play on a street designed only for traffic to houses on that
street? I played on the street all the time as a child. Of course, my streets
weren't flooded with drivers trying to save a few minutes by driving through
residential areas.

~~~
holograham
The fallacy in your logic is that the streets were not designed for kids to
play in. They are designed for cars to drive on.

Furthermore, like was mentioned by previous posters and the article, there are
further legal traffic laws that can be implemented to protect side streets
from incurring unreasonable or unsafe traffic (e.g. no thru traffic, rush hour
restrictions, lower speed limits, additional stop signs or even speed bumps,
etc). By all means, local governments should be using these laws and
regulations to ensure neighborhood streets are as safe as possible. However,
even with minimal traffic, kids playing in a street will always be a risk. If
the street does not have adequate safety measures AND enforcement then as a
parent you should not allow your child to play in or near the street without
accepting the risk.

~~~
akgerber
Most streets in older parts of the country were not designed for people to
drive on, and plenty of children played on them. Motor vehicles simply killed
enough children when they first became common that children were forced
elsewhere.

[https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/fighting-
traffic](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/fighting-traffic)

------
jdblair
The City of Berkeley, CA, fixed this problem a long time ago, before Waze or
even widespread GPS. Every few blocks they block side streets to all vehicles
except bicycles. The effect is to be forced to take right or left turns that
guide you back to the main through street.

Streets parallel to the through streets that are now impassible to cars are
marked as "bicycle boulevards" and provide safer routes for cyclists.
Residents still have easy access to the main roads.

It sounds like the residents of this Maryland neighborhood could adopt this
practice and solve their traffic issue.

~~~
honkhonkpants
I still see lots of people who are willing to disregard these signs, though.
For example on Channing at Roosevelt I see people cut through daily.

[https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8647438,-122.2756017,3a,75y,...](https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8647438,-122.2756017,3a,75y,285.28h,74.42t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sLe9NeRKcb-
roJuJE-t6ntQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1)

~~~
jdh
I am sure you are right, but as a long time resident, I think this is the
trees not the forest -- I would estimate these barriers reduce 95-99% of the
car traffic through them, even if someone cutting through is indeed a daily
occurrence. Most are quite intimidating, many are totally impassable or
require significant ground clearance.

~~~
hx87
SUVs and crossovers are becoming more popular by the day, so this might be
more of a problem than people imagine. I wonder if there is a way to
discourage cars with high ground clearance--a rollover hazard, perhaps?

------
paulddraper
If it's faster to take a neighborhood street than the _interstate_ , there's a
problem.

It's not normal.

It sounds like residents are at war with transportation infrastructure
instead.

~~~
HillaryBriss
There seems to be a new reality, a new problem with population growth and GDP
fetishism: GDP rises with the number of people participating in the economy,
true. But GDP and accompanying tax revenues don't rise _enough_.

Infrastructure becomes overloaded and the government fails to expand capacity
sufficiently. Tax revenues rise somewhat, but, again, not enough to pay for
the necessary expansion. Traffic gets worse.

One solution would be to literally _force_ everyone to take high efficiency,
high density modes of transportation (trains, public buses, carpools,
chartered buses, etc) but local and even state governments don't seem to have
the legal power (or will?) to do so. The gridlock continues.

~~~
mmoche
Even if they had the power, or will, governments in ostensibly free nations
shouldn't be forcing their population into a form of transport, just as they
shouldn't be forcing their population into specific jobs, specific homes, or
specific religions.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Force? No. But planning, incentives, market-oriented policies like congestion
charges? Sure.

The reason traffic gets so bad during rush hour is a simple case of supply and
demand: limited supply road of space, lots of demand, and most importantly,
the space is effectively _free_. If cities charged something approaching
market rate for the space, traffic gridlock would disappear.

Of course, this is impractical to do in most US cities, because of a lack of
alternative ways to get around. Thus, the first thing that needs to happen is
to provide more options; once that's done, you can work on incentivizing
people to take the methods that can support more people.

~~~
sbardle
We have the congestion charge in London. Initially the traffic did drop, but
now the traffic is just as busy, and the gridlock lasts all day. Cities like
London, NYC and SF are expanding very quickly in terms of population size and
density, so in transport terms, the solution will have to be something like
automated self driving cars integrated into a conveyor belt like system, which
incentivise ride-sharing.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> We have the congestion charge in London. Initially the traffic did drop, but
> now the traffic is just as busy, and the gridlock lasts all day.

My guess is that this is for the same reason as the fact that housing prices
have gotten crazy high in London over the last decade: demand has continued to
outpace supply (and in this case, the congestion charge). I mean, you can
_always_ suppress traffic if you're willing to raise the price high enough,
right? It's just that politically, that can be a hard thing to do.

> the solution will have to be something like automated self driving cars
> integrated into a conveyor belt like system, which incentivise ride-sharing.

Sure, Minority Report-style traffic systems are probably a good idea in the
long run (although that kind of thing is obviously a very long ways out).
We'll still have to make investments in other, denser modes of transportation,
though, as well as market-oriented policies like parking fees and congestion
charges.

~~~
chongli
_Minority Report_ style fancy transportation is totally unnecessary. All we
need is an automatic congestion charge similar to Uber's surge pricing. Heck,
such a system would work great for keeping traffic out of residential areas
too.

------
PaulHoule
Ithaca had this problem arise spontaneously about a decade ago.

If you're driving to the Wegmans supermarket from east of town, the official
routes you are supposed to use are badly congested, and drivers "in the know"
have long been aware you can save a few minutes sitting in traffic by going
through a certain residential neighborhood.

When they put traffic calming in place and made it illegal to drive through
the neighborhood, congestion immediately got worse on the official routes.

The idea that drivers benefited from less congestion was entirely left out of
the public debate, especially the fact that drivers taking the shortcut reduce
congestion on the major roads.

~~~
joncp
I wish I had a route to a local Wegmans, congested or not.

------
warcher
I have gotten in not one, but several, _extremely heated_ discussions over the
years after parking on a public street in front of somebody's house.

I'm not a big defender of, say, Airbnb running gypsy hotels in secret defiance
of leasing and HOA agreements, but people have a lot of funny ideas about
ownership of things that _aren 't theirs to own_.

~~~
enjo
It seems to me that you see this problem mostly in suburbs. People didn't buy
a house, they bought a _lifestyle_. A particular lifestyle that has no room
for even the slightest inconvenience from others. During my suburban days I
was always sort of amazed by the entitlement people had around me.

I saw near fistfights over people parking in front of other peoples houses. Or
a particularly memorable argument in which people shouted out of their kitchen
window at a group of kids who were doing nothing but sitting on a deck talking
at 8:00 PM. My HOA sued the town I lived in because someone wanted to build an
apartment building about 1/4 mile from the front entrance of the subdivision
(don't want "those" people living nearby after all).

The HOA also was part of a larger group opposing the extension of a light rail
line that would connect our town to the larger metroplex. The same argument
was used in that case, "those people" would be able to come up and cause crime
in our neighborhood.

I'm not surprised that the people in the article believe that they have a
right to a quiet street.

~~~
awm
I've noticed though that the perspective matters. If somebody start
complaining about how I parked in front of their house, a typical response is:
"I can't believe how annoyed this guy is getting over me just parking here for
15 minutes."

The homeowner however doesn't care that its only 15 minutes of your time,
since for him/her its probably all day :-/

~~~
enjo
But it's not their parking spot to get mad over.

------
joehewitt
On Memorial Day I walked outside and did a double take - my quiet street,
tucked away many turns from any main road, was backed up with cars from end to
end. I'd never seen that before in 5 years here. Turned out it was Waze
sending beachgoers (I'm still 30 minutes from the beach) on a side route to
the nearest on ramp for the highway that heads to the coast. Within an hour
there was a police car here diverting drivers and the town put up cones to
stop it.

What's frustrating is this "shortcut" was completely ineffective. It simply
moved the traffic jam from the main roads to our tiny neighborhood.

~~~
gerbilly
>What's frustrating is this "shortcut" was completely ineffective. It simply
moved the traffic jam from the main roads to our tiny neighborhood.

This exemplifies the arrogance of 'disruptive companies' when they think they
can improve on something like a traffic system or a taxi system.

They set out to make things more efficient without a deep understanding of the
problem.

They see every problem as a technical optimization problem because they
learned this kind of thing at school. However society has usually evolved a
set of rules balancing the rights of various parties already.[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)

------
koolba
> Connor and his neighbors put up “No Through Traffic” signs. And their city
> councilman, Tim Male, tried to get Google Maps to take note of the official
> detour, by calling the company and flagging it through the apps’ feedback
> feature.

Assuming the road itself is a public road (not a driveway or gated community),
is there any legality to this?

~~~
sokoloff
Petition the town to do it and it's legal. Putting up bootleg signs? Probably
not legal.

It sounds like they may have had town cooperation. (In Cambridge, MA and
surrounding towns, we have many "no turn onto this street between 7-9 AM
and/or 4-7 PM" and the street I live on is two way for 99% of its length and
one way for the last 20 feet or so [to prevent it being used as a cut-
through.)

~~~
twoodfin
I may be mistaken, but from following along with my helpful city councilor's
email list, I believe Cambridge actually has to get state approval for all of
these. I think that's a good thing.

~~~
sokoloff
Could well be on the first point. I have no idea.

On the second point, I tend to disagree, believing that local government
governs best and that travel/turn restrictions on residential side streets in
Cambridge ought to be a city matter, not a state matter, IMO. (As a thought
experiment, why shouldn't they need Federal approval for them? Why state
exactly?)

~~~
twoodfin
I can think of a few reasons. Drivers should be protected from a mishmash of
locality-specific traffic configurations and rules, so it's beneficial to have
the state enforce some uniformity and best practices (and obviously a good bit
of that is derived from the Feds).

Also, the state (and thus the state's taxpayers) ends up paying for a good
chunk of local roads. Cambridge or any other locality shouldn't have free
reign to let NIMBYism make life difficult for out-of-town commuters.

------
brooklyndavs
While I have sympathy for homeowners in this case I have none for the local
politicians that are complaining about it. As a Waze and Google Maps user if
there is a faster route down a side street vs the interstate I'm of course
going to take it. I'll follow all the laws of that side street naturally (25
mph zone for example) but I still have every right to drive down it if its a
public street that is maintained by public taxes.

With that said, if these local politicians really cared about fixed the
problem vs just complaining about traffic they would work within their region
to fix the root problems of traffic. Provide alternate transportation options
including bike lanes, trains, buses, etc. Stop building office parks out in
the middle of nowhere. Start building dense, walk-able, AFFORDABLE
neighborhoods close to jobs and services. Encourage local business to have
people telecommute or work alternate hours.

------
Spooky23
I have to agree with the homeowners here. This isn't a NIMBY issue.

Google in particular has the data to know what streets are primary routes and
what streets are not. Road design and traffic engineering are engineering
problems, and shunting high volumes of traffic at roads not engineered
appropriately is a bad thing.

By doing this, Waze is creating situations where adequate flow controls
(traffic lights, lane markings, crosswalks, signage) are not present and
create serious safety problems.

If someone I cared about was injured in this type of situation, I would sue
Google, because they have the data to know this is wrong.

~~~
golergka
The only thing Waze is doing is giving people information and suggestions. It
does not control drivers. And if your traffic system requires drivers to not
know information that by all means is public knowledge to work — it's one bad
system.

~~~
Spooky23
If you give advice for a living, you have a responsibility to provide the best
advice possible.

------
voiper1
I actually recall this... 15 years ago, living parallel to a busy street. The
various extra stop signs didn't keep people from using it.

As @FroshKiller said though, it's not "my street". However, it was still a
problem: there were frequently people way over the speed limit when we'd
hardly expect it...

~~~
theseatoms
> However, it was still a problem: there were frequently people way over the
> speed limit when we'd hardly expect it...

Sounds like recourse should be attainable via law enforcement.

~~~
potatolicious
You can't ticket your way out of this problem - nor can you _afford_ to over
long periods of time. Stationing cops in enough places to actually discourage
speeding is not practicable.

There are fortunately _lots_ of ways to fix this without stationing a cop
every few blocks.

Speed bumps are common, but imperfect. In my hometown on smaller residential
streets struggling with too much through-traffic they've put traffic circles
at the intersections. Locals coming home aren't much impacted but it heavily
discourages fast through traffic.

Another major issue is that suburban streets are _simply too wide_ , many
neighborhoods give more than the 12-foot standard width to a lane (itself a
specification that is _way_ too generous), and we know that wide lanes result
in faster speeds as drivers feel safer (and everyone else feels less safe).
Narrowing lanes have a proven effect of increasing driver awareness and
reducing speed, and also reclaims land for use by actual people.

The solution to traffic is intelligent redesign of streets - enforcement
doesn't really work, especially at scale, and neither does simply telling
people to stop doing bad things. Just like web engineering, user behavior is
governed by what you build, not arbitrary rules that you attach to systems
where it's easier to misuse them than use them properly.

~~~
theseatoms
I totally agree with the approach you've described.

Ticketing is only the first step, a temporary solution that highlights
unacceptable (to local residents) traffic patterns to the local government.

Waze and its user are surfacing inefficiencies in how traffic patterns have
been engineered. Though it'll take time for communities to plan and implement
solutions, these are definitely solvable problems.

~~~
potatolicious
> _" Though it'll take time for communities to plan and implement solutions"_

By default yeah, but it doesn't have to! I think a lot of places get into a
problem where perfect is the enemy of good - they hold off on traffic calming
projects because of cost. Narrowing a road by constructing new sidewalks is
expensive, after all.

But you don't need to do it perfectly - New York City redesigned vast portions
of of its streets using nothing more than paint and traffic cones. No concrete
needs to be poured nor streets torn up to get the process started - and even
better, because these changes are fully reversible, they can often be
implemented quickly without the usual multiple rounds of bureaucracy.

In NYC the redesign of many streets was simply done by the city, and kept
permanently once the quantified results proved the efficacy of the setup.
Easier to ask forgiveness (especially when you have hard data) than permission
and all that.

------
osi
If a route is more efficient, but people don't want it to be, the solution is
traffic calming, not hiding the right of way from maps.

~~~
breischl
Yes, but traffic calming usually involves some or all of: planning studies,
committee meetings, community outreach, and voting, and building & maintaining
physical infrastructure.

Changing the app to just not route through there is _far_ cheaper, easier, and
faster.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Easier, you say? Now someone has to curate the list of "forbidden streets,"
someone has to keep track of who's allowed to request additions/removals, you
obviously need to add that into the algorithms somehow, etc. So, you're not
actually solving anything: you're just passing the buck, pushing the traffic
planners' job to Waze. And guess what: there isn't One Waze To Rule Them All -
push a blocklist hard enough, and other apps, routing from other sources, will
become popular. And suddenly you're playing the usual Internet Censorship
Whack-A-Mole game, trying to find and coerce all the apps that are unwilling
to implement your Traffic Calming Blacklist.

~~~
breischl
Spoken like someone who has never witnessed the process of changing
streetscapes.

There's a project on another street near me to do some traffic calming along a
~10 block stretch. It's actually a relatively small project - they're going to
move the existing street parking out next to traffic, move the existing bike
lane next to the curb, and make a few minor pedestrian & signage improvements.
That effort has been going on for literally _years_ , has taken time from
dozens (maybe hundreds) of people, and will probably cost a 6 or 7 figure
amount of money.

That kind of investment makes sense when you're dealing with a long-term,
ongoing problem. When it's a two-week problem due to construction, it's
completely ridiculous. Software is many orders of magnitude easier to change
than the physical world.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Got a crystal ball, eh? Don't worry, I'm acutely aware what a PITA any sort of
street change is - just changing the designation of a 1-block residential
street to a living street is Impossible (TM), and physically, that's just
signage.

I'm not saying that street planning is easy, not at all. In my opinion, you
seem to be saying "I understand street development, but I don't do software;
therefore if the former is hard, the latter can't be hard (because world is
somehow binary); plus it's Somebody Else's Problem now. Bam, problem solved!
_Magic!_ " \- nope, you just moved the mess to a place it's harder to see.

Or in other words: is street design slow, because it takes a lot of time to
repaint lanes and/or add a virtual barrier into the database, or is it slow
because of all the non-technical issues _surrounding_ it?

~~~
breischl
Actually I'm a software developer by day. Polish up that crystal ball.

I'm suggesting fixing the problem in the software because that's where the
problem was created and where it stands a chance of being fixed. Street
infrastructure cannot be changed fast enough to deal with temporary traffic
problems. Attempting to do so would be ineffective.

~~~
breischl
The problem isn't that the road is closed/restricted.

The problem is that the app is telling people to use other roads that were not
designed for such traffic. If not for the app, the majority of them would
likely have stuck to major arteries that are meant to handle high traffic, but
instead they are flooding into side streets and causing problems.

More succinctly, the problem is that the app encourages using the roads in
ways that are inappropriate. It is abusive of the road network.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Not sure about that; I seem to recall the exact same situation in the 90s,
before any apps: major street blocked, adjoining minor streets become clogged
with cars trying to get around that.

But I think I see your point now: Waze _amplifies_ the problem an order of
magnitude. Still not sure that maintaining a list of "undesirable" streets is
a good idea, but maybe discouraging the routing algorithm from taking side
streets might work? (Seems to work around here - perhaps also a matter of map
data quality?)

------
sandworm101
>>> Tim Connor stands by a sign his neighbor purchased to thwart commuters
from cutting through their quiet residential street in Takoma Park, Md.

So who here is the one really flouting the law? You are not allowed to simply
erect traffic signs, nor are you allowed to restrict access to a
neighbourhood. So it's no surprise that this guy then goes rogue on the app, a
presumed violation of the eula/tos agreements.

~~~
djrogers
That's more than a bit of a straw man there - the article never accused any of
the drivers or the app companies of 'flouting the law'.

~~~
sandworm101
It accuses them of being focused on their cellphones, with the implication
that this is impacting their driving. That's generally a traffic offence,
either distracted driving or cellphone use depending on the local laws.

------
jackfoxy
Waze can have giant screw-ups. I live in a valley with one major freeway.
Every now and then a major accident at a choke point on the freeway will stop
all traffic. Waze will then tell drivers of 2 alternate routes on surface
streets. Both routes, however, re-connect to the freeway below this choke
point. Now instead of just the freeway having gridlock, every thoroughfare in
the valley is gridlocked and locals cannot even get out of their house or back
to their house from local shopping.

------
neves
Here in my third world country, I know people who live near dangerous areas
that love the traffic increase that Waze created. Sure it there is a little
more noise, but they also fell more secure.

Maybe it is just a different point of view.

~~~
CodeCube
Interesting, are you saying that the increased traffic is welcome because
there are now more people around to dissuade crime from occurring?

~~~
neves
Yes

------
danra
I simply hate it when Waze navigates me through a dozen small streets I'm not
familiar with, just to save one minute vs. taking a main road. The multiple
suggested routes often don't mitigate this enough.

Wish for a feature to turn a preference for main roads in general.

~~~
tbyehl
IME, Waze's journeys down non-primary roads probably aren't making my driving
experience less frustrating and probably don't save any time. Invariably it
sends me down a series of side streets with stops signs and dumps me back at a
busy primary road where I have to make a left across traffic without the aid
of a signal. If I was "up" any time by then I'll probably give it all back and
then some waiting to make that final turn of Wave's goofy detour.

~~~
danielweber
"Left turn onto main thoroughfare with no signal." I've encountered this twice
from Google Maps. I wouldn't want this even if it was saving me a few minutes.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Even a right onto a main thoroughfare isn't worth saving a few minutes. Re-
joining the main flow of traffic is stressful and dangerous.

------
Splines
> _And their city councilman, Tim Male, tried to get Google Maps to take note
> of the official detour, by calling the company and flagging it through the
> apps’ feedback feature._

Both Google Maps and Waze have ways (ha!) of editing the routes available in
the map. A street I used to commute through suffered from the non-local
traffic problem and the city erected "No thru traffic" signs. I updated both
gmaps and waze to no longer me through there, it took probably about 30 min
for both.

Oddly enough editing maps in gmaps was disabled for around a year (some time
in 2014 to some time in 2015?). But I _think_ it should be turned back on now.

------
jbmorgado
Perhaps we could be more positive and instead of spending so much time trying
to get his street off Waze instead help change the public opinion and city
official to improve the public transit system or get more people to use
bicycles, or both.

~~~
jrockway
No doubt the subject of this article drives a car to work, probably annoying
someone with the traffic he is a part of.

"You're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic."

A more realistic way of solving the traffic problem is not to get people out
of their cars (that is going to be super-expensive), but the eliminate rush
hours where everyone goes to work at the same time. "No income tax if you work
from 12-8," or something would probably kill traffic dead.

~~~
rplst8
While it's true that distributing the load over more hours will improve things
in the short term, the fact is, with continuous growth, eventually the
roads/routes need some improving.

The simple fact is that in most cities, the road infrastructure is just not up
to the task for the number of people using it, and projects rarely seem to
include the future requirements of the roads based on growth.

The other part of the problem, as I see it, is that the solution is almost
always more lanes, rather than a highway that parallels the original a few
miles to the left or right of the original route. More routes have the benefit
of not bringing all traffic to a halt when one has an accident.

------
rwhitman
It's fascinating to witness this byproduct of the ubiquity of Google Maps /
Waze as it begins introducing traffic jams of it's own creation. So many
people are directed to alternate routes en masse that Google has the power to
direct the flow of traffic.

This is one of those AI-run-amok problems that everyone has been so worried
about. A Google robot is algorithmically directing our traffic now, no self-
driving cars necessary. A bot potentially throwing an enormous monkey wrench
in billions of dollars worth of traffic planning done by city engineers all
over the world. Going to be interesting to see how all this shakes out

------
JustSomeNobody
I'm actually torn on this.

If the city, county, etc. maintains a street as "public", then it's fair game.
However, I know there are jerkarses in the world and would treat residential
streets as their personal race track.

If people are getting agitated and honking and there's traffic jams, that puts
residents in danger.

~~~
jdbernard
Yeah, me too. I'm not a Waze user, but I've lived in my area long enough to be
familiar with a lot of the neighborhood roads. My personal solution is to only
take side streets when the traffic on them is light enough that I'm not making
it worse, and to be extra cautious as I do so. Not really a scalable solution
though.

------
intrasight
I don't like the term "war". I think this is a valid process of crowdsourced
information and neighborhoods then working the political process to put up
"soft" barriers to change that information. And on the plus side for the
neighborhoods, it forces neighbors to meet and hopefully get to know each
other as they try to exert a crowdsourced counterforce.

------
tggrass
The levels of arrogant suburban privilege in this article are staggering.

------
dkhenry
Yes what we should do is complain that people are starting to use side streets
because no one plans on increased traffic when developers and homeowners are
building mega suburbs. If you want sub-urban sprawl, but don't want to invest
in infrastructure then your street should be over run with commuters.

~~~
enoch_r
One of the examples in the article is Clinton St, a designated "bike
boulevard" in a dense residential neighborhood of Portland, 1-2 blocks south
of one of the bigger, cooler commercial streets in the city. This is not a
case of suburbanites suffering for their sins in some morality play--some of
the best bike infrastructure in the city is what's being overrun by commuters.
Neither the people living along Clinton, nor the bicyclists who were
incredibly unhappy to lose a low-stress route through the city, are looking to
maintain a suburban lifestyle.

------
S_A_P
If it were me, I would never live on a "busy" street. I dont know that you can
put the genie back in the bottle here. I dont use WAZE, but I do use my
navigation system in a similar fashion if I notice a build up of traffic.
There are too many navigational tools that can direct you around traffic.

------
Overtonwindow
Waze is providing a solution for poorly constructed and ignored
infrastructure. I am a homeowner and a Waze user. I think if you have a
problem with traffic through your neighborhood, blame the city Council, and
push them to action. Don't blame the solution to bad infrastructure.

------
yAak
Google Maps is routing me down these 1-lane residential roads, too, and I'd
generally rather it didn't.

These 1-lane roads are already a headache for those living there, with cars
parked on both sides, making dealing with ANY traffic a pain.

Traffic is terrible where I live, but I'd rather spend another 1-5 minutes on
a major thoroughfare than drive through someone's neighborhood.

I don't live on a street that has this problem (it's a dead end) but we have
our own parking disaster unrelated to thru traffic, so maybe its easier for me
to empathize with these homeowners about something that they have almost no
control over and lowers quality of life.

~~~
massysett
Google Maps is doing this to me in Washington DC. I probably wouldn't mind if
it actually saved time. The problem is that drivers before me tried it, so the
city has made many of the streets one way during rush hour only, or particular
turns are banned. Google should program in more of these details before it
routes people down what its maps already know are tiny, non-through streets.
Usually I consult Google for traffic but when it picks these circuitous routes
I ignore it because I can't trust it.

In the same vein sometimes it is worth it to stay on a main road even if a
perfectly valid side route would save just a few minutes. Driving the side
route can be less safe, more stressful, and it's easier to miss a turn, which
wipes out the savings anyway. I wish the map software would account for this.

------
brbsix
I really wish Google Maps wouldn't be pushing these reroutes by default. A
friend was pulled over a few days ago in a small town off the Interstate (the
sort of place with bored LE) and got embroiled in all sorts of legal nonsense
thanks to this "feature". There's only one obvious route (and I know it well),
so I couldn't figure out how she was "caught up" in the aforementioned city.
She said Google Maps had redirected her off the Interstate and that she had
spent 40 minutes driving back roads. I didn't believe her.

The next day I was driving as she played navigator with her phone. It was a
highway route that I know well. Several times it redirected us around
"slowdowns" and (what it referred to as) construction. Out of curiosity due to
the prior events, I begrudgingly obliged it's instructions. It was completely
nonsensical... Not only did it not save time, but it added a whole new
dimension of additional stress driving through unfamiliar, unsigned, back
roads.

I don't know that I feel comfortable using or recommending the current
incarnation of Google Maps navigation to others. It's great and all when you
already know exactly where and how you're going someplace. The traffic
estimates can be invaluable. However until they scale back this rerouting
business, I'd be really weary of using it any further. There are plenty of
decent "dumb" navigation apps that won't fuck you like this.

------
snowake
This is a delicate and complicated issue, to be sure. It's got a bit of a
NIMBY flavor to it - at least, personally. Like many other Waze users below, I
benefit greatly from the alternatives the app presents - and have been expert
at quickly switching to the 'routes' view to see JUST how much time that
detour is going to save me. With the heavily congested Bay Area freeways, our
35 minute drive can easily take well over an hour (the 'regular' way) and Waze
consistently trims it down to under 50 minutes, door-to-door.

All of that said - if there was a sudden influx of 'through' traffic on my
quiet, residential street, where my child plays - I'm pretty sure I wouldn't
like it. Of course, no matter WHAT route we're taking, every driver is
expected to travel within the legal speed limit and remain fully aware of
surroundings... right?? I know, I know.

There's no doubt that this is a technology that's here to stay - and I applaud
enhancements like highlighting schools, hospitals or other "slow zones" (they
could even become optional 'areas to avoid'). With more and more autonomy and
connectivity being built into vehicles (which disturbs me due to security
implications), I imagine it won't be long until this functionality gets (at
least optionally) embedded in the vehicle.

Perhaps a self-drive car, aware of its surroundings, wouldn't hit the plastic
"Slow - Children at Play" sign. :)

------
edward
Tragedy of the commons. Waze could let people pay drivers to not use their
road. The price can be determined by the market. Start at $0.50, only valid
once per day in each direction.

~~~
chongli
Why should the locals have to pay? What we need is a system of license-plate-
reading cameras with automated ticketing to bring up the enforcement of No
Thru Traffic signs to near 100%. Then, if Waze routed a hundred cars through a
neighbourhood they'd all end up paying $100 fines, bringing in a big stream of
revenue to the city and discouraging the use of the app.

Perhaps even more practical would be a law to allow the residents themselves
to set up and maintain the system in exchange for a cut of the ticket revenue
for their neighbourhood!

------
ablation
“We had traffic jams, people were honking. It was pretty harrowing.”

"Harrowing"?! Man, I hope this guy never has to experience anything actually
bad happen in his life.

------
blisterpeanuts
The newer neighborhoods in Phoenix are designed on purpose to prevent this
type of cut-through traffic. The northern Glendale area where my house is has
luxuriously broad thoroughfares with three lanes in each direction, plus
usually an extra right turn lane and left turn lane at intersections, plus a
median that accommodates incidental left turns without interrupting traffic
flow. From a driving point of view, these roads are virtually perfect.

But the minute you enter the neighborhoods, which tend to have walls between
the houses and the main roads to keep down the noise, the roads become curly-
cue winding paths with T-intersections and dead ends all over the place. The
point is, you can easily get to your house, and you can easily get to various
outlets to a major road or to the minor "partial cut-throughs" that are really
only useful to the residents. But few will use the neighborhoods as cut-
throughs.

I would suppose Waze is not of much value in this type of district, except
maybe to warn you to reroute from one major road to the other.

Maybe the residents of these cut-through neighborhoods alluded to in the
article should introduce more speed bumps and stop signs to "calm" the traffic
and make their roads less desirable alternatives. In some cases, creating one-
ways is also useful if it doesn't inconvenience the residents too much.
Parking on the street, if legal, would also impede traffic, forcing people to
cross lanes or wait.

It would also help to have the main thoroughfares be properly widened and
maintained as in the Phoenix example, don't allow major road and sewage
maintenance during rush hour, etc.

------
ThomaszKrueger
In Rio some tourists had a pretty harsh reception when they made a turn
suggested by Waze.. got riddled with bullets.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/10/05...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/10/05/how-
directions-on-the-waze-app-led-to-death-in-brazils-favelas/)

------
yellowapple
> For one thing, the system knows if you’re not actually in motion. More
> important, it constantly self-corrects, based on data from other drivers.

> “The nature of crowdsourcing is that if you put in a fake accident, the next
> 10 people are going to report that it’s not there,” said Julie Mossler,
> Waze’s head of communications.

This sounds like something solvable with a farm of Android VMs and fake
location data. Get an estimate of how many cars are cutting through the
neighborhood, spin up enough VMs to out-vote them, feed Waze fake location
data (pretty sure you can do this through developer options, though I don't
know if Android supports spoofed motion specifically), and simulate an
accident or some other blockage.

On an unrelated note, if you're stuck in traffic, wouldn't there still be a
lack of motion? That seems like a weird sanity check. It's probably an
oversimplified description of what's actually being detected against (stop-
and-go versus just standing there), but it sounds like even this check could
be defeated with an ordinary GPS-enabled smartphone and a bicycle.

~~~
brbsix
I assume Waze is monitoring the entire duration of your travel (while you have
it on at least). It should be fairly easy to identify users who stay within
the 0.25mi radius of one neighborhood and/or never exceed 20mph.

There is an 'Allow mock locations' toggle in developer options, though
applications can detect that it's been enabled. Xposed framework can prevent
that however.

Perhaps some community will start a crowdsource fund to hire a developer to
implement such a system? Or go low-tech and crowdsource real users, paying $n
per false report.

They could also take a page from the residents of Beachwood Canyon (near the
Hollywood sign in LA) who petitioned their council member to arrange a deal
with Garmin and Google Maps. [http://gizmodo.com/why-people-keep-trying-to-
erase-the-holly...](http://gizmodo.com/why-people-keep-trying-to-erase-the-
hollywood-sign-from-1658084644)

------
iambyteman
Seems like Waze should probably try to send thru traffic down double-yellow-
line roads. Those roads are typically better able to handle the traffic at
least where I live (in Baltimore). Sending folks down a single lane (but not
technically one way) street is nuts and doesn't really save much time.

~~~
dragonwriter
those roads typically have higher speed limits and will be faster routes --
until they are clogged with traffic. Which is when Waze (and, for that matter,
Google Maps, and any other traffic-aware routing system) will use alternative
routes which are slower in the ideal case, but faster with the actual current
traffic loads.

There's ways to avoid this:

(1) Design residential districts so that through traffic is impossible. (Lots
of places do this, by having branching patterns rather than grids; this, of
course, also makes it more possible for accidents, etc., to prevent
ingress/egress.)

(2) Provide capacity on arterial roads so that they don't jam up and leave
residential roads as faster through routes.

(3) Improve public transport capacity so that the existing capacity of
arterial roads is sufficient.

Long before Waze and similar systems, people who frequently drove in an area
would learn over time the alternate routes (including those through
residential neighborhoods) that provided better times when main routes clogged
up and use them freely. Technology just makes it so that information is more
rapidly acquired by commuters. Its irrational, however, to expect commuters
that have that information, whether through trial-and-error born of
frustration (and then spread through word of mouth) or through modern
technology to _not_ use it.

------
ucaetano
The american dream is everyone having their own cul de sac :)

------
dclowd9901
“In some extreme cases, we have to address it to preserve the sanctity of a
residential neighborhood.”

Bull fucking shit. This nimby crap has got to stop. This is a public road. If
you were smart you'd buy the road and put a toll on it.

------
donatj
I think there entire thing is looked at backwards by city planers. Instead of
having one major road you force everyone on to, make all the side streets
viable. Parallel works great when you can't speed up the serial speeds.

------
gerbilly
I don't understand why so much of this thread is caught up on issues of what
is legal, and what isn't, often citing that nobody 'owns' the street.

Isn't it a matter of being considerate?

Everybody knows that most rules in a society are implicit and unwritten.

To insist on only obeying the laws that are written in the most selfish way
possible is to be intentionally, self-servingly, naïve.

We aren't robots, we are people. We live in a society, not a scenario out of a
game theory textbook.

------
olentangy
I want Waze to add new features: 1\. Crowd source bad roads. Some interstates
are atrocious, I'd happily turn on [X] avoid potholes and uneven pavement.
Maybe use the motion sensors to do this automatically. 2\. Get me know
altitude. This would made planning trips through the mountains way better -
avoiding high mountain passes would be very helpful. 3\. Overlay radar when
thunderstorms are hopscotching across the land.

------
mback00
The problem here is not the app. People need to understand that the road /is/
public! Your neighborhood does /not/ own the road - everyone does. IMO, The
solution to the problem of conjestion is opening of carpool lanes to all
travelers, aggressive clearing accidents, creation of visual barriers (blinds)
to accidents, and above all global acceptance of driverless systems.

~~~
poolbath1
The next thing we need to do is change the language of the road to "incidents"
instead of "accidents". An accident implies that there is no way to avoid the
outcome of an incident. An incident implies that a traffic collision has
occurred. Once we rule out human error or any other cause for the incident,
then it becomes an accident. We will find that many of the traffic collisions
that we are currently referring to as accidents could have been prevented in
many ways:

\- remove vast amounts of human error by automating driving and being much
more strict for driving infractions (Inattention, reckless driving, DUI)

\- infrastructure that encourages speeding / leaves no options for pedestrians
or cyclists causing incident hotspots.

This will allow us to focus on the safety issues that really are accidents,
and usually caused by poor maintenance on vehicles and infrastructure.

------
mathattack
One thing that Waze misses (perhaps in the interest of simplicity?) is nudges.
As in, "I prefer highways" and "I prefer no speedbumps". I don't know a clean
way to map it against time (Don't go residential unless you save me 10 mins)
but this could be a start.

I like Waze for helping me survive Bay Area traffic. If there's an accident, I
do like the roundabout directions.

~~~
golergka
It has "routing styles", "avoid toll roads" and "avoid freeways" in settings —
sounds close enough.

------
epalmer
I turn off the navigation. I know how to get to work and home. What I want to
know is where the accidents are, something in the road, car stopped on the
side of the road. things like that. I make navigation choices once presented
with these options.

------
vermontdevil
Not all roads are created equal. Residential roads have different maintenance
and capacity than main roads.

If traffic increases due to shortcut traffic, towns will have to increase
budgets to accommodate more wear and tear upkeep.

------
sehugg
At least in Takoma Park's case, these are decisions made 50 years ago coming
home to roost -- that is, the decision not to build any highways through
northern DC.

------
cgtyoder
Duplicate:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844246)

------
dghughes
In a way I know how he feels.

A portable speed bump was placed on a parallel road to where I live and
traffic avoids it as if it were a pack of zombies.

------
Shivetya
want them out of residential, speed humps are wonderful, not the little curb
like bumps, I am talking the flat top type that you ride and down on.

been done in a few areas where I live when people started shortcutting on
streets that were home to influential people. much more difficult to get into
simple subdivisions though

------
killface
Lol, now these assholes also own the streets and traffic patterns around their
houses. Good to know.

------
CPLX
I think those of us who live in the central business districts of major urban
ares should organize a once a month event to take 500-1000 cars to a specific
suburban neighborhood, where we will take up all the legal on street parking
and cause a traffic jam, to prove a minor but important point.

------
bgok
A friend laughed at me once when I said I felt bad about cutting through
neighborhood streets when waze routed me that way.

------
Tokkemon
Remember the old days when one actually had to figure out directions for
themselves by looking at a map?

------
hans
Homeownership is so overrated, not so sovereign after all..

~~~
ryguytilidie
I don't understand. Your expectation is that if you buy a home, you should be
able to prohibit people from using the public street in front of it?

~~~
macintux
I think many people expect, when they buy a home on a quiet street, that the
street will remain quiet indefinitely.

Obviously that's not an entirely rational expectation, but it's very
understandable.

I grew up in an entirely enclosed (not gated, just not connected)
neighborhood, where riding my bike as a young child was very safe. After I
moved out, it was connected to new neighborhoods, so there is now non-local
traffic. It's a fairly dramatic change for people still living there.

~~~
jdbernard
Yes. When was growing up from a relatively young age I could be gone half the
day on my bike, traveling to friends' houses or nearby parks. I'm not sure I
will let my children do that today because of the traffic through our current
neighborhood.

