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Waze and Other Traffic Dodging Apps Prompt Cities To Game the Algorithms (usatoday.com)
KindMind writes: USA today reports that Waze and others are causing traffic planners to try to figure out how to gain control back. From the article: "While traffic savvy GPS apps like Waze and Google Maps have provided users a way to get around traffic, it has caused massive headaches for city planners. With highways frequently congested, navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze started telling drivers to hop off the freeway at Fremont's Mission Boulevard, cut through residential streets and then hop back on the highway where things were clearer -- much to the distress of the people who lived there. 'The commuters didn't live or work in Fremont and didn't care about our residential neighborhoods,' said Noe Veloso, Fremont's principal transportation engineer. Fremont instituted commute-hour turn restrictions on the most heavily used residential cut-through routes. The city also partnered with Waze through its Connected Citizens Program in order to share data and information, such as the turn restrictions, so that the app takes them into account. The result has been effective, but Veloso is worried the changes may simply reroute commuters into other neighborhoods."
Or, here in Austin, 20-30 mile long bike paths for 100+ million dollars, while there has not been a -single- highway improvement, other than making an existing road a toll road, since 1995.
Even without Waze, I can save 30-45 minutes on a commute by exiting, going down 10-20 blocks, and getting back on an exit north of the university. A city trying to stop that is in dereliction of their duties... these are public roads, and people using Waze are free to use them. If they don't like it, fucking fix the highways.
The buses have a 15% utilization rate? Sound here the buses hold 90 off people when full. At 15%, that's about 10 people. They take up the space of little more than a car when travelling at speed: the safety gap you need to leave is far longer than the bus. Sounds like a net win for making more space available for cars.
I'll also bet that like here, the utilization is MUCH higher at rush hour, when demand for space on the road is heaviest, meaning the gains are much better.
Or, you know, politicians could spend the gas tax funds to improve the freeways and stop pissing them away on mass transit buses that have a 15% utilization rate...
They could, but I always find it strange when drivers make these kinds of complaints. The most effective thing for improving things for drivers is to get fewer people to drive. That way the roads will be clearer for you. Objecting to politicians spending money on non-car forms of transport seems to be like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
That's mostly my attitude.
In Minnesota, MNDOT decided to close all of US-169 to replace a bridge/causeway and now a whole bunch of people are trying to cut through side streets versus taking the MNDOT-approved detours, which are on parallel freeways miles away.
What's funny is that the city they're driving through, Edina, is probably the wealthiest one in the whole state and the residents are MELTING DOWN over the cut-through traffic. They're organizing vigilante slow traffic, the city has been cracking down hard on traffic violations and has put up all manner of "calming" obstructions to discourage people.
It's so hard to not link their economic privilege with their apparent sense of geographic privilege. I think they believe they ARE living in a gated community and somebody left the gate open.
As an expat who has lived all over the planet, the best organized cities make it really hard to drive *through* neighborhoods by which a neighborhood is maybe one 8x8 block region divided from other similar neighborhoods by a main artery road.
Germany is perhaps the best at this city planning skill. One learns fast to never try to drive *through* such a neighorhood block because you will go mad. Dead end obstacles, trees planted in the middle of the road that you must slooooow down for, super narrow roads (despite wide sidewalks and ample parking), and raised platforms at crosswalks(think of a 5 yard thick speed bump) make going around them the only sensible choice.
They do it because they believe if cars are going fast enough to kill children in small neighborhoods, it is a street design problem so they are often solving high traffic rates by intentionally making it impossible to drive fast with the above car thwarting techniques. Side effect is that waze is moot here and neighborhoods all remain quiet and safe.
Also makes it so they have no police enforcing speed limits in such neighborhoods. The streets are made super narrow and convoluted exactly to the degree necessary to keep you at or below the intended speed limit. The attitude is also something like "If you dont like it, then get on public transit" , which by the way is also fantastic in Germany.
Traffic and speeding are both just engineering problems waiting to be fixed if you see it clearly.
Pretty good? Bart has a years long list for parking at most stations as well as being standing room only at the first stop. Caltrain might be ok if you live or work in the peninsula or the city, but if you can afford to live in those places you're probably commuting by private jet or helicoptor anyway - forget east or north bay. I've been to a lot of cities around the world and public transit in the bay area is hands down the worst I've ever seen.
They just did the opposite here, reducing a 4 lane freeway to two "peasant" lanes and turning the other two lanes into expensive toll lanes ("Lexus lanes"). The tolls can be as much as $10 for a one way trip. This is on I-405 from Everett to Renton in WA state.
$20 per day times 250 days per year....so about $5000 a year to get back and forth to work. And we already paid for those fucking roads with our tax dollars.
Now, of course, the traffic in the "peasant" lanes is terrible, just super super bad. Gee, who could have foreseen that?
Lots of people would love to kill the fuckers that made this happen. I mean really kill them, with guns and knives and shit.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...