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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."
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.