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."

Comments

I'm hungry

[Anonymous Coward]

God forbid that someone gets off a freeway and discovers a local establishment while passing through.

Re: I'm hungry

[slasher999]

Excellent point. Interstates destroyed many communities due to their limited access nature. In recent years some roads formerly designated as Interstates have actually been torn down in some areas bringing back traffic (the good kind) to some communities that deperately need it.

Re:I'm hungry

[xevioso]

By "discover" do you mean have to park, probably parallel, thus backing up traffic further? A lot fo smaller places and communities don't have the parking available for lots of retail traffic.

Re: I'm hungry

[__aaclcg7560]

The Cypress Street Viaduct (I-880) that ran through a West Oakland neighborhood. After the viaduct collapsed in the 1989 earthquake, the replacement structure went around the neighborhood through an unused rail yard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Street_Viaduct

Re: I'm hungry

[dougdonovan]

if you dont want traffic in front of your home that is next to a major highway, move.

Re:I'm hungry

[DerekLyons]

God forbid that someone gets off a freeway and discovers a local establishment while passing through.

Having owned a business along such a commuter route... All I can say is ROTFLMAO. You have no idea what you're talking about.

All those commuters care about is getting the hell out of Dodge and back onto the freeway and getting home. They're not even looking at the local businesses.

Re: I'm hungry

[radiumsoup]

Nobody wants to stay at your hotel anyway, Norman.

Re:I'm hungry

[meerling]

So instead people sit in a traffic jam, and make it worse, trapping more people, and still the people that are close enough to an exit will still end up taking it to drive through residential areas, and tend to do so for a longer distance both because the traffic is backed up further, and often they don't know just when it's cleared up and get on after that point... Seems to me the apps are reducing the problems for everyone while some bozo in the local government is annoyed that traffic is rerouting past his damaged system.

Re:I'm hungry

[Anonymous Coward]

But they aren't trying to keep the routes from commercial districts. They are trying to keep people from using residential districts as the throughway. You won't find much in the way of businesses in a residential zone but you are much more likely to find kids and pets in the road.

Re:I'm hungry

[whoever57]

Take a look at the map of Fremont. People commuting North in the evenings on i680 get off at South Mission and attempt to get back on at North Mission. Or they may have come off i880N and are just attempting to get onto i680N. They are not looking for local establishments, just a short cut.

i680 is frequently very slow between these two junctions, hence the desire to get on at the N Mission junction.

The local establishments lose trade because actual customers cannot get close to the local businesses during the evening commute.

Re:I'm hungry

[Cramer]

They aren't "using" their phone. It's duct taped to the dash, telling them what to do, and they blindly obey.

Re: I'm hungry

[murdocj]

If you don't want to be stuck in a traffic jam, walk.

Re:I'm hungry

[Maxo-Texas]

That's a real interesting deflection there but the problem is high traffic volume on streets designed for low traffic volume.

* More accidents
* Much higher road maintenance costs because
* High traffic roads are built much thicker and of different materials than low traffic roads.
* Danger to neighborhood children and street traffic on roads not designed to for high density, high speed traffic.

Various traffic shaping tools can be used such as...
* Blocking streets.
* Turning the streets into a maze with lots of dead end sections
* Closable gates that completely block traffic thru the neighborhoods at certain times of day.
* Lowering speed limits on residential roads and enforcing the lower speed limits.

In zoned communities, restaurants are on the edges or even in separate districts. Even in my *non* zoned neighborhood which fortunately doesn't face this traffic problem, we have a grand total of one hamburger joint and 2 convenience sores. The restaurants are all 2 miles away on the highway feeders and in a business strip center.

So the likelihood of discovering a restaurant as you cut thru a residential neighborhood at 50mph is vanishingly small- even if you had any real intention of stopping instead of trying a conway-esque deflection.

Re:I'm hungry

[AmiMoJo]

Seems to me the apps are reducing the problems for everyone

Except the people living in the rat runs. Pollution goes up, health deteriorates and costs increase. Accidents increase, insurance goes up. Property prices decrease, they can't use the street for other things any more.

There is a reason that major roads are kept separate from where people live.

Re:I'm hungry

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a single person, it's 10,000+ commuters simultaneously trying to get from one end of the freeway to the other, and if the freeway is blocked, they'll take every possible side street between the nearest off-ramp and the first on-ramp past the blockage. Because Waze broadcasts the best route based on whoever is moving the fastest, one person who knows the backroads causes everyone else to follow, causing more jams elsewhere.

Re:I'm hungry

[Bert64]

Parking in such places is not only in short supply and difficult to use without holding up traffic, but often expensive, and with overly aggressive traffic wardens all too keen to fine you for even the slightest infraction.

Re:I'm hungry

[Bert64]

When these GPS systems were new they actually helped, you could get off the highway and take a shortcut to avoid the blockage...

Now they tend to make things worse, the highways are designed for large volumes of traffic but the residential streets are not, so traffic that will slow a highway down will bring residential roads to a complete standstill. You're often better off just staying on the slow moving highway.

The biggest problem as always is the outdated notion of everyone working at the same time in the same place... If working locations were spread out, as were working times, and with more people working from home if their job made it practical to do so, traffic problems would be pretty much a thing of the past.

Re:I'm hungry

[dgatwood]

I would argue that to some degree, this is a normal side effect of living on a street that parallels a major highway, and to the extent that it isn't, it is actually caused by attempts to keep people from using secondary streets. One of the biggest reasons that our highways are such a nightmare in the Bay Area is that people use them too much. People hop on the freeway to go one or two exits when they could just as easily take city streets, largely because of broken traffic light timing that discourages people from using those streets instead. The result is that the freeway system becomes completely clogged by people entering and exiting unnecessarily often, and everybody suffers.

Ironically, the best way to fix this problem is to rip out all of the traffic "calming" silliness, program the traffic lights on major city streets to maximize the flow of traffic in the direction that parallels any traffic backup, and encourage people to use those larger city streets for their local commutes instead of getting on the freeway in the first place. The more cars you get using (at least) major city streets, the more the highways will improve. Just reducing the number of cars entering a highway by a small margin can have a big impact on the speed of that highway.

Re:I'm hungry

[dj245]

Seems to me the apps are reducing the problems for everyone

Except the people living in the rat runs. Pollution goes up, health deteriorates and costs increase. Accidents increase, insurance goes up. Property prices decrease, they can't use the street for other things any more.

There is a reason that major roads are kept separate from where people live.

Not only that, but one of the largest causes of congestion on highways is on/off ramps. If traffic on the on/off ramps increases, overall traffic might increase too. There's a particularly bad example of this on my commute at 29.9378728,-95.4454552. The eastbound highway has an exit onto the feeder road, followed shortly by the entrance ramp. The feeder road has no stoplights in between the exit and onramps. Waze often tells me to take the exit and then re-enter the highway. Traffic is often backed up here at peak times, but clears up after the entrance ramp.

It is clear that Waze is promoting a route which makes traffic worse in this case. You can watch it unfold as someone takes the offramp and then tries to merge back on, causing slowdowns. This is a very clear case, there are likely many others which may not be so obvious.

Re: I'm hungry

[saloomy]

What does that have to do with this? We're talking about traffic going through residential neighborhoods. I'm sorry to say it, but those residents don't have the slightest expectation of a private road. They didn't buy in gated community, or have private access roads, they bought in a neighborhood with "through streets", so the public (which pays for those roads btw) has a right to drive on them. If the streets experience higher than engineered use, then the city planners should take that into account and resurface the roads to a higher rating. Streets already have engineered maximums (like no truck over 6 tons), so as long as the drivers understand where their vehicles go and can't go, I see no problem here. This is a govt employee falling out of line with his work, which is to see where traffic is going, and make arrangements to accommodate.

Re: I'm hungry

[Cederic]

I believe the point here is that someone carefully chose a home a sensible distance from the major highway, only to find a bunch of commuters driving down their leafy secluded lane trying to dodge a jam that's on the highway.

Or are you proposing that nobody lives within six miles of a highway? I think that'll result in new highways; we'll run out of countryside quite quickly.

Re: I'm hungry

[__aaclcg7560]

They didn't buy in gated community, or have private access roads, they bought in a neighborhood with "through streets", so the public (which pays for those roads btw) has a right to drive on them.

Because this was a poor minority neighborhood, government planners didn't think twice about running a freeway through it. Residents didn't "buy in" to having their neighborhood split in half. When the 1989 earthquake brought down the freeway, there was a huge public outcry to rebuilding the freeway as was before and re-routing the freeway through the rail yard reunited the neighborhood.

Re:I'm hungry

[nickittynickname]

Gross overpopulation is the reason bay area traffic is so bad. The same reason home and rent prices are so expensive and people have to commute 1-3 hours a day on the road. Also, Oakland is a major shipping port so the the right two lanes are always clogged with semis. Jumping on and off the freeway, only taking up the right lane, is a very minimal impact on traffic.

Re:I'm hungry

[LunaticTippy]

In Fremont you aren't correct. I drive this route a couple times a month during rush hour and like to work errands into the rare days that I drive. I often stop at restaurants, grocery stores, other retail, bars, etc. and they are all slammed. Often the parking lots are near capacity. I like taking care of my todo list while traffic thins out and it appears that many thousands of other commuters feel the same.

I don't live in Fremont, don't work in Fremont, it is just on my way. I probably spend several hundred dollars a month there over the handful of days I am passing through.

Re:I'm hungry

[dgatwood]

Not at all. The Bay Area isn't even remotely overpopulated compared with other cities. In fact, the most dense city in the Bay Area, San Francisco, isn't even in the top 20 cities in the U.S. density-wise. It actually ranks below a suburb of Louisville, KY. The population density is basically a non-issue. The problem is not the number of people, but rather how far they are driving, how often they are driving, and how efficiently they use the roads. Specifically:

• We have terrible public transit because the density is too low on average.
• Ill-conceived property tax laws in the 1970s make it too expensive to move closer to your job, resulting in some of the longest average commutes in non-rural America.
• Businesses are not sufficiently encouraged through tax incentives to spread out beyond the peninsula, resulting in businesses locating in areas where the vast majority of workers can't afford to actually live.
• Traffic lights are deliberately programmed to slow the flow of traffic to encourage cars to use the freeway, effectively wasting the vast majority of our road capacity.
• Poorly designed lanes force unnecessary merges.
• Sudden lane shifts cause traffic to enter other lanes accidentally, causing a lot of wrecks.
• Inadequate "business" routes fail to provide high-volume secondary highways that parallel the major freeways.

I'm sure there are many other issues that contribute, but these are the problems that I've noticed causing the largest number of wrecks and significant backups, at least in the South Bay.

Jumping on and off the freeway, only taking up the right lane, is a very minimal impact on traffic.

You couldn't be more wrong. In practice, there is effectively a maximum difference of just a few miles per hour between adjacent lanes, dictated by the way traffic flows. Every time a vehicle in the next lane over needs to exit, it has to merge into that right lane. If the right lane is moving more slowly, that merge slows down the second lane for a good mile or more behind that vehicle, bringing it down to just faster than the rightmost lane. Then this repeats for the next lane over, and so on.

Incidentally, this is why every study that has ever taken a serious look at carpool lanes has concluded that they are almost completely useless unless they have their own dedicated exits on the opposite side of the road. I can count the number of times that I've seen the carpool lane going more than about 5 MPH faster than the next lane over on one hand in almost two decades of driving in the Bay Area. As long as those cars have to exit through a glorified parking lot, how can they possibly move significantly faster than the parking lot? Everything affects everything. And in aggregate, all those cars that get onto the highway when they could have gotten there in the same time on a city street with better traffic light timing cause a significant impact on traffic.

Re:I'm hungry

[VisceralLogic]

God forbid that someone gets off a freeway and discovers a local establishment while passing through.

Having owned a business along such a commuter route... All I can say is ROTFLMAO. You have no idea what you're talking about.

All those commuters care about is getting the hell out of Dodge and back onto the freeway and getting home. They're not even looking at the local businesses.

I discovered and patronized two businesses based on routing my commute to avoid highways.

Re: I'm hungry

[Rakarra]

Also the Embarcadero Freeway, Ca-480 that can along the coast of San Francisco. It was also demolished after the 1989 earthquake, and now the area is open plazas, waterfront, housing, and parks.

That particular area greatly benefited, though the Chinatown section north of it hated losing the freeway, and mayor Art Agnos was defeated in his next reelection. It's a popular topic for study for urban planners considering freeway removal.

Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you mean we're just supposed to sit in gridlock instead? Our highways have been an inadequate crumbling mess for decades. The proper response here is to fix them, not gripe that there's an inadequate workaround.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[xevioso]

By "fixing" do you mean widen? Which usually actually ADDS to congestion on many cases?

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[DontBeAMoran]

Another point of view would be that highways are more than adequate for decades, it's selfish people who don't use mass transit and idiots living one hour away from work that are the problem.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

F'd if I know - widen them, stack them, dig under them, do whatever you need to to make sure they handle current peak capacity without delays and projected capacity increases for the next 50 years. It's not 1960 anymore. I've never seen any indication wider highways add congestion.

Re: Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[slasher999]

Fixing could mean removing as I pointed out above. The predecessor to the Interstate system was the US Highway system which didn't have the drawbacks of Interstates and quite honestly aren't necessarily slower than an Interstate.

Re: Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe no one can afford to live that close to work due to the huge cost of some urban areas. Or maybe it's not safe to live in those areas. Don't be so quick to judge.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[xevioso]

Or you can do what most major cities around the world do, which is fund mass transit at extremely high levels, to encourage people to not drive.

The Bay Area has some unique geographical features that make the sort of public transit that works extremely well in other places more difficult here; that said, it's still pretty good.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[FatdogHaiku]

Obligatory oldie...
https://xkcd.com/277/

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[hawguy]

Oh, you mean we're just supposed to sit in gridlock instead? Our highways have been an inadequate crumbling mess for decades. The proper response here is to fix them, not gripe that there's an inadequate workaround.

If I had to choose between you and 1000 other commuters racing down my small residential street and you sitting in traffic, I'd pick having you sit in traffic. I didn't move within walking distance of work to have to deal with commute traffic on my own street.

There's no easy "fix" to congested freeways around here -- the freeways have already expanded to the center as far as they can go, and they are surrounded by homes and businesses to each side, so any expansion would be prohibitively expensive.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[AK Marc]

Improving roads doesn't add to congestion. It reveals the extent of the neglect, but that's a different issue. Most of the studies into "adding" to congestion were looking at roads operating at 500% capacity, which then add 10% to capacity, and see an increase in throughput. This is by design. Roads can be congestion free. But if they were, the greens wouldn't have any traffic to complain about, so they don't want it, and the capitalists/politiicans wouldn't have an endless supply of ineffective billion dollar projects to get profits/bribes to build.

So the 99% is stuck in traffic, because transportation is a political problem, not a technical one.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[__aaclcg7560]

In this case, "fixing" would be reducing the population by about 50%.

After the dot com bust in 2001, 2M+ people moved out of Silicon Valley and SF Bay Area. Traffic was wonderful until the economy started improving and people moved back in from the hinterlands.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

it's selfish people who don't use mass transit and idiots living one hour away from work that are the problem.

Yes, those inconsiderate bastards that can't find a job that's only 5 minutes away from where they live! Who do they think they are??

Newsflash, dumbfuck: EVERYONE would love to live close to where their job is, but it doesn't always work out that way.

Shockingly, some people change jobs once in a while, and even more shockingly, some people can't afford to move or find it impractical to do so.

Should I move away from the home I've lived in for 20+ years just to be a little closer to wherever it is I work? No fucking way.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[xevioso]

Trains in Tokyo are light-years beyond "standing room only". Until we have public servants literally squishing people into trains to make sure the doors close, you can't really talk about Bart being crowded. At certain times of the day, trains are crowded, yes...but literally NOTHING like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

or this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

So if you haven't been to those places, you should get out more before you talk about how bad BART is. In addition, almost none of those other cities has the feature unique to the Bay Area, which is the bottleneck of the tube under the bay connecting SF to the East Bay.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[hawguy]

Let us know when someone asks you to make that choice. Until then, it's up to everyone and about what's best for most. Build over or build under and yes, it will be expensive and people will lose their homes and business just like they did the first time the freeways were built. Did you really think this just had to be done once and that we'd be good forever?

Someone already asked me to make that choice, maybe it was even you, Anonymous Coward:

Oh, you mean we're just supposed to sit in gridlock instead?

He asked, I answered.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[R3d M3rcury]

The problem is that garbage expands to fill the space allotted. If you add more lanes, more people will use the freeway and you end up with the same problem in a few years.

Let's say I'm deciding on a house. Well, I work here and there's a nice house 10 miles from work. But there's a house that's just as nice but a bit cheaper 40 miles from work. So I'll buy that house and drive on the freeway. Other people have the same idea and pretty soon that freeway is full of commuters going to-and-from work. If you add capacity, you just end up with more people making that same decision to live further away because the freeway makes it so convenient.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[MightyYar]

If you consider me selfish, then so be it. I don't take mass transit because the hour+ it would take me to get to work on the train/bus combo would cost me 1.5 hours of time in the day. I could charge 1.5 hours less each day or see less of my family. I can't move closer to work because that would mean moving further away from my wife's job, increasing her commute. She can't take mass transit because her job is in a terrifying area of town and she has odd hours where it is not safe. I'm not going to be apologetic and neither is she.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Qzukk]

The real problem is that the freeways are designed to be "hurry up and wait" systems. Designers bring in thousands and thousands of cars on 3 lanes at 60 MPH, then ask them all to take a single lane exit at 45MPH, then they scratch their heads and wonder why things go to shit.

Bonus points if they put a stoplight 100 feet from the end of the exit ramp that is red more than 50% of the time.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Cramer]

Part of the solution is simply teaching people how to f'ing drive. First lesson: you aren't the only f'ing person in the universe; stop driving like you are.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Cramer]

I'd like to see your data, sir. My experience says exactly the opposite. Yes, eventual population growth can make any road system inadequate over time. That's what we're seeing here... population growing faster than infrastructure.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Cmdln Daco]

That doesn't scale to infinity.

Typically these sorts of arguments are made by advocates of high density housing along rapid transit corridors.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[beelsebob]

Where by "Unique geological features" you mean "Residents of Palo Alto repeatedly refuse to let BART be built through their town"?

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[roman_mir]

it's selfish people who don't use mass transit

- I see the words you typed here but I fail to see the issue. Yes, people are selfish, that's a good thing. We wouldn't have any progress with selfless people, we probably wouldn't even exist today with selfless people.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Cramer]

So, people are stupid and bad at math. :p

I base my home buying on where I want to live. Jobs come and go, office locations change; I'm not moving every time my office does.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[molarmass192]

Those videos are pretty much my idea of hell. Hopefully we'll implement the tube transport system from Futurama before it gets that bad here.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[demonlapin]

And there's a pretty interesting counterexample: Atlanta. Atlanta has - by far - the least bad traffic of any city of its size I've experienced. And the traffic is least bad on the highways with the most lanes. It's usually faster to go through Atlanta than around Atlanta, because the Downtown Connector is six or seven lanes each way, and the Perimeter is three or four.

Yes, induced traffic demand happens. Sort of. Go build a 20-lane freeway around Minot, ND, and see if it attracts traffic. (Probably not.)

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[djinn6]

Enjoy your "no right turn 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM". Hope you never need to get home in a hurry because you're going to get lots of those signs in your neighborhood.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[hawguy]

"my own street."

And here we have the typical example of an asshole who doesn't know that my tax dollars pay for that fucking road as well, so no, you DON'T fucking own it.

Assholes like you are why Trump got elected.

Actually, my street was paid for and is maintained almost entirely out of property tax dollars, while most of the commuters cutting through from the freeway are just on their way home to the next county (or beyond). So no, your tax dollars didn't pay for it. But you (and I) paid for the federally funded freeway you're escaping.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[ChrisMaple]

In some cases, this is going to be a state highway suffering congestion in a city in the middle of a long commute. The city can't afford to provide mass transport that will mean anything for the long commute, the city can't rebuild the state highway. The city doesn't want to condemn and build over property near the highway to make access roads to handle the overflow traffic. The state doesn't give a damn about one city's traffic delays.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[AK Marc]

Diverging diamond intersections with no stop lights at all coming off the offramp are possible. And 60 to 45 is fine, so long as less than 50% of the outside lane exits, which is a reasonable design constraint. The technical is trivial and solved. It's the political will to eliminate traffic that doesn't exist.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[amxcoder]

Didn't watch the video's, but I've literally been on BART, where people were crammed in so tight that the doors wouldn't close unless everyone sucked in their gut so the last guy at the door could get their ass in the car and let the doors close. No joke! Sure, there weren't BART workers pushing people in, but it was BAD!

I also know people who get on the trains going the opposite direction (opposite of commute) in SF and ride several stops down so that they can get back on a train coming across the bay and maybe get a seat before the cars fill up (which doesn't work in most cases).

I've also had cars for my line come in and be so full that maybe a couple people that are in line to get on actually can, and the rest can't, and then everyone has to wait another 15-20 mins for another train for our line to come through for the same thing to happen. Several trains later, you might get on one, after waiting for almost an hour.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[amxcoder]

PAVE THE BAY!!! (Just fill it with quickset and paint 100 lanes across it each way!).

Yes, CalTrans and the city planning haven't done hardly jack squat about the freeways. What they like to do is fund a major freeway project that makes traffic worse for several years, only to finally complete it, and paint a 'diamond' in the extra lane that they made so 90% of commuters can't use it. That's been the case for years, but lately, they like then adding toll to it for rich people to commute in as well, like at the 880/237 interchange, where you can pay >$5 (per trip) to bypass like a 1/4mi of freeway intersection.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[serviscope_minor]

It's the lesser of two evils. It's annoying for residents to have to take a windy route home. It's much less bad than heavy through traffic on residential roads.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[cvdwl]

Nobody rides BART anymore, it's too crowded.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[TheRaven64]

CalTrain is too infrequent. Even at peak times it is only about every half hour and those trains often don't stop at every stop. It's okay as a commuter train, but it's a bit painful for anything else. Good mass transit systems have a train every 2-5 minutes, so you hardly spend any time waiting. The BART manages every 10-20 minutes, depending on line and time of day. CalTrain can't decide whether it's a mass-transit system or a conventional rail line and manages to combine the worst aspects of both.

Re: Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[TheRaven64]

Which is made worse by the crazy zoning system that American cities seem to use, designed to ensure that places where people work, places where people shop or go for recreation, and places where people live are all as far away from each other as possible. When I first played SimCity, I thought it was absurd: no one would be stupid enough to design a city like that. Then I visited the US for the first time.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[cstacy]

Enjoy your "no right turn 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM". Hope you never need to get home in a hurry because you're going to get lots of those signs in your neighborhood.

I have seen plenty of street signs that restrict the road to RESIDENTS ONLY during rush hours.

The cops will occasionally park there and stop anyone they don't recognize.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[edx93]

I wanted to downmod you, but will respond instead. I'm not sure where you're from, but in the U.S public transportation is, at best, pitiful. I'm lucky to live in Boston where we actually HAVE a public transport system (as dysfunctional as it is). It's a bit of a hassle, but I can get to just about anywhere from where I live. This is because Boston, like NYC, Chicago and San Fran has enough density to support public transportation. Just about everywhere else does not and without the population density, the economics doesn't make sense: why spend countless billions of dollars to build and maintain an infrastructure when few people will actually use it? What's more: with (sub)urban sprawl seen in the US, commuting via bike or other alternative forms of transportation also becomes unfeasible, meaning you (and tons of other people) are ultimately stuck with driving a car to get to work....causing traffic.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Xicor]

the problem of our highways isnt the lack of space on the highway, it is the shitty ass human drivers on the highway. in a perfect world, as long as there is an inch of space in front of you, you should be able to drive at whatever speed you want... why? because the person in front of you is doing the same. the problem we have is that human drivers cant seem to match the speed of the guy in front of them, so they hit their brakes, forcing everyone behind them to hit their brakes as well. Another issue is people constantly shifting lanes to 'get in the better lane'... this also causes slowdowns for everyone behind them. People have no idea how to merge onto highways. also because of the above points, there are always accidents on highways, causing major slowdowns. in 10 years when self driving cars are mandatory, highways will become a lot more efficient.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[silas_moeckel]

Sure because there are an unlimited number of cars? This shows that people prefer cars over mass transit. Built more lanes stop doing stupid bits like left exits. People prefer the fastest way to get from point a to b get high-speed rail so people can live 150 miles out and have a similar length commute. Fastest is all things combined getting to the station waiting for the train etc.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[silas_moeckel]

The politics tends to actively make it worse, left off ramps to save building a flyover bridge can cause traffic nightmares. It's not the DOT that's putting them in it's politicians to cut costs.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[usuallylost]

I think it is going to take more than fixing the roads. I know in my area the state has neglected the roads for decades. It has gotten so bad in my county that the county is actually paying for road construction the state was supposed to pay for. Simply because we can't wait anymore for it. Going forward I think they are going to have no choice but to expand the existing roads. In addition, we are going to have to look at creating additional parallel routes in the most traveled areas. If you are going North-South here you have the main highway and the road it replaced. If anything happens to the main highway the road it replaced becomes a traffic jam. Then people are off onto the side streets.

I also think we are going to have to look at other solutions as well. We need to expand mass transit and we need to incentivize people to use it. I know here for much of the area Mass transit is just not an option. Even where it is an option it is shockingly expensive and disturbingly unreliable. I know people who use but even they comment that it isn't any cheaper than driving and it often isn't any faster. Add that the trains keep having fatal accidents and it isn't a surprise people are giving up and going back to their cars.

We are also going to have to look at how communities are laid out. Waze and similar technologies are only going to become more common. My area is fairly new, started construction in the mid 90's and is still being built. One thing I have noticed is that the whole area is built with wide arterial roads with almost no houses directly on them. Then the neighborhoods are built as a series of closed loops that let out onto the same street fairly close to each other. The only part that has any through streets at all is the very oldest section. Even there they are fairly limited. So Waze isn't going to route anybody through the houses because they are all basically on dead ends. The arterial roads are designed to handle a lot of traffic. Eventually existing areas will have to modify their roads to be more like that.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Archangel Michael]

Our highways have been an inadequate crumbling mess for decades

But at least the men can use the girls bathrooms now. And we have High Speed Rail between nowhere and idon'twanttogothere. So there is that.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Bert64]

Or how about reduce people's need to all travel to the same places at the same time...
Have more people working from home...
Build offices near homes, instead of having them all clumped together in business districts with no residential properties nearby.
Change working hours, the traditional working day is based on the need for daylight when working the fields - this doesn't apply anymore, especially in todays global world where you're likely to be dealing with people in other countries anyway.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Bert64]

The problem is that all the workplaces tend to be in close proximity to each other, and housing that's close is in short supply and prohibitively expensive so people are forced to look further afield where it's cheaper.
How about building some offices 40 miles away where the houses are cheaper, so the staff can afford to live nearby and not have to use the highway?
If workplaces were spread out instead of clumped together you'd solve a lot of these problems.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[dgatwood]

The real problem is that the freeways are designed to be "hurry up and wait" systems. Designers bring in thousands and thousands of cars on 3 lanes at 60 MPH, then ask them all to take a single lane exit at 45MPH, then they scratch their heads and wonder why things go to shit.

A single exit lane with a traffic light at the top. Approximately 90% of the problems on 101 are caused by the city streets near Google not accommodating the flow of incoming traffic, causing major backups onto the highway. Want to fix it? Do this:

• Close the La Avenida entrance onto North Shoreline.
• Connect the right lanes of the exit ramp at North Shoreline directly to La Avenida with no traffic light.
• Make North Shoreline be one-way southbound from the intersection at Amphitheatre Parkway to 101. Use traffic cones and
• Make Amphitheater Parkway be one-way northbound from the intersection at North Shoreline to 101.
• Make Charleston Road be one one-way westbound from North Shoreline to Amphitheatre Parkway.
• Convert the traffic light at Charleston and Amphitheatre Parkway to a series of green and flashing yellow turn arrows.
• Convert the traffic light at Charleston and North Shoreline to a series of green and flashing yellow turn arrows.
• Tear down walls and make it possible to cut through parking lots to get from from Pear Ave. to Space Park Way, Shorebird Way, and Charleston Rd.
• On days with events at Shoreline, temporarily restore two-way traffic flow on both roads with safety cones. Use La Avenida and Inigo Way to route traffic from the freeway onto North Shoreline.

And with only a little bit of minor roadwork and traffic light reprogramming, you've just changed 101 from a horrible nightmare to a free-flowing road from roughly Menlo park through Mountain View on the southbound side in the evening and from Santa Clara to Mountain View on the northbound side in the morning... and all without actually touching 101.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[painandgreed]

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.

Well, ya, compared to Europe or Asia it might be mediocre, but for the US it's one of the best we have. I live in Seattle and whenever somebody complains about the transit here, I can tell they are either from SF, NYC, or DC because those are about the only places in the US that are better.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[AK Marc]

So no exits to the airport, downtown, or really anywhere else where a majority of people might like to go.

You sound like a traffic engineer. No, the solution to too many people taking exits isn't to reduce exits, but increase them. If there were 4 exits for the airport, any one of them alone wouldn't work, but spread to 4 works fine. Clear signs for Domestic or International, and you have solved the problem. The problem is trying to tell people where they should go. That never works. Like your example, more exits for the next 3 lights would help. But the other error always made is matching exits and entrances, so traffic is always merging/slowing.

Nobody would do it, but all left exits, and all right entrances in urban areas would simplify traffic. Fights to exit would never block entrances, and vice versa. But nobody has ever studied that, other than one irregular left exit when all others are right exits seems to cause confusion. Not because people can't figure out left from right, but because it's irregular. So make it regular. No more crossing traffic required. Middle lanes would be the fast lanes, and slower lanes on both sides, more like a liquid in a tube, than the current system. Having to get over fast and hard would also decrease the people getting on the freeway for a single exit.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[farble1670]

By "fixing" do you mean widen?

Better, more affordable public transportation.
Flexible work hours.
More, higher-density housing near urban centers.
Work from home alternatives.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[farble1670]

How about building some offices 40 miles away where the houses are cheaper, so the staff can afford to live nearby and not have to use the highway?

Employers don't like it because they can only attract talent w/ a certain mindset. Employees don't like it because they are now married to their employer.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[farble1670]

Who's going to pay for that? Google? All of their money is tied up in offshore accounts.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[dgatwood]

Who's going to pay for that? Google? All of their money is tied up in offshore accounts.

You speak of this as though I'm talking about a huge cost. We're talking about twenty or thirty feet of asphalt, some new road striping, a handful of temporary concrete barriers to close off some roads, and minor traffic light changes. The average Google employee could pay for this.

BTW, I just noticed that I left half a sentence in my original post. Where I sad "Use traffic cones and", that was an aborted attempt at writing the last bullet point about adding safety cones to turn those roads temporarily back into two-way streets to allow more inbound traffic on event days if it proves necessary to do so.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[farble1670]

I was being sarcastic. Of course Google can (and should) pay for it.

Re: Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[PrimaryConsult]

The US Highway System unfortunately runs at the whims of the states it passes through. I try to use it where possible, but US20 through Massachusetts takes twice as long as I90. There are sections where the speed limit drops to 20, or the number of lanes drops to 1 each direction. The Interstate standard of:
* grade separated
* 2 lane per direction minimum
* 55MPH speed limit

Are what make them better.

The worst of these is US15 in VA. Through MD and PA it is a breeze. The section in Virginia is a 1 lane/direction hell, likely by design. I *wanted* to stop and eat but feared never being able to merge back onto the road; I can't be the only one. All those businesses who have to put up with the passing traffic don't even get to benefit from it.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[PrimaryConsult]

There is a fix; if your city has such congested freeways during rush hour, a light rail, S-bahn type commuter rail or subway that serves the CBD with park and rides sounds like the answer. Bus is *not* an answer because it will simply sit in the same traffic as the cars, bus lanes cause frustration, and bus service is too easy to alter at will to be any meaningful metric. The bus that goes from my apartment to my office does not run for any work schedule other than 8AM-4:30 PM. When I first moved there, the span of service was 7AM-7PM. No one would dare do that to a light rail, subway line or even a commuter rail.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Khyber]

"If you ask a legislator to increase the gas tax, even by a few cents/gallon, you will get the idea thrown back in your face wrapped around a rock."

Which is why the California Gas tax went from 39 cents per gallon in 2010 to almost 60 cents per gallon this year, eh?

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Rakarra]

How about building some offices 40 miles away where the houses are cheaper, so the staff can afford to live nearby and not have to use the highway?

There are many reasons why this doesn't happen, and among them are:
1) In the city center, businesses can attract talent from all over. In the suburbs, they have a smaller hiring pool. If you don't live in the particular suburb that this company is based in, chances are your commutes would be greater than they were before.
2) People hop jobs. Gone are the days when you would graduate high school/college, be hired by a company, and expect to work there for 40 years. People don't want to have to move to whatever development is near their new job, not when it involves selling their house and pulling their kids out of their school.
3) Most cities are -dense- for good reasons. The downside is that it's easy to overwhelm tiny freeways.
4) Many many many people also detest living in tiny, expensive developments packed into buildings like rats, so that's why they don't live in the big city. There's more space and less crime outside of it.

If workplaces were spread out instead of clumped together you'd solve a lot of these problems.

Re:Time To Invest In Infrastructure

[Rakarra]

"If you ask a legislator to increase the gas tax, even by a few cents/gallon, you will get the idea thrown back in your face wrapped around a rock."

Which is why the California Gas tax went from 39 cents per gallon in 2010 to almost 60 cents per gallon this year, eh?

California's gas taxes are currently 38 cents a gallon. It's 57c if you a add in federal taxes.

Fuel taxes were lower in 2010, but that's because in 2010 California implemented a tax swap, where sales and use taxes for fuel were lowered, while the gas tax itself was raised. So between 2010 - 2011 the "gas tax" spiked, but the cost at the pump didn't change aside from the regular variations in prices for the fuel itself. This was done because sales taxes were calculated based on a percent of the price, while the fuel taxes are a set amount per gallon. This has the effect of making the taxes collected less volatile with a glut when gas is expensive and starved for taxes when gas is cheap, as state expenses should be stable -- they can't ramp up and then fall with the price of oil.

Or politicians can go back to basic services

[LeftCoastThinker]

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...

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[xevioso]

By improve do you mean widen? There's only so much you can do without making massive changes. The problem is there's more people driving. The money is better spent encouraging people to to contribute to increasing that 15%.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[DontBeAMoran]

How about finding ways to push the utilisation rate of those mass transit buses instead?

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[serviscope_minor]

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.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[LeftCoastThinker]

They just spent 6 years in my area widening a major freeway from 4 lanes each way to 6 lanes each way, totally eliminating gridlock, and they also managed to cram in a 2 lane dedicated HOV lane in the middle. They did it without bulldozing anyone's homes on the existing easements and went through densely populated cities as they did it. Even if they have to bulldoze or go TBM underground, there is no excuse for not improving freeways. Stop and go traffic is a completely avoidable pollution nightmare, and commuting is a reality that no one wants to give up because there is simultaneously comfort, flexibility, mobility and security in having a personal vehicle.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[johanw]

Mass transport is going from where you aren't to where you don't need to be.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[the_bard17]

Promote motorcycles and make filtering legal.

Motorcycles, as a general rule, get better gas mileage than most four-wheeled vehicles (less pollution). Each motorycle weighs significantly less than a four-wheeler, reducing wear and tear on the road (less maintenance). Each motorcycle sitting in between lanes is one more car that's not taking up a lane (more room for four-wheelers). Anybody who's idiotic enough to filter illegally at a high rate of speed might just end up as an viable organ donor, which helps another section of the population (donor recipients). If they've managed to wreck most of their vital organs... they're less traffic overall.

Might be a challenge getting all the four-wheeled drivers to actually check their blind spots and switch lanes safely... but more motorcycles on the road might increase awareness.

Darn shame we can't do much about those horrible winter months in the Northern half of country, when we can't ride year 'round.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[__aaclcg7560]

Mass transport is going from where you aren't to where you don't need to be.

That's funny. Two local buses and an express bus gets me from my front door at 6AM to the front door of my job 30 miles away at 7AM. Best commute I ever had in 30 years of taking public transit.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

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.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[mattack2]

You do realize your 6 lanes each way freeway will soon (within years at most) be filled up to as much as it was before, right?

"Even if they have to bulldoze".. I hope you appreciate your land being taken for eminent domain.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[markdavis]

That's funny. Two local buses and an express bus gets me from my front door at 6AM to the front door of my job 30 miles away at 7AM. Best commute I ever had in 30 years of taking public transit.

And you probably represent a small fraction of a small percent. In many areas of the county, the mass transit simply doesn't work well because everyone is going everywhere and there are not enough routes or connections. Nobody is going to trade crawling in a traffic jam for an hour (in their own car) to standing outside multiple times in the rain, jumping from one bus to another, dealing with smelly and loud people for 1.5 hours.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[markdavis]

>"How about finding ways to push the utilisation rate of those mass transit buses instead?"

Will it start with you? Everyone wants EVERYONE ELSE to use the buses/train/whatever. That is the problem. Here, the buses are slow, smelly, loud, and EXTREMELY inconvenient. With 7 interconnected cities, there is no standard commute, everyone is going everywhere, making it a logistical nightmare. You would spend MORE time getting home while hating the experience even more than sitting in your own car crawling through traffic. And with a bus, there is no real practical way to run chores while on the commute or transport than very minimal stuff. Like standing in the rain with 20MPH 33F temps for 15 min? Like having to sit near someone blasting their damn phone or with a screaming kid or eating gross food? Like having to walk through questionable areas to get to each stop, dragging whatever stuff you need with you? Like having to arrive X min early or leave X min late from work to fit your life to someone else's schedule? That's the bus!

There are lots of places where mass transit just doesn't work well and even when it does work well, most people really still don't want to deal with the other factors.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[__aaclcg7560]

Nobody is going to trade crawling in a traffic jam for an hour (in their own car) to standing outside multiple times in the rain, jumping from one bus to another, dealing with smelly and loud people for 1.5 hours.

You obviously have never taken the express bus, which is an extra $70 per month, a larger, comfortable bus, and everyone on board are working class professionals. Most people on the early morning express bus are snoozing from getting up early, and the commute home is often quiet because people are snoozing from a long day at work. I spend my commute time reading The Wall Street Journal in the morning and an ebook in the afternoon because I'm paying someone else to drive.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[caseih]

Okay, so what is the solution? You keep saying there is one, so you obviously have some ideas. How about putting a few forth here? Inquiring minds want to know.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[Migraineman]

Awesome. Trying to take public transportation for my 39-mile commute would take 2 hours 49 minutes. I had a 30-mile commute for my previous job, which would have required almost 4 hours of public transportation. Sometimes, it's just not a viable option. My biggest complaint is that the two available train options don't have an "express" that runs the bulk of the distance directly. They insist on running as local-only service, which really limits the people-hours bandwidth. I'm already going to have a car to get to the station. Collect the commuters at a regional station and haul them directly to the next big hub. Stop with the at-grade crossings to pick up 3 people every 2 miles.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[meerling]

I've lived someplace around here where the bus was only twice a day, 6:30am and 8pm, Total freaking waste.
Two miles closer to town there's a lot more busses, and we have that new express route they made that has it's own lane, going out to an area that nobody goes to except the people that already live on that end of town because everything out there is much closer. The same bus routes that to go a simple 1.8 miles might take you all over for 1hr45m to arrive, and an extra 20m going the other direction. Yeah, our bus system is messed up. Seemed to have happened right after that honcho from portland took over.

Mass transit can be great, if it's ran right, but it's never a total solution, especially when you have an entire city that isn't tied to your transit schedule.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[meerling]

Not to mention the noise pollution. About have the motorcycles around here probably cause hearing damage within 10 meters. I wish the cops had decible-meters on hand, you can bet those are definitely over the legal limits.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[whoever57]

Promote motorcycles and make filtering legal.

You did read that Fremont is in California, right? California is the only state in the nation that does allow lane splitting.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[Qzukk]

The solution would be to have every single freeway and street operate at 75 MPH. This includes your driveway. The first person who steps on their brakes is automatically shot by patrolling drones, which then attach to the car and fly it off to the junkyard to be crushed. Stoplights and stopsigns will be removed.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[jeff4747]

Or, you know, politicians could spend the gas tax funds to improve the freeways

That doesn't actually work. Demand expands with or slightly faster than capacity. You literally can not build/widen freeways fast enough to meet demand.

This problem has to be solved via mass transit and changes to zoning philosophies.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[Lehk228]

That is only true in places already deep into congestive failure like LA. as you slightly unfuck the situation you will quickly pull back some percentage of people who are going far out of their way or otherwise taking drastic measures to avoid the 2+ hours of stationary traffic.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[phantomfive]

It should probably be mentioned that every time it comes up on the state ballot, California voters approve taxes for road construction (source: my memory so don't trust it).

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[phantomfive]

I do the same as you except it's on a normal bus because we don't have an express bus, and a good percentage of the ridership is homeless, and every few months one of them decides to start yelling at me for no reason.

But anyway I don't have to drive and that makes it worth the chance of contracting hepatitis on the way.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[__aaclcg7560]

I do the same as you except it's on a normal bus because we don't have an express bus, and a good percentage of the ridership is homeless, and every few months one of them decides to start yelling at me for no reason.

That would Hotel 22 in Silicon Valley.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/hotel-22.html

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[thesupraman]

So.. You are telling me that there are no special bus lanes that could otherwise be carrying cars? That the buses don't have very high fuel (and therefore pollution) footprints, and that they don't cost the city huge amounts in subsidies for those special few who can use them?

I wonder what color the sky is in your world..

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[AK Marc]

Traffic is caused by people trying to move. So move the people. Don't move the cars.

Or move the cars, and move them fast. There are millions of solutions. The right answer for NYC isn't the right answer for Houston, so asking for the answer is the wrong question. PRT is the answer. Cheaper than roads, and faster.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[serviscope_minor]

You do get good behaviour when lots of people commute. The morning train is packed and you could hear a pin drop pretty much. It's deathly quiet which is great, since everyone's tired, grumpy and on the way to work and no one wants to hear other people.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[dunkelfalke]

A vaccine might help ;-)

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[serviscope_minor]

So.. You are telling me that there are no special bus lanes that could otherwise be carrying cars?

Some places yes. But the congestion happens at junctions mostly. The bus lane allows the bus to skip the traffic queues at the junctions. I don't see how it would increase the throughput at the junction however, since the junction itself is what causes the congestion.

That the buses don't have very high fuel (and therefore pollution) footprints

Not per passenger mile, they don't. But are you complaining about fuel economy or congestion? They're different problems (though often with the same solutions because of physics).

and that they don't cost the city huge amounts in subsidies

The roads cost a huge amount too. If the bus subsidy reduces the congestion more effectively than the equivalent amount of money spent on roads, then you should be in favour of it.

I wonder what color the sky is in your world.

Mostly grey, but I live in a part of the world where buses are heavily used and the idea of operating without public transport is so patently absurd that all but the most reality-denying feverent of wingnuts are in favour of it.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[TheRaven64]

Bike lanes in Austin would need to be covered and air conditioned before I could imagine anyone using them. Last time I was there was spring and it was too hot to comfortably cycle by about 6:30am (a time I normally regard as fictional, but yay, jetlag). I'm told that in the summer it's a lot hotter. Maybe there are a couple of weeks of good cycling weather each year...

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[cstacy]

There are not too many people driving. .

There are simply too many people.

Those VMS displays should not be saying "Route 202 in 30 minutes".
They should be saying things like "LASTDAY Capricorn 437".

That would renew our road capacity.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[dave420]

Only if it - or the areas it's serving - are terribly planned. There are countless examples of working public transport systems the world over, so clearly they can work.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[AmiMoJo]

Is that a problem with public transport in general or just your poor implementation of it?

In Tokyo you can get everywhere on public transport, which runs every few minutes. It's often faster than driving. They build the tracks and over and under, even though it costs more, because they need them and 50 year ROI is fine.

the mass transit simply doesn't work well because everyone is going everywhere and there are not enough routes or connections

Personal transport simply doesn't work because everyone is going to the same place and there are is not enough capacity on the main trunk roads.

Part of fixing this requires designing your cities so that it is possible to walk or cycle around them, so that when you get off the train or bus it's no problem to walk a short way to your destination.

Re: Or politicians can go back to basic services

[TheMeuge]

Start with yourself or shut the fuck up.

If everyone who thinks there are too many people commits suicide, the roads will get less congested.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[Grishnakh]

Bike paths are something the government *should* be building.

However, how the hell does it cost $100 million dollars to build one? That's insanity. Bike paths are narrow and simple, and don't need all the work that roads do. A thin layer of asphalt, laid by a small cart pulled by hand (I've seen one used in a park for laying a walking path) is all you need. Someone must have been getting paid off there.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[green1]

So there are infinite cars available in your world?

By that logic, the roads should have been most full when first built (capacity expanded from nothing to where they are today) and should have emptied over time (no capacity expansion) Meanwhile the exact opposite has occurred. The roads were fine when first built because they were built to handle the expected amount of traffic, but over time as more people and businesses moved to the area and the roads weren't expanded, they became more full.

The solution is to build roads for the expected usage, not to try to socially engineer everyone in to your own personal vision of how the rest of the world "should" commute.

The REAL problem is NIMBY types who won't allow people to drive on public roads because they're special snowflakes and their own personal aversion to seeing cars on their street trumps hundreds or thousands of other people's well being who want to get from A-B, and politicians who think that "everyone can just walk/bike/bus" to work is actually a viable option.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[apoc.famine]

I also see the problem of people not even bothering to consider public transportation before deciding on jobs or houses. In all of mine I definitely have. "Does this job pay enough to make up for driving?" is a question I ask before taking a new one. The savings I've made taking public transportation exceed the money I'd have made at a couple other jobs I considered before the last two. And not just the money: The time, and the stress. 35-40 minutes to surf the internet, check some email, or just watch out the window absolutely blows away 20-30 minutes in rush hour traffic.
 
I'd need a good $10k-$20k pay raise to go back to driving. And if that drive is closer to an hour, double that.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[Bert64]

And for me to get to work it's 2 and a half hours standing in discomfort public transport (bus, plus 3 different trains followed by another bus) or 20 minutes sitting comfortable in a car...

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[Bert64]

Many people suffer from motion sickness, which usually doesn't occur when you're in control of the motion (ie driving) and is usually worse if you're not concentrating on the motion (ie doing something else like reading)...

I can just about survive a ride as a passenger if i watch and concentrate on where i'm going, otherwise i'm likely to vomit. If i tried to read something on the journey i would certainly vomit within a few minutes.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[jeff4747]

So there are infinite cars available in your world?

As infinite as there are freeway lanes in yours.

The roads were fine when first built because they were built to handle the expected amount of traffic

No, the roads when first built were built to handle multiple times the expected amount of traffic.

but over time as more people and businesses moved to the area and the roads weren't expanded, they became more full.

No, they were expanded, and became "more full" despite the expansion.

Think of it this way: Right now, there is some relatively distant suburb that is lightly populated because the commute is too long/too congested. When you expand the relevant highway to relieve that, more people move to that distant suburb. Thus consuming all of the additional capacity you just added.

Traffic congestion in a large city is an equilibrium. When you add capacity, you get more traffic that consumes the additional capacity.

The REAL problem is NIMBY types who won't allow people to drive on public roads because they're special snowflakes and their own personal aversion to seeing cars on their street trumps hundreds or thousands of other people's well being

The carrying capacity of residential streets is extremely small compared to highways. Also, it's still an equilibrium. The slight gain in capacity from those residential streets is consumed by more drivers following that route.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[phantomfive]

tbh I'm more worried about strep.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[Shalhav]

I make that I-405 commute and usually pay the fee when I am in a time crunch. It rarely saves me more than 15 minutes, but sometimes 15 minutes makes the difference between making my morning meeting and not.

Offhand, it make sense to take a scarce resource like that and allocate it according to how valuable it is to people.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Offhand, it make sense to take a scarce resource like that and allocate it according to how valuable it is to people.

We already paid for that road with our tax dollars, you shit bag.

Let me guess, you feel the same way about life-saving drugs and medical care, right?

Your mantra: "The rich can afford it and everyone else can just piss off and die."

Re: Or politicians can go back to basic services

[markdavis]

Smug comments about freedom or not understand how large a REAL large country is, or what it is like to live in a TRULY diverse land, or other things they don't understand or can't relate to? Must be a European.

Jealousy doesn't become you.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[thesupraman]

Why?

No one uses them. Why should the government be sponsoring the hobby of a tiny minority of the population?
Really, go and count the users on one during peak commute time - it wont be difficult.

What these are is not an investment in transportation, it is buying votes from a small but vocal pressure group, while
at the same time lining the pockets of the infrastructure building companies, who are creaming it from such projects,
and who just happen to be VERY generous campaign contributors.

I have nothing against cyclists, but cycle paths, cycle lanes, etc that significantly impact normal traffic flow, or
public funds in a major way are a terrible TERRIBLE idea, as they detract from transport efficiency, not add to it.

The funniest part I find is that in most countries roadside cycle lanes are not usable by scooters/motorcyclists - a form
of transport that CAN actually have a positively impact in commuting, but who are not 'fashionable' enough to be
given consideration, so instead they must ride in the traffic, which is much more dangerous, and thus people avoid
it.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[LeftCoastThinker]

There used to be this thing called transportation planning, where needs were anticipated and met before an issue became a flaming pile of feces. Today's politicians want to inflict suffering on their constituents because the politician are confident that they know best and politicians want the dumb commuters to start taking mass transit, even though there are major drawbacks, rather than doing their damn jobs and accommodating the needs of the citizens.

Back when the freeways were originally built in the 60s, they were built with major excess capacity anticipating future growth. Until a city is approaching the population density of something like New York, subways and elevated trains just don't make sense for most people.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[LeftCoastThinker]

Or you know you could take the tax revenues that are paid by the citizens and provide the services that they need, like expanding the roads, instead of charging them twice, once at the toll booth and once on tax day...

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[LeftCoastThinker]

I agree with everything you said up to this point:

"Objecting to politicians spending money on non-car forms of transport seems to be like cutting off your nose to spite your face."

The problem is not spending on non-car transportation, the problem is spending on ineffective, non-car transportation. In New York, non car transportation is great and effective. There are a number of large, high density cities where non car transportation works great. The problem is having politicians try for 40 plus years to cram a one size fits all solution down everyone's throat and piss away billions of dollars on a solution that is demonstrably ineffective while forcing the people who pay those taxes to suffer due to the incompetence of the politicians and bureaucrats.

Some solutions to overcrowding that could save tons of CO2 every day:
1. Mandate 3 days a week telecommuting for jobs that do not require physical presence.
2. Ban long haul trucking during rush hour (Texas or some cities in Texas did this and it helped a lot).
3. Subsidy of van pools that carry 4 or more people more than 30 miles per day.

This kind of thinking is what we need, along with real investments in freeways and roads. The suburban sprawl of the west coast is not going away for at least 50 years, so plan ahead and build the roads accordingly, just like they did in the 1960s.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[LeftCoastThinker]

Um no, the 4 lane highway was sufficient for the last 50 years and the growth rate of the population is not increasing much at all. The 6 lanes should be good for another 15 to 20 years, but this thing called city and roadway planning allows for us to look forward and predict future use and population, and governments that are not filled with complete incompetents will save up the gas taxes and make plans for the next big expansion (maybe a double deck roadway or a tunnel under the existing roadway) and implement those improvements before there is gridlock on the existing system.

The root problem is that the government types want to steal that money to spend on sexy projects or give it away to buy votes, or try and force half assed solutions that waste millions of man hours. Through choice, they create massive gridlock, put buses in that gridlock so that people can spend 15 minutes walking to a bus station, 5 minutes waiting for a bus, ride a bus for 30 minutes that goes 10 miles out of their way to then drive another 15 minutes home to avoid 2h of gridlock on a route that normally takes 15 minutes... This is why people like me are pissed with all the incompetence.

Eminent domain for fire houses, police buildings, roadways, drainage ditches etc is a good thing and the reason that it exists. I want my government to pay people the market rate for their property plus 20% for the inconvenience of having to move. America is not the old country, we move and own land but are not that attached and can easily move to a different home or build one.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[Rakarra]

Why?

No one uses them. Why should the government be sponsoring the hobby of a tiny minority of the population?

Because they're not just operating in a vacuum. A bicyclist who bikes to work is not taking up the space of a car on the road, is not taking up a parking spot on the street or in a lot, is not filling the air with pollutants from his car, and is likely to be healthier for the effort. So, for those who have the option, why not encourage it?
The best thing you can do from a city infrastructure perspective is to encourage people and make it more convenient to not drive in a car.

Re:Or politicians can go back to basic services

[Rakarra]

You obviously have never taken the express bus, which is an extra $70 per month, a larger, comfortable bus, and everyone on board are working class professionals. Most people on the early morning express bus are snoozing from getting up early, and the commute home is often quiet because people are snoozing from a long day at work. I spend my commute time reading The Wall Street Journal in the morning and an ebook in the afternoon because I'm paying someone else to drive.

Cool. Around where I live, the bus (which doesn't come close to my house but does have a dropoff close to my workplace) has plenty of people who just shout whatever comes to mind all days long and bus drivers who have learned to just pretend it's not happening.

On the other hand, you can see some great fights on the bus. Epic Beard Man happened right on my route.

Re:Everyone into the jam

[zlives]

its a disruptive neighborhood app.
pretty sure that's the right use of the adjective.

Public roads?

[0100010001010011]

Are the roads paid for by public taxes? They're public roads. I used to do this all the time with the old paper maps. Looks like a road stoppage? Find a parallel city or state road. Follow the speed limits and other rules of the road and you're legally allowed to drive on them.

Want a gated community with private roads? Pay to live in one.

Re:Public roads?

[xevioso]

Sure, and Fremont is well aware that these are public roads.

Likewise, they are well withing their rights to make it very difficult for you to drive there. They can't prohibit you from taking an offramp into Fremont off of the highway, but they can put a bunch of speedbumps, roundabouts, no-left-turn signals and so forth that you will have to obey or pay attention to, lest you damage your car (or injure others).

Re:Public roads?

[serviscope_minor]

That's a bad attitude frankly. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's a good idea. In fact more or less everything has been legal at some point, which is why there are now so many laws. Because if there's no law against it, then some idiot will do it, no matter how ill conceived.

Yes, it's legal to do that. Yes people have always skipped busy areas with local knowledge. However large numbers of people going down a rat run (see there's even a phrase for it now) makes life miserable for those on the rat run. It's the sort of thing that prompts local authorities to put in traffic restrictions, entirely reasonably, because residential streets are designed for access, not throughput. And if they get misused, then that's bad.

It's now getting worse because of the increased convenience.

Anyway it's a classic case of "this is why we can't have nice things". People will abuse the residential roads and eventually the authorities will intervene. Then those abusers will whine and the locals will grumble a bit about the restrictions, but not that much because of the reduced traffic on unsuitable roads.

Re:Public roads?

[swb]

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.

Re:Public roads?

[AthanasiusKircher]

Are the roads paid for by public taxes? They're public roads.

Well, for one, commuters frequently are cutting through roads which aren't in their own community. So, unless it's a state road or something, they may not be paying taxes for these roads.

Second, neighborhoods are often planned and zoned based on assumed traffic patterns. For example, they may choose to put a school or tight residential areas farther away from heavy traffic commuter highways -- for safety reasons. If you suddenly start routing rush-hour traffic through there, it can create hazards with pedestrians, driveways, kids playing, etc.

The problem isn't new, though -- and many towns and cities even have policies on the books to deal with it. The difference is that in years past traffic patterns would change over years or decades, whereas now they can be altered quite suddenly with a map app's algorithm. Long before stuff like Waze, the city I used to live in had a series of progressive restrictions it would make on streets that exceeded their designed traffic load for the zoning, etc.

They'd put in more one-way streets to make it more difficult to navigate the area without a lot of turns, then introduce things like raised crossings to slow people down (and help point out places where pedestrians might be very common), eventually they'd covert some streets to cul-de-sacs, and in a worst case scenario might even put a mid-block barrier to stop traffic going through entirely.

These weren't actions undertaken by citizens -- this was official stuff in the municipal code of the city, authorized by the city's governing council, elected by the city's taxpayers who paid for the city's road maintenance. If you're a commuter who doesn't like those policies... drive on somebody else's "public roads."

Re:Public roads?

[quantaman]

Are the roads paid for by public taxes? They're public roads. I used to do this all the time with the old paper maps. Looks like a road stoppage? Find a parallel city or state road. Follow the speed limits and other rules of the road and you're legally allowed to drive on them.

Want a gated community with private roads? Pay to live in one.

There are legitimate reasons not to want high volumes of traffic cutting through neighbourhoods. That's why many new subdivisions are unnavigable, so people can't use them as short-cuts.

I don't like the idea of an app expediting the tragedy of the commons.

Re:Public roads?

[drinkypoo]

However large numbers of people going down a rat run (see there's even a phrase for it now) makes life miserable for those on the rat run. It's the sort of thing that prompts local authorities to put in traffic restrictions, entirely reasonably, because residential streets are designed for access, not throughput. And if they get misused, then that's bad.

It's not the drivers' fault that there is insufficient highway capacity. What are they supposed to, just suck it up?

Re:Public roads?

[AthanasiusKircher]

By the way, the actions I mentioned were obviously things done only after "normal" traffic control mechanisms (stop signs, traffic lights, speed zones, etc.) failed to decrease traffic volume.

Re:Public roads?

[Ogive17]

Typically most of the road maintenance comes from local taxes meaning those who actually live or work in that area. Plus residential neighborhoods are typically not designed to be used as highway bypass routes. I understand the need to occasionally disperse grid locked traffic on the side roads but it just seems to me that the more people who use Waze (or an equivalent) the less of a benefit everyone will get.

I think the local residents have a valid reason to be upset. Best thing they can do is put a stop sign on every corner to ensure people aren't buzzing through too quickly.

Re:Public roads?

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of the day, this is just another case of NIMBY-ism. These same drivers will happily cut through other residential areas to avoid traffic slowdowns. How do I know this? A good number of them work near my neighborhood where they are cutting through to avoid the jam their new offices created. Just look up where Apple/Google/Linked In built new buildings. Around quitting time, look at residential areas nearby and you will see all the cars jamming the nearby surface streets trying to find their way back to Fremont and beyond.

The solution is not trying to stop GPS apps from routing folks into these areas. The solution was to actually have had reasonably priced public transit in place to help with moving all the people from point A to point B. The high tech buses that folks liked to get pissed at did 1 thing very well. It got a lot of other cars off the streets.

Re:Public roads?

[meerling]

It's like the internet, if there's congestion, the traffic WILL find a way around it if at all possible.
Essentially jams and slowdowns are damage and congestion to roads. Do you really expect the packets/cars to sit in limbo for who knows how long, causing more congestion and jams trapping more, getting bigger, trapping more, etc?

Re:Public roads?

[0100010001010011]

Braess paradox. Adding more lanes and capacity actually makes it slower for everyone.

Dietrich Braess, a mathematician at Ruhr University, Germany, noticed the flow in a road network could be impeded by adding a new road, when he was working on traffic modelling. His idea was that if each driver is making the optimal self-interested decision as to which route is quickest, a shortcut could be chosen too often for drivers to have the shortest travel times possible. More formally, the idea behind Braess' discovery is that the Nash equilibrium may not equate with the best overall flow through a network.

Adding extra capacity to a network when the moving entities selfishly choose their route can in some cases reduce overall performance. That is because the Nash equilibrium of such a system is not necessarily optimal. The network change induces a new game structure which leads to a (multiplayer) prisoner's dilemma. In a Nash equilibrium, drivers have no incentive to change their routes. While the system is not in a Nash equilibrium, individual drivers are able to improve their respective travel times by changing the routes they take. In the case of Braess' paradox, drivers will continue to switch until they reach Nash equilibrium despite the reduction in overall performance.

Re:Public roads?

[whoever57]

Looks like a road stoppage? Find a parallel city or state road.

Take a look at a map of the area. There is one alternative route (highway 84, also known as Niles Canyon road) and it is a narrow, twisty, and dangerous road which is often slow because of the volume of traffic attempting to avoid the freeway. The clue is in the name of the road: "Canyon".

Re:Public roads?

[dfghjk]

No they are not. Public roads are for use by all, not by a select few. It is not within a few citizens' "rights" to deny others use of taxpayer-funded public roads.

The entitlement here is the residents. If they don't like their side streets being used to overcome traffic congestion they should lobby for improvements to all roads, not to f*ck over the other 99%.

I'd like to see proof that drivers on their commutes "don't care" about residential neighborhoods. What a BS inflammatory statement.

Re:Public roads?

[dfghjk]

"It's the sort of thing that prompts local authorities to put in traffic restrictions, entirely reasonably,..."

Not "entirely reasonably", not reasonably at all. What causes authorities to put in restrictions is the endless complaints of an entitled few, not concern over improper use.

"...because residential streets are designed for access, not throughput. And if they get misused, then that's bad."

BS. All roads are designed for "throughput", some for higher throughput that others. No road, however, is optimized for throughput since it's speed limit is set intentionally too low, at least in the US. Driving on a public road to get somewhere is NEVER misuse.

"Anyway it's a classic case of "this is why we can't have nice things". People will abuse the residential roads and eventually the authorities will intervene."

No, we can't have nice things because a few ruin it for others. The few in this case are not the drivers, it's the residents who think that public roads are their private property.

"Then those abusers will whine and the locals will grumble a bit about the restrictions, but not that much because of the reduced traffic on unsuitable roads."

The way to "reduce traffic on unsuitable roads" is to fix the roads which are intended to handle that traffic. No discussion of that though! Who cares just so long as the residents get the roads reserved for their use only.

Re:Public roads?

[dfghjk]

"Essentially, yes. Write your state congress-person. Demand additional lanes be added to all freeways in the area. Get 100,000 of your closest friends and family to sign it too."

Sounds great. Why don't the local residents do that? Why should they not be burdened by the problem just as much as the drivers are? Why the double standard?

"...but I also don't blame communities for adding in signs, speed bumps and other traffic slowers to make things safer for residence."

Then you are a fool. The drivers are not only helping themselves but also improving the overall throughput for everyone. The residents are deliberately ruining a public resource for everyone. The two are not comparable.

Re:Public roads?

[dfghjk]

Not doubt the author of this considered it insightful. This has utterly no relation to the issue at hand.

Re:Public roads?

[vux984]

No they are not. Public roads are for use by all, not by a select few.

They are for use by all *for* a specific purpose. And in the case of side residential streets that specific purpose is for public to access the residences on that street.

They were not built as a highway bypass routes. That's not what they are for, just as you can't live in a motorhome in a public park. The fact that it is a public space doesn't mean you can use it however you want, in any way you want.

There aren't restrictions imposed on most residential streets to force the issue because its hasn't historically been a major problem. A few cars going through is fine. But there have been streets downtown in my city with 'local traffic only' signs on them for years, and you could be ticketed for commuting through them, and other places where barriers erected all over the place to turn a grid into a maze to discourage 'through traffic'. This is how society has dealt with it in the past when its been a problem.

Expect to see these solutions expanded.

It is not within a few citizens' "rights" to deny others use of taxpayer-funded public roads.

It has always been within the publics rights to designate usage restrictions on public spaces. Greenspaces are designated as parks, playgrounds, bike paths, walking only paths without bikes, off leash areas... on leash areas.

Roads are the same. They aren't all equal. They are for different things. IF the usage deviates from the intented usage, you should absolutely expect clarification, and then enforcement.

Re:Public roads?

[cipher1024]

Sounds great. Why don't the local residents do that? Why should they not be burdened by the problem just as much as the drivers are? Why the double standard?

So your solution is to cause a problem for someone else. Nice.

The residents are deliberately ruining a public resource for everyone.

Back in the long-long-ago, people had some courtesy and respect for other people. Your attitude is exactly why we can't have nice things anymore. Generally, if you don't have any reason to be in a residential area, you should stay out of it. That's just common courtesy. Just because it's not illegal to drive on the road, doesn't mean it's not a douche move to cut through someone else's neighborhood. Those people pay for the road in front of their house through property taxes and assessments, so you should show some respect by not wearing the road out prematurely because it was not designed nor built to support freeway levels of use. "If it's legal, it's OK" is a shitty mentality. I'd rather not live in a society where they have to try and legislate good manners.

Re:Public roads?

[ooloorie]

They are for use by all *for* a specific purpose. And in the case of side residential streets that specific purpose is for public to access the residences on that street.

If you want to limit the use of those streets in that way, then they should be private roads, paid for by only the residents of that street.

But there have been streets downtown in my city with 'local traffic only' signs on them for years, and you could be ticketed for commuting through them

Well, cities, towns, and police run all sorts of scams; that doesn't mean it's a good idea, or that voters will tolerate this behavior indefinitely.

Re:Public roads?

[vux984]

If you want to limit the use of those streets in that way, then they should be private roads, paid for by only the residents of that street.

You are welcome to drive on the street. You just can't use it as a commuter bypass for the highway. Its a restriction on how you use the public resource... like the speed limit, or a 'one way' designation'. And it applies to everyone using the street.

; that doesn't mean it's a good idea, or that voters will tolerate this behavior indefinitely.

The voters absolutely will 'tolerate' it. They requested it, and they voted for it. They want the residential streets to be used as residential access only. The residents ARE the voters.

The people using their residential streets as a hyway bypass... are the ones that DON'T live there... and they don't get to vote on the traffic shaping in communities they don't own property in. That's kind of how it works.

Re:Public roads?

[serviscope_minor]

Not "entirely reasonably", not reasonably at all. What causes authorities to put in restrictions is the endless complaints of an entitled few, not concern over improper use.

No you're the entitled one thinking you have the right to use residential roads for commuting. Typical of car users, it's all "mine mine mine". No mater if you make roads not designed or use more dangerous, and subject people to large amounts of noise pollution.

BS. All roads are designed for "throughput", some for higher throughput that others.

Utter tosh. Most residential roads are designed for access, not throughput. Some are cul de sacs which have a net throughput of precisely zero.

No road, however, is optimized for throughput since it's speed limit is set intentionally too low, at least in the US.

Well, this simply proves that whiny, entitled drivers are their own worse enemies. Increasing the speed limit decreases throughput since braking distance increases with the square of speed. That's why very busy motorways have variable speed limits. When congestion happens, they bump the speed limit progressively down from 70 to 40, since the throughput is much higher at 40 than at 70.

You clearly don't know anything about traffic planning, and you believe you have a moral right to do something if it's legal, no matter how large the negative impact on others. So, the local council will put in restrictions removing your legal right to use the roads in the way you think is OK.

It's very telling that you put your right to get somewhere a bit faster well above the rights of a large number of people to live on a safer road without large amounts of noise pollution.

The way to "reduce traffic on unsuitable roads" is to fix the roads which are intended to handle that traffic. No discussion of that though! Who cares just so long as the residents get the roads reserved for their use only.

Yep, it's clear you don't know the first thing about traffic. You're just like a toddler whining "mine! mine! mine!".

Re:Public roads?

[dunkelfalke]

That is worded as if Ruhr is a town. It is, in fact, a river, and the university is located in Bochum.

Re:Public roads?

[serviscope_minor]

If you want to limit the use of those streets in that way, then they should be private roads, paid for by only the residents of that street.

If they want to limit the use of streets then they should make them private. That means I can dig up the freeway and put a building there, because it's public land so I can use it how I want, right? No, of course not. You don't have a right to use public land in absolutely any way you want.

Re:Public roads?

[serviscope_minor]

It's not the drivers' fault that there is insufficient highway capacity. What are they supposed to, just suck it up?

Yep. Or you know, live somewhere which doesn't require huge commutes. So that means probably living in a smaller house, but that's basically trading your lifestyle against externalities imposed on other people.

Traffic congestion is a problem which needs to be fixed. A small percentage increase (the residential roads don't have much capacity) which makes a huge number of people miserable is a poor solution.

Re:Public roads?

[ooloorie]

The voters absolutely will 'tolerate' it. They requested it, and they voted for it. They want the residential streets to be used as residential access only. The residents ARE the voters.

The residents of each residential street are not "the voters", they are a tiny minority of voters among all the residents of the city. And the rest of the voters of the city are also excluded from using those roads as bypasses.

The people using their residential streets as a hyway bypass... are the ones that DON'T live there... and they don't get to vote on the traffic shaping in communities they don't own property in. That's kind of how it works.

Legally, of course. What I'm saying is that the interests don't work out. If you have tax payers pay for roads that are used and restricted like private roads, lots of people who don't benefit from those designations end up paying for the private roads, and mostly private roads of people who live in affluent parts of the town/city. You may be able to fool voters into doing that for a while, but eventually, they figure it out and are going to stop supporting it.

To put it another way, once you treat public residential roads like private roads, the arguments for having the tax payer pay for it pretty much go away.

Re:Public roads?

[dave420]

It is entirely applicable to the discussion at hand. It shows that attempts to alleviate traffic congestion by adding more capacity is not a panacea, and can make things worse. Which is the problem being discussed here.

Re:Public roads?

[hawkinspeter]

It might not be the drivers' intentions to reduce highway capacity, but driving on a highway DOES reduce capacity for everyone else (to the tune of one vehicle). In large numbers, drivers can completely clog a road/highway and they then start complaining about there not being enough capacity for them all without realising that they are part of the problem.

Re:Public roads?

[drinkypoo]

Traffic congestion is a problem which needs to be fixed. A small percentage increase (the residential roads don't have much capacity) which makes a huge number of people miserable is a poor solution.

Well, I'll agree that this can be fixed in some other way. But cities have to work together to solve these problems. There needs to be affordable housing where the jobs are, or the jobs need to be force to go somewhere else, or commuting needs to be made to work. Nothing else is going to work. Complaining that civilization has discovered a way to use your road and has arrived at your doorstep is a valid way to get attention, but maybe a better answer is to sell your home to a commuter who would like to live closer to work, and spend the profits moving further away from civilization so that people aren't driving past your front yard in droves.

Re:Public roads?

[serviscope_minor]

Oh I've caught an idiot. He's thiiiiiiiiiiiiis stupid.

You claim that on a public road anything goes by which you mean everything you want to do should be allowed. You're not smart enough to realize that there are tons of entirely reasonable and unobjectional rules already. You only object to go one because if stops you externalising the cost of your poor choices onto other people. I assume you're right wing, since forcing everyone else to pay for your mistakes shoe blaming everyone else is right out of the current Republican playbook.

Public doesn'tmean everything goes, and there are lots of restrictions. Like licensing and traffic rules so that drivers don't completely mess things up. Putting these restrictions is just some traffic rules like speed limits and etc because without them, drivers address messing things up.

The government is entirely entitled to decide who drives on the road and how. Not only that but the locals who's tax pays for the road get a say too. Entitled whiners who choose an inappropriate place to live get no say. So lol sucks to be you!

Re:Public roads?

[ahoffer0]

There are short-term city planning solutions. Block roads to limit ingress and egress like housing developments do.

Re:Public roads?

[myrdos2]

I'd rather not live in a society where they have to try and legislate good manners.

A lot of the people on that freeway have rather hellish lives. They have insane commute times, parking fees, sit in polluted gridlock, shitty jobs, not enough sleep, etc. But you want to force them to spend hours stuck in traffic every week, because their tires will eventually wear out the road by your house, which you want to remain pristine. I can only say that it seems like the lesser of two evils by far, and that courtesy and manners are a two-way street.

Re:Public roads?

[serviscope_minor]

A lot of the people on that freeway have rather hellish lives.

They could have chosen to live in a smaller house nearer to their office, or perhaps taken a lower paying job with a shorter commute. I don't see why the hapless residents inbetween are morally obligated to pay for those people's choices.

Re:Public roads?

[vux984]

If you have tax payers pay for roads that are used and restricted like private roads, lots of people who don't benefit from those designations end up paying for the private roads, and mostly private roads of people who live in affluent parts of the town/city

Any cite to back that theory up? A few feet of pavement on a residential street that only gets local traffic doesn't require all that much maintenance nor is the initial construction cost all that big. Meanwhile the 'affluent residents' are paying significantly higher property taxes.

Are you sure its not actually the other way around. I propose that their property taxes not only more than cover the few feet of pavement in front of them, but also subsidize a bunch of arterial roads.

The city is paying 76 million to upgrade 3.1 km of highway (widen and add center meridian, and an overpass). The shared arterial infrastructure is where the costs are, the residential streets are peanuts by comparison.

Put it this way... 76 million could buy 120 houses for $600,000 each...with money left over. The money "left over" would still be more than enough to build the 1 km of residential road to access them several times over.

Re:Public roads?

[mjwx]

"...because residential streets are designed for access, not throughput. And if they get misused, then that's bad."

BS. All roads are designed for "throughput", some for higher throughput that others. No road, however, is optimized for throughput since it's speed limit is set intentionally too low, at least in the US. Driving on a public road to get somewhere is NEVER misuse.

Here you lose all credibility in the argument. There is a hierarchy of roads. Local roads are for people to live on, these feed into collector roads, which feed to arterial routes which feed to freeways and highways. The more throughput you want, the more limited the access to the roadway and vice versa, the more people live on a road the lower throughput you want. Local roads really are just for starting and ending journeys.

Any properly designed city will be made so that people don't live on major thoroughfares. Of course given rather old cities like London, this isn't always possible. Anything in the US (which wasn't even a country when roads were invented) has no excuse except piss poor city planning.

Re:Public roads?

[cipher1024]

because their tires will eventually wear out the road

What do you think wears out a road? It's not the tires, it's the 3k - 4k pound car that sits ON the tires. If a residential road takes 500 cars a day, maybe it will last 10 years. If you turn that road into a freeway bypass, and shove 5000 cars a day down it, it's going to wear out sooner, maybe every year. So the residents have to pay an extra $800 a year because freeway people have shitty lives, need a nap and want to save 10 minutes on their commute? The same Freeway people that quite possibly don't live in the same city and pay no taxes to the city they're ruining. I think that's just incredibly selfish. 5000 short-cutters gain a tiny reprieve while destroying the quality of life for the 50 neighborhood residents. "My life sucks, so it's ok to make yours suck more." That's backwards.

Re:Public roads?

[ooloorie]

You claim that on a public road anything goes by which you mean everything you want to do should be allowed.

No, I didn't and I don't claim that.

Oh I've caught an idiot. He's thiiiiiiiiiiiiis stupid.

Well, you're obviously talking about yourself there.

Re:Public roads?

[ooloorie]

Any cite to back that theory up? A few feet of pavement on a residential street that only gets local traffic doesn't require all that much maintenance nor is the initial construction cost all that big. Meanwhile the 'affluent residents' are paying significantly higher property taxes.

The relevant question is how much property tax each group of people pays for their share of road frontage. A single family home will have maybe 100 ft of road frontage. In cheaper neighborhoods, the same frontage will support half a dozen rentals in a building worth several times (and hence paying several times as much in property taxes) as much as the single family home. So, the single family home owner gets their roads for much less than the owner of the multi-unit building. In addition, the road in front of the multi-unit building probably supports businesses too, while the road in front of the single family home provides little benefit to anybody else.

Roads aren't all that cheap either: 100 ft of 30 ft-wide road is about $12000, and that needs regular maintenance and lasts maybe 20 years. In addition, you need to add the initial cost of the land and the opportunity cost of not using it for some other purpose. If you take that into account, it eats up a substantial percentage of the property taxes paid by single family home owners.

And cities are figuring out that that's a bad deal, which is why you see more and more gated communities and/or special assessments for roads.

Re:Public roads?

[serviscope_minor]

Me: You claim that on a public road anything goes by which you mean everything you want to do should be allowed.

You: No, I didn't and I don't claim that.

But you also said: If they want to limit the use of streets then they should make them private.

So which is it? Is public road use limited or not in your bizarre philosophy?

Well, you're obviously talking about yourself there.

Are you 12?

Re:Public roads?

[danbert8]

No, the entitled people are the ones in neighborhoods that were designed without through streets. I have no sympathy for the rich neighborhoods I cut through to get home every day and I flagrantly violate every one of their unnecessary stop signs. Maybe if those rich people didn't want people cutting through their residential street (which has no houses on it by the way) they would have actually designed some thoroughfares through their massive 2 square mile with a lake community in the middle of gridlocked suburbs...

These residents who complain about commuter traffic through their neighborhoods sure aren't clamoring to improve their major streets to allow for more traffic capacity to get people off the rural roads. It's far easier for them to lower speed limits, add stop signs, and have the cops issue tickets to get those pesky commuters back in their gridlock where they belong.

Re:Public roads?

[danbert8]

That's the key right there. Piss poor city planning... Which is directly caused by large real estate developers. I live in the suburbs of Atlanta. Got a crowded street that is a clusterfuck? Sure developer, build a huge dense townhouse development right in the middle of it! We aren't even going to make you pay for improvements to the already overcrowded street.

Going to make a massive development that occupies multiple square miles in the middle of a crowded urbanizing area? Sure, go right ahead and don't bother needing to put any 4 lane thoroughfares through your development either. Make everyone go around on the undersized avenues on the edges of the development.

Meanwhile 2 lane state highways built in the 60s that back up for miles aren't getting improved because the state is upgrading rural 2 lane highways to divided highways to bypass a small 1 stoplight town to save rural drivers a few seconds every trip.

Public transit you say? Yeah, those same residents who complain about traffic cutting through their neighborhood constantly vote against MARTA expansion. Heaven forbid those urban elements (non-white people) have access to the suburbs...

"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[davidwr]

but Veloso is worried the changes may simply reroute commuters into other neighborhoods.

Rerouting traffic to the best available route is a feature, not a bug. Seriously, it's a feature. Don't mess with it.

If you really don't want people cutting through neighborhoods during rush hour, then put up temporary traffic-flow restrictions in ALL neighborhoods during those hours and make sure Waze, Google, etc. know about them.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[xevioso]

I think that is what many of these cities are doing, but they probably aren't cooridinating as they should. Try driving through the residential neighborhoods in Berkeley, which figured this out long ago. No one gets off at University to drive through that city because certain parts are very difficult to drive through unless you live there.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[D00MSlayer]

but Veloso is worried the changes may simply reroute commuters into other neighborhoods.

Rerouting traffic to the best available route is a feature, not a bug. Seriously, it's a feature. Don't mess with it.

If you really don't want people cutting through neighborhoods during rush hour, then put up temporary traffic-flow restrictions in ALL neighborhoods during those hours and make sure Waze, Google, etc. know about them.

But is it legal for a city to restrict public roads like that? I think there would be some legal road blocks with that concept(pun intended).

Ultimately, it comes down to needing a better design of city infrastructure to combat the use of non-highway routes if they want to prevent that from happening.

Either that or we change the business-day concept in a way where traffic isn't at a standstill at key hours in the morning and afternoon.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[serviscope_minor]

If you really don't want people cutting through neighborhoods during rush hour, then put up temporary traffic-flow restrictions in ALL neighborhoods during those hours and make sure Waze, Google, etc. know about them.

So basically the city needs to spend ass loads of money because people are dickheads. I do believe that this is why we can't have nice things.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[Ksevio]

I don't think signs with time restrictions cost that much...

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[AthanasiusKircher]

But is it legal for a city to restrict public roads like that? I think there would be some legal road blocks with that concept(pun intended).

Yes, it is legal for a city to do such things, particularly in the name of public safety. Residential areas are frequently zoned, parcelled, and otherwise designed with an expected traffic volume. Increase that volume significantly with a bunch of frantic rush-hour drivers, and suddenly your school is no longer located on a "safe" street, and hazards are created by pedestrians, frequent driveways, kids playing, etc.

Controlling traffic on streets to try to keep it to its designed volume for safety reasons is no different from prohibiting you from parking near an intersection or next to a fire hydrant or whatever on a "public road," also in the name of safety.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[davidwr]

But is it legal for a city to restrict public roads like that?

I assume you are talking about cities in the USA restricting public roads. In some states, neighborhoods may own and maintain the local streets, and they can usually limit access if they want to.

Unless state laws say otherwise, it's generally legal as long as everyone is treated the same.

I've lived in cities where one-lane alleyways had signs saying "no through traffic" but since hardly anyone used them as shortcuts, enforcement wasn't an issue.

It gets tricky if residents are exempt from the restrictions. Ditto if there is an obvious discriminatory effect against a protected class (e.g. de facto racial discrimination) but that's not going to happen in most cases.

Now, as to whether state laws limit a city's ability to do this, well, that will vary by state.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[__aaclcg7560]

So basically the city needs to spend ass loads of money because people are dickheads.

It's called social engineering. Want people to use light rail to get to work? Build mixed developments — stores and high density housing — around each light rail station, providing the incentives for people to live closer to a station and take the light rail to work.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[D00MSlayer]

Thank you for clarifying on that. Wasn't having any luck so far finding the answer.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[D00MSlayer]

Thank you for clarifying that. I obviously have no clue about what my city can do.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[meerling]

They aren't very good at making a road system that properly handles the traffic either.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[whoever57]

Rerouting traffic to the best available route is a feature, not a bug. Seriously, it's a feature. Don't mess with it.

The pinch point in Fremont is the freeway on ramp and then over the hill on i680. It doesn't matter how you get to the on ramp. Rerouting does nothing to improve the overall traffic issues.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[dfghjk]

Why not set a speed limit of zero? Make it illegal to drive on the streets at all? I mean if damaging the usefulness of a few roads is good and damaging a lot more is better, why not go whole hog?

Some people are truly self-interested idiots. The problem is inadequate shared resources; you don't fix that by taking more of it away. Don't give a crap about the residents, it's everyone's problem. Making the residents feel pain would actually help the issue, not hurt, but only if those motivated to act aren't willing to settle for a half-assed measure intended to shut them up.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[dfghjk]

Right, the problem is that government isn't really interested in doing its job...serving the public's best interest. Instead they cater to special interests.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[serviscope_minor]

Don't give a crap about the residents, it's everyone's problem. Making the residents feel pain would actually help the issue, not hurt, but only if those motivated to act aren't willing to settle for a half-assed measure intended to shut them up.

So basically, you live too far from work, and now you want to make people in the middle endure the pain of your bad planning so they have to pay to fix your poor decisions.

#MAGA

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[ausekilis]

The reason Waze and kin are so popular is because the city planners aren't doing their damned jobs. They simply don't do up-front investment and planning to handle what is obviously going to be an area with increased traffic. Traffic in the Austin metro area is a nightmare 6 hours of every day. The 3-lane highways are parking lots from 7-10 am and 4-7 pm EVERY DAY. All major roads are 2 lanes and 35-45 mph limits. It's absurdly common to have traffic backed up to the next light, 1 mile away. Even funnier is you can tell when you leave one county and enter another because the roads magically widen and are in better repair.

The solution to this rush hour purgatory? Add a single toll lane, each way, on the highway that nobody will use. The toll lane has 3 exits, all the way north, downtown, and all the way south over a span of ~14 miles. The toll is higher during rush hour, lower during off hours - when there aren't enough cars to use it anyway. So not only does it not serve the majority of commuters due to lack of exits, it also is prohibitively expensive when it's most needed by those that can use it. It's not uncommon to spend $10 on tolls in one day around here on fixed-rate tolls. $200+ a month adds up.

Re:"It's a feature, not a bug" - seriously

[k6mfw]

"put up temporary traffic-flow restrictions..." There is one of those I saw in Cupertino some years ago (before Waze). I don't remember exactly but while parked on a residential street in Cupertino neighborhood, friend was getting something from another, I noticed the flower bed divider in middle of road was on a rotating pedestial. Looking more closely and also a sign prohibiting thru traffic on weekday mornings and early evenings I can see this rotates 90 deg to block traffic. Damndest thing I ever saw, I have yet to go find this thing, maybe take video as it rotates to block cars.

Los Gatos prohibits traffic exiting hwy 17 into downtown LG on a particular exit (not all of them). It sure seems like this is deliberately planned to stop the Waze traffic using LG as a thru way.

Bandaid

[Thelasko]

This is a bandaid on the much deeper problem. Inadequate highway infrastructure. Fix the root cause, not the symptom.

Re:Bandaid

[93 Escort Wagon]

This is a bandaid on the much deeper problem. Inadequate highway infrastructure. Fix the root cause, not the symptom.

Not every congested location has space to add new freeway lanes (or new freeways). Take I-5 through downtown Seattle sometime, then figure out where you'd put the new "infrastructure".

Re:Bandaid

[Ichijo]

The root problem is too many cars, not overpopulation.

Re:Bandaid

[geekmux]

This is a bandaid on the much deeper problem. Inadequate highway infrastructure. Fix the root cause, not the symptom.

Not every congested location has space to add new freeway lanes (or new freeways). Take I-5 through downtown Seattle sometime, then figure out where you'd put the new "infrastructure".

Never been to Seattle, but every other major city has pretty much the same answer. Build another layer above.

Don't have the funds in the city coffer and can't stomach the tax hike for fear of citizen revolt? Fine. Make the next layer a toll road to pay for it. People hate traffic and are impatient enough these days they'll pay, believe me.

Re:Bandaid

[boskone]

bad example. the transportation "planners" in Seattle, a region growing by leaps and bounds, is REDUCING freeway capacity by removing the 6 lane Alaskan Way Viaduct and REMOVING the two express lanes across I90 to put choo choo trains on them in a region that already has some of the worst gridlock in country.

Re: Bandaid

[Fwipp]

Yeah, we already did that. And we got other stuff over that layer too.

Re: Bandaid

[Fwipp]

Why are you terrified of light rail? Bad childhood experience with Thomas the tank engine?

Re:Bandaid

[bickerdyke]

No. For densly populated areas, adequate infrastructure would be better public transport. ("better" in terms of capacity, price and safety)

Re:Bandaid

[NormalVisual]

In many places, it really is population. Central Florida is a prime example. Not only are there traffic issues, but the ever-increasing population is putting quite a strain on the groundwater resources. Busses and trains won't fix that.

Re:Bandaid

[Ogive17]

Inadequate mass transportation infrastructure.

I'm in Ohio, I'd love to have a rail line installed in the median of all our interstates that connect the main cities with stops along the way.

Re:Bandaid

[Quarters]

'Build another layer above' worked wonderfully for San Francisco until 1989.

Re:Bandaid

[markdavis]

>"The root problem is too many cars, not overpopulation."

No, it is pretty much overpopulation. I moved to this area 30 years ago and traffic was X. Now it is about 2X and so is the population. Car ownership rates hasn't changed all that much in 30 years. Most adults own a car and use it regularly.

Re:Bandaid

[Balial]

Clearly the new infrastructure is to soak up the capacity in the streets surrounding the freeways. This is what Waze et al help with.

Re:Bandaid

[thomst]

Thelasko opined:

This is a bandaid on the much deeper problem. Inadequate highway infrastructure. Fix the root cause, not the symptom.

Obviously, you've never been to Fremont.

Fremont, CA, is located along scenic (HAR!) Interstate Highway 880, the major commute corridor for drivers in the East Bay going to work from the (somewhat) affordable residential communites of San Leandro and points north to jobs in Silicon Valley. It's three to five lanes wide, and it's PACKED at commute time. Widening it would require using eminent domain to acquire land in one of the most expensive areas in the United States - land that is already in use for (mostly) commercial and industrial concerns. You know: mom and pop businesses like, for instance, Tesla Motors. Then there's the permitting process, where, in addition to Federally mandated enviornmental impact studies, there are onces specific to California, public busybody organizations like the Sierra Club (which routinely files lawsuits against freeway expansion in the San Francisco Bay Area), and other meddlers. At long last, once all that is accomplished - at a cost of years and many billions of dollars - the actual construction can begin. At a cost of more billions of dollars from highway funds that are already wildly overstretched.

And the minute the new lanes open, they will already be occupied to maximum capacity, because Silicon Valley. (See the Cypress Overstructure replacement project in Oakland as an example.)

"For every complex human problem there is one and only one simple, easy to understand solution. And it is always wrong." - H. L. Menchken

Re:Bandaid

[jeff4747]

Inadequate highway infrastructure. Fix the root cause, not the symptom.

No, that isn't the root cause.

The root cause is zoning. We do not allow people to build tall buildings everywhere, nor do most cities allow mixing of residential and commercial development.

Increasing highway capacity (aka "highway infrastructure") can not fix this problem, because demand increases as fast or faster than you can add capacity. That distant suburb few live in because most are unwilling to endure the commute? Improve the highway and more people will move there, using up all the capacity you just added.

Re:Bandaid

[reg]

Along with some of the other deeper problems listed in other replies, here are some others:

Poor driving skills and habits. California drivers are specifically taught not to zipper merge and will get angry if you do. Plus, they weave looking for the fastest lane. This weaving means others don't leave following distance (else some ****** will take it), so there is no cushion and everyone stop/starts.

Poor interchange spacing, requiring excessive merging. This is especially true in California, where there are no standards for interchange spacing. Poor merging skill makes this worse.

No functional hierarchy of roads. California has 26 lane freeways or 2 lane city streets, but few arterial and collector roads. This goes hand in hand with poor interchange spacing, because you need lots of interchanges to the city streets, rather than a few interchanges to arterials.

Poor interchange and intersection design. California loves four leaf clover interchanges because they reduce left turn conflicts on city streets, but they often back up the freeway instead. Also, cramped interchanges result in creative interchange designs, which often have capacity problems, backing up onto freeways.

Poor traffic light timing. Often lights rely on triggers, and very few lights are synchronized. Even if they were synced, poor driving habits mean that people speed between the lights and are forced to stop.

HOV lanes often make these problems worse because people merge quickly to get into the HOV lane and then to get out. Theoretically they increase capacity, but only under a very simplistic model, and not when you reward electric vehicle owners...

Hopefully self driving cars will help with some of these, if they can be taught to drive properly, and co-ordinate merging, but then mostly their owner will get frustrated because they will always feel they could drive better.

The root cause of these problems is that a fundamental theorem in traffic basic shows that at optimal traffic flow at any point is defined by the condition that every individual driver can improve their own solution by acting selfishly. With selfishness on the rise, it is no wonder that traffic problems are getting worse.

Re:Bandaid

[bluegutang]

You do realize that the "choo choo trains" can transport more people than a freeway, because they hold hundreds of people per vehicle rather than the typical 1 person in a car on the freeway?

Re:Bandaid

[dave420]

1. Increase driving license testing quality
2. Improve road surface quality for safer higher speeds
3. Increase speed limit
4. Invest in medium-distance light rail to link town and city centers with long-distance high speed rail

It works wonders in Germany (and so could work in US cities/commuter belts), but points 1, 2 & 4 would never fly in the US.

Re:Bandaid

[Thelasko]

Inadequate mass transportation infrastructure.

Inadequate infrastructure in general. Too much distance between good jobs and good housing. Mass transit, better roads. So many things.

I admit, in my first post I was rage typing.

Re:Bandaid

[Thelasko]

No, that isn't the root cause.

The root cause is zoning.

I agree. When I wrote my original post I was rage typing. The root cause is poor infrastructure in general. Highways and zoning are just one aspect.

One of the most promising developments I've seen are networks of distributed urban environments linked by rail. These types of developments are becoming popular in the DC metro area.

Re:Bandaid

[Cajun Hell]

The root problem is TANSTAAFL. Everyone (quite reasonably and understandably) wants more for less. But as a whole, or on average, they can't have it.

Realtime traffic databases offer a short-term advantage, where you can come out ahead . . . until enough people know about it, until those who bear the costs of the new traffic patterns react, etc. Like the traffic itself, lunch seeks an equilibrium, and it ain't free.

Re:Bandaid

[amxcoder]

I can assure you that I880 through the Fremont area is not 'near empty' 2 hours after the commute. On that freeway, the heaviest hours are between 6-9am and 3-7pm, however even between 9am-3pm, it's still heavy traffic like most ordinary freeways would be considered heavy. During the middle of the day, the freeway moves at least, but your still doing like 45mph not 65mph through that section. The only time you could actually do the speedlimit in most cases is in the middle of the night.

Re:Bandaid

[Ichijo]

I moved to this area 30 years ago and traffic was X. Now it is about 2X and so is the population.

And so are the cars, correct?

Re:Bandaid

[markdavis]

Yes, that is what I meant by "traffic." Although the traffic [problems] is [are] actually worse than 2X because it is non-linear.

Re:Bandaid

[Ichijo]

So how is it that the traffic congestion was not caused by putting more cars on the road? That's...counterintuitive.

Re:Bandaid

[markdavis]

The more people, the more cars. The reason there are more cars is because there are more people. There are not more people because there are more cars. It is the fact that more people moved to this area (population) that what caused more cars to be on the road.

Re:Bandaid

[Ichijo]

The more people, the more cars.

Really? How much are you willing to bet that I cannot name a city with more people but fewer cars than yours? Ha ha!

Re:Bandaid

[markdavis]

>"Really? How much are you willing to bet that I cannot name a city with more people but fewer cars than yours? Ha ha!"

I wasn't talking about another city. I was comparing my city now to 30 years ago.

Re:Bandaid

[boskone]

I realize they theoretically "can" hold more capacity, but I would suggest that they WON'T move more people per hour than the two dedicated traffic lanes do today.

according to the DOT, I90 express lanes move about 7,000 vehicles an hour at peak, including buses and carpools https://www.wsdot.wa.gov/North...

ST projects (and they usually offer VERY optimistic projections) that in 2030, the entire eastlink project will carry 50,000 riders/day. So, in 13 years, along the whole route, ST "projects" that the trains will "almost" carry the amount that cars carry today, for free.

http://www.soundtransit.org/ea... (bottom right rail has the projection)

but overall, yeah, they're a great boondoggle. tell me again why not just more buses,a nd keep the lanes available for carpools, buses, ambulances, etc?

Learn the Lesson of Water

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: How does water get where it's going?

A: Any way it has to.

Commuters and drivers are like water. Put up a barrier and the "water" will adapt, and rather faster than a creaky bureaucracy can keep up.

An easy fix

[Ichijo]

When a freeway is congested, good old-fashioned Supply & Demand says it's because the price is below market equilibrium. That's easy to fix, and as a bonus it provides a revenue source to pay for freeways that's less regressive than the sales tax.

Re:An easy fix

[quantaman]

When a freeway is congested, good old-fashioned Supply & Demand says it's because the price is below market equilibrium. That's easy to fix, and as a bonus it provides a revenue source to pay for freeways that's less regressive than the sales tax.

Won't that just push more people onto the side streets? Besides, it might even be more regressive as a lot of working poor do have jobs that require a lot of driving to get to them.

Re:An easy fix

[Dunbal]

People need to work in order to live, and they need to commute in order to work. At one point you stop taxing "convenience" and are in fact taxing survival. Governments are parasitic by nature but it's never in the parasite's best interest to kill the host. You might tell yourself you're real smart when you start thinking about the inelasticity of demand in this case and how wonderful a tax would be. Then you wonder why the mob with pitchforks and torches is battering down the town hall door. Fix the problem instead.

Re:An easy fix

[Ichijo]

Won't that just push more people onto the side streets?

More than Waze already does?

Besides, it might even be more regressive as a lot of working poor do have jobs that require a lot of driving to get to them.

If they can't afford to get to work, their employers will have to pay more if they want their toilets cleaned and their grass cut.

Re:An easy fix

[Ichijo]

People need to work in order to live, and they need to commute in order to work.

Perhaps, but the fact that people fill up an unpriced freeway with cars is no more a sign of need than people grabbing all the burgers on free burger day.

Re:An easy fix

[quantaman]

Won't that just push more people onto the side streets?

More than Waze already does?

Well yeah, tolls work by reducing traffic, where do you think that traffic goes?

Besides, it might even be more regressive as a lot of working poor do have jobs that require a lot of driving to get to them.

If they can't afford to get to work, their employers will have to pay more if they want their toilets cleaned and their grass cut.

Meaning that fewer employers will actually employ them, so fewer jobs will be available and the jobs that are available will be less profitable due the toll costs.

Re:Public roads

[DontBeAMoran]

Won't neighbourhood roads get destroyed pretty fast if you redirect highway traffic through them?

Cars? In my street?

[fabioalcor]

How they dare! City mayors must send them back to the traffic jams where they belong!

Re:Public roads

[xevioso]

Yes, and those cities/towns have just as much right to put in traffic "calming" measures, like speedbumps, roundabouts and other annoyances as you have a right to drive there. It goes both ways.

It's not the highway infrastructure

[wickerprints]

The real root of the problem is that people are either unwilling or unable to live within a short distance to their workplace. Many large cities were not designed to handle the volume of commuters that we have had for at least 20 years. People live in the suburbs (for a variety of reasons; some due to economics, others due to a desire to live in areas with lower population density), and commute to the city centers to work. This was okay when suburban sprawl was not as extreme as it is now. In the Bay Area, people can't afford to live close to work due to the insane real estate market. And they don't want to live in shoebox apartments, either.

The problem can only be solved by reducing the need for people to commute. There are a lot of ways to do this:

1. Encourage employees to work remotely where possible.
2. Decrease the cost of living in the city center or areas close to work.
3. Provide financial incentives for employees to live near their job site.
4. Allow more flexible working hours so that traffic volume can be distributed over a longer period of time.
5. Self-driving cars have the potential to reduce accidents and increase traffic flow efficiency.

Notice I did not include public transit. Public transit is only good for people who already live sufficiently close or do not need the flexibility of traveling by car. In Los Angeles, public transit is a complete joke. To commute from a suburb to downtown can take over 90 minutes, whereas driving by car--even in traffic--is at least 30 minutes faster, simply because train frequencies and network densities are too low. Sure, it's great if you only need to travel two or three stations and the trains run every five minutes...but for the vast majority of commuters this is not realistic. Commuters want and need to drive cars.

Re:It's not the highway infrastructure

[techno-vampire]

In Los Angeles, public transit is a complete joke.

One of the reasons is that it's set up strictly to get people from the suburbs to Downtown and back. As an example, there's no practical way to go from the San Fernando Valley to the San Gabriel Valley by bus without going through Central Los Angeles.

Re:It's not the highway infrastructure

[GreatDrok]

Alternatives to cars is what is needed. I agree with you that public transport is pretty hopeless. I used to work in the CBD and live in the suburbs so the commute by bus was 1.5 hours, but then again it was 1.5 hours by car too and it would cost $14 a day to park so adding in fuel I was looking at $20 a day. $400 buys a lot of bus trips and there's the benefit of being able to zone out. However, spending three hours a day commuting wasn't going to work for me so I bought a motorcycle and cut my travel time down to 35 mins each way because I could filter through the traffic to the front at traffic lights, and also parking in the CBD is free for motorcycles, plus I used around 1/3rd of the fuel that the car would so my weekly commuting bill dropped from $400 a month to $100. I was very surprised how few of us were on bikes because the traffic here is so awful but everyone likes their tin umbrella I guess. Personally, I was happy to gain another couple of hours a day, and I enjoyed riding my bike come rain or shine because I would take the out of the way route and have fun. The only downside was that car drivers tend to be ignorant of the existence of bikes so don't look, or don't see them so you need to keep your wits about you. Now though, I work from home so no longer need to commute through the city and I couldn't be happier.

Re:It's not the highway infrastructure

[b783719]

Encourage employees to work remotely where possible / Provide financial incentives for employees / flexible working hours

Pointy Hair Boss said no, as he comes in 3 hrs late for the meeting.

Re:It's not the highway infrastructure

[jeff4747]

In Los Angeles, public transit is a complete joke.

>90% of the buildings in the Los Angeles area are 3 stories or less.

The problem is not public transit in and of itself. The problem is zoning restrictions that prevent the density required for effective public transit.

Re:It's not the highway infrastructure

[scamper_22]

There's another solution that I'll add.

Far too much emphasis is put on residential choices and not enough on business choices / city planning.

I used to live in the city (Toronto), but have recently moved out to the Burbs. Here's the thing, I chose to live near a regional rail line. I work downtown. It takes me less time to get to work (30 min) then when I used to live in the city taking the subway...

It got me thinking that all this moralizing over transit is pretty silly. You can have a high intensity downtown living. You can have your suburban living. Assuming things are planned reasonably.

If anything, I'd say, all this crazy drive to get people living close to work and in shoe box condos is all a bit silly. Put the businesses in the central locations.

Then get regional rail to get people from the burbs there.

Regional rail is pretty cheap in comparison to subways. Sure, it runs less often, but it does the job.

I've come to see that the biggest problem we've faced in the suburban office park.

Another Canadian example is the city of Calgary, which kept its downtown business core better than Toronto. It has huge burbs, but also a good LRT system that functions as regional rail.

Re:It's not the highway infrastructure

[waveclaw]

It is funny to note that one of the original - and never met - goals of the original President Eisenhower Federal Highway system was to replace bad city-planned roads to reduce congestion. The ironic fact the system increases congestion it by creating choke points to get on and off it is lost by many.

The real root of the problem is that people are either unwilling or unable to live within a short distance to their workplace. Many large cities were not designed to handle the volume of commuters that we have had for at least 20 years. People live in the suburbs (for a variety of reasons; some due to economics, others due to a desire to live in areas with lower population density), and commute to the city centers to work.

The highway system in the United States is rather unusual. Most countries would design a system to maximize the utility. Lots of high density living near high density employment plus walking, cycling and mass transit. Then minimizing problems like traffic jams by using turnabouts and parallel paths. Instead, the United States highway system was built for the military instead. It was created by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (Public Law 84-627).

Originally this system got raw material from one side of the country to another to manufacture planes, guns, ammo and ships. It was also envisioned as a great lever on the economy. But the immediate social cost of this high-speed bypass was destroying little towns that grew up on existing roads like Highway 66, a road that already crossed the entire country.

But the system was funded at a time when Nuclear War was the next big thing just around the corner. One intention or clear effect is spreading living out into the new suburbs and exurbs to reduce the impact of a nuclear strike on the core of a city. In fact the roads around every major city aren't designed to avoid traffic jams but instead to ensure:

the importance of the Interstate System to evacuation of cities in time of national emergency.

-- the Clay Commission.

This was the time when everyone was told on the brand new TVs that success means 'a steady job, a home out of town, a car, two kids and husband+wife.' That is when they weren't practicing duck and cover.

Where these yahoos intended to put these people fleeting the burning inner cities during war? The imaginary copious amounts of farmland that planners though should be able to support them. Yes, this was during a time when farming was already well on it's way to consolidating into agribusiness.

No, people didn't decide that suddenly the suburbs were the peak of civilization (even if we parody that in the movies.) The citizens of the United States bought a big pile of propaganda. The sad fact is that the people who wrote that propaganda actually believed it was to help them.

The problem can only be solved by reducing the need for people to commute. There are a lot of ways to do this:

Tell that to three generations of management that believe in face-to-face time. Google and other Stack-ranking "Internet Native" companies design their HR system to terminate remote workers or flex workers as fast as they can hire them. Sixty years of white flight, black flight, Mexican-ization, gentrification, urban blights, drug wars, gang wars, the real estate collapse and protectionist nimby laws the problems haven't been solved by staying at home. In places like Irving, California, that are built on the Internet, things got much worse. The demographics keep changing but the work culture and laws didn't.

Re:It's not the highway infrastructure

[stephanruby]

Notice I did not include public transit. Public transit is only good for people who already live sufficiently close or do not need the flexibility of traveling by car.

On a side-note, public transit should not be treated as a binary thing.

I can't speak for the Los Angeles area, but in San Francisco, the bay bridge / golden gate bridge can be significant bottlenecks during commute hours. One could try driving/ubering through all that gridlock, but the fastest way sometimes is to take the Bart/Ferry to cross the bay, and then pick up your car, or call an Uber/Lyft, to finish the last leg of your trip.

Re:It's not the highway infrastructure

[jwdb]

I agree with the sentiment, in that LA is not dense enough. However, that doesn't mean it needs to build upwards - most European cities I've been in are almost completely 3 or 4 stories, but they make it work with good public transport, smaller houses, and building things closer together. The complete absence of row houses and mixed use zoning is part of the problem.

LA is afraid of turning into Manhattan, but tall buildings isn't the only way to get sufficient density.

Re:It's not the highway infrastructure

[k6mfw]

Your comment reminds me of this lecture of 20th century suburbs by Evan Friss on CSPAN https://www.c-span.org/video/?... and he describes the garage as a house for a car.

Americans always see this issue backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Americans always see this issue backwards

[per.abich213]

Been living in Germany, Norway and the UK, and I always felt that the best system is to provide good public transportation for an affordable price, subsidised by road tolls. And provide lots of (free) parking space at good connection points for commuters from areas where public transport isn't as convenient. The road tolls need to act to deter people from driving who don't need to. It should make people consider public transportation - while at the same time making the road less congested for the people who choose to pay for driving. First step of introducing something like this would have to be to create parking and good public transportation before the congestion points and enable tolls...

Re:Americans always see this issue backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US, grid-plan streets were the thing back in the horse-and-buggy days. Old cities have this, and it's very susceptible to abuse by Waze and its ilk. In the early days of suburban sprawl, developers were all building on city streets, and those all connect with each other. They run straight and parallel/perpendicular for the most part. It's not strictly grid-plan, but it's pretty close.

But modern development in the US in the suburbs favors huge subdivisions with curvy private streets. These streets rarely have any markings, aren't maintained by the government (HOA's pay for repairs), and usually have parking allowed on both sides in between the myriad of private driveways. These neighborhoods don't connect to the next neighborhood over, because a different home builder developed the next subdivision, and they don't want their potential customers to go to the next guy to buy a house. So the streets literally go nowhere.

Commuter traffic isn't a concern in the suburbs anymore.

Re:Americans always see this issue backwards

[HornWumpus]

A lot of them were 'cute', they actually have a way through, usually just one. Now everybody knows where it is.

But you do have a point, it's dead ends with HOAs, or grid roads and freedom, for the most part.

I've seen a grid road neighborhood association metastasize into a HOA in everything but name.

Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[tepples]

it's selfish people who don't use mass transit

If you live in a city that doesn't run its buses from 8:45 PM to 5:45 AM (source), and you're given hours at night, you need a car in order not to have to spend the majority of your paycheck on a taxi or lose your job. If you live in a city that doesn't run its buses on Sundays, and you're given hours on Sunday, you need a car in order not to have to spend the majority of your paycheck on a taxi or lose your job.

and idiots living one hour away from work that are the problem.

A lot of jobs don't pay enough to rent a place to live closer to work. How are people "idiots" for taking advantage of a sharp gradient in annual housing costs? Perhaps the real "idiots" serve on the city's zoning board that created this situation.

Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[bickerdyke]

it's selfish people who don't use mass transit

If you live in a city that doesn't run its buses from 8:45 PM to 5:45 AM (source), and you're given hours at night, you need a car in order not to have to spend the majority of your paycheck on a taxi or lose your job. If you live in a city that doesn't run its buses on Sundays, and you're given hours on Sunday, you need a car in order not to have to spend the majority of your paycheck on a taxi or lose your job.

And if you're paying for a car anway, you don't want to pay the same amount again for a month pass, even if your usual hours are not at night or on sunday.

Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[Ichijo]

A lot of jobs don't pay enough to rent a place to live closer to work.

Then take one that does, and let your ex-employer figure out how he's going to get his toilets cleaned if nobody can afford to work for him.

Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[Cramer]

I recently looked up how much trouble it would be to get to work via bus. I live in one city, and work in a shares-a-border adjacent city. Depending on the time of day I need to get between them... 3-4+ hours. First, a bus or two to get to the central hub downtown. To then get a bus to either the regional transit center (out near the airport, connects all the regional bus systems) or the amtrak terminal. And from there, a bus (or three) to get near my office. You'd think a huge office park and amphitheater would have a bus stop, but no, the closest one is half a mile away, behind the Wal-mart.

Mass Transit systems in the US are woefully inadequate and seriously inconvenient. The only places I've ever been with remotely usable transit are DC, NYC, and maybe Chicago. Even at NCSU (decades ago), I rarely used the buses. If I was in a hurry, I'd drive. If I wasn't in a hurry, I'd walk. If I didn't care if I ever got there, I'd wait for a bus. :-) (granted, I wasn't headed to the vet school every day.)

Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[tepples]

Then take one that does

Provided you have enough self-marketing skills to get more than one job offer. That doesn't come naturally to many in Slashdot's demographic.

Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[thegarbz]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say people travelling at 9pm aren't contributing to traffic jams.

Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[TheRaven64]

I did similar calculations when I was buying my first house: there were some houses a couple of miles out of town that were quite a bit cheaper, but would end up costing a lot more over a few years. If anything, he's being optimistic, because he's not factoring in the appreciation in the house. He does make the point that you can afford a much more expensive house if you're not commuting, but doesn't add in the fact that even a 1% appreciation per year in the value of that house over the time that you're living in it will come to around a third of the amount that he says that you save by commuting: 3% appreciation will more than double the savings. He also doesn't factor in things like the fact that living out of town also increases the cost of getting to shops or the fact that you need to get a taxi (or persuade your partner to be a designated driver) if you want to go out for drinks.

Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[dave420]

We're not talking about night workers, but people commuting during rush hour.

Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[DarkOx]

A lot of jobs don't pay enough to rent a place to live closer to work. How are people "idiots" for taking advantage of a sharp gradient in annual housing costs?

Which is the best argument against housing subsidies and subsidized mass transit. We have these giant city centers where a few mega corps pay salaries that 10 - 20x everything else in the region. You have folks making 20x living there in fancy penthouses, the folks making 15x living in downtown apartments and the folks making 10x trying to take a car into the city. Then you have all the support people making what might be generally considered a prevailing wage who either live in subsidized housing or take subsidized transportation.

Here is the thing though nobody would want to work in a giant office building that does not get cleaned. Nobody wants to live where they can't get a cup of coffee or a bagel made for them, they don't want to live where there is no retail of any kind. Those support workers are *required* The high earners and mega business that occupy our down towns are just corporate welfare recipients. Fast food workers would get $15 an hour downtown if we did away with these subsidies because otherwise there would be no hamburgers for sale downtown because there would be no employees to make them.

One of two things would happen, either downtown would start to suck and companies down there would leave unable to attract talent and go back to the company town model. This still exists look a Breezewood WV, or say Westfield Ohio. The company hires everyone. They outsource nothing, the guy serving burgers in the cafe is a corporate employee, so is the guy mowing the laws. They local bank is the company, so the local hotel, etc. This model works fine. People like, in fact ask anyone who lives there and the love it.

Or Two, bottom end wages will go up substantially which will free the rest of us from tax burden, or allow better services of other kinds, no longer supporting housing and transportation.

Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[tepples]

Someone who works days Wednesday through Sunday both is affected by Sunday downtime and contributes to rush hour traffic.

Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[MayeulC]

it's selfish people who don't use mass transit

If you live in a city that doesn't run its buses from 8:45 PM to 5:45 AM (source), and you're given hours at night, you need a car in order not to have to spend the majority of your paycheck on a taxi or lose your job. If you live in a city that doesn't run its buses on Sundays, and you're given hours on Sunday, you need a car in order not to have to spend the majority of your paycheck on a taxi or lose your job.

On the other hand, there traffic is usually less problematic during these hours, as there are often less commuters (maybe except for holidays on Saturdays, those can be quite crowded).

So, that use case is hardly a problem, in my opinion (unless I missed something).

Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[tepples]

If you work the evening shift, your trip out still contributes to the evening rush hour. If you work the overnight shift, your trip back in still contributes to the morning rush hour. If you use your car only on Sundays, you still need to pay for maintenance and insurance on a car. And when you have a car, you drive your car.

Re:Bus downtime; housing cost gradient

[TheRaven64]

property taxes on the increased value of the house?

Property taxes here are assessed in bands and aren't revalued very often, so it's really only the difference between the initial purchase prices. That difference between bands for this kind of difference is pretty small - far less than the difference between mortgage payments.

Increased home owner's insurance for increased value of the house?

Contents insurance was lower than in the place I was renting, because the doors and windows were more secure and it was in a lower crime area. Building insurance costs don't vary very much with property value. I'm now in a house valued at about 4-5 times the current value first house I bought and property insurance prices are about 50% higher.

Re:Public roads

[D00MSlayer]

There's a route I take sometimes to work, and they have a street that just had a sign put up outside of it that says "carpool only" during 7AM-9AM to try and curb people cutting through to get around a nasty bit of traffic in that area. It helps, but people like myself scoff at it and proceed to drive through it anyways.

Speed bumps are a fire hazard

[tepples]

Speed bumps are not the answer because they also impede emergency first responders.

Easiest way to gain back control

[bickerdyke]

Easiest way to get control back to the traffic planners would be to provide waze with highly dynamic information where traffic planners would like to send the cars to to minimize congestion. And if traffic planners would like them to be stuuck in a traffic jam they should look up their job description or for other jobs.

Re-route to poor neighborhoods

[rsilvergun]

where there aren't any HOAs/housewives that can take time out of their day to lobby city councils. It's amazing the difference in public service between well-to-do neighborhoods and the poor ones.

Wait

[Dunbal]

So town planners are mad that people avoid sitting in traffic and want to find a way to force people to sit in traffic? I didn't realize that generating traffic jams was the actual goal of the transportation people.

Re:Wait

[green1]

Town planners used to work for the public good. They optimized traffic flows to try to get the most people to where they were going in the least time.

Then NIMBY types, green types, and other special interests got a hold of them. Now town planners have a completely different job. Their job now is to try to socially engineer everyone to the NIMBY/green/special interest vision of the perfect commuter. This is accomplished by making it as difficult and as slow as possible to drive anywhere.

Where I live we get very harsh winters, but our bike lanes are clear of snow (and any cyclists) well before the city streets are. They remove traffic lanes that were previously bumper to bumper cars, and put in bike lanes that are empty 99% of the time. Our local cycling special interest group is extremely vocal, and the city caters to their every whim, at the expense of everyone else. Meanwhile our main thoroughfare through the city was last widened in the 1970s (despite sitting on a large easement that would make it easy to do so), the official logic being that if they expanded it, people might use it, and they'd rather encourage "alternative" transportation (code for bicycles). Meanwhile we have some of the largest urban sprawl of any city, coupled with harsh winters. who cycles 30km each way to and from work at -35c?

This is a case of the "squeaky wheel gets the grease" NIMBYs, greens, and special interests are a tiny fraction of the overall population, but they know how to make a LOT of noise.

Make the speed humps narrow

[Bruce66423]

This is the approach here; wide enough to catch cars, but so wide that emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire engines aren't inconvenienced.

Re:Make the speed humps narrow

[dfghjk]

The "approach here" is no speed bumps. The problem isn't speed over even the legal use of public roads, the problem is local resident entitlement.

Re:Make the speed humps narrow

[green1]

exactly!

Why does one resident's urge to not have to see any cars other than their own trump hundreds or thousands of other people's rights to use publicly funded infrastructure to get from A-B?

Worse yet, that same person would probably happily cut through someone else's neighbourhood without a second thought.

NIMBY types get no sympathy from me.

Re:Make the speed humps narrow

[Alioth]

The problem is SUV drivers see them as challenges and go roaring over them at speed.

Re:Make the speed humps narrow

[LunaticTippy]

No NIMBYs in my back yard!

well, crap

[fluffernutter]

How come every major new technical commercial venture we talk about seems to crap all over a lot of people in some way?

Re:well, crap

[green1]

You mean how come every time someone comes up with a better way of doing something local governments do everything they can to obstruct it?

Re:well, crap

[fluffernutter]

That's easy, because it is the job of local governments to ensure that no commercial venture tramples on a citizen's right to enjoy their part of society as much as anyone else.

Speed bumps slow cop cars

[tepples]

This is the approach here; wide enough to catch cars, but so wide that emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire engines aren't inconvenienced.

Police cruisers are both cars and emergency vehicles.

Re:Never exit the freeway

[Quarters]

To be clear, you're advocating willful ignorance of the 4th and 5th amendments as a way to prevent legal use of taxpayer funded roads?

As always, down to $$$

[iamacat]

Charge for crossing certain points during peak hours, give locals a transponder to wave the fee. It's basic supply and demand.

Re:As always, down to $$$

[green1]

Why should those entitled locals get an exception to the rule?

If they want to block everyone, fine, but they should be included in "everyone". or are some people "more equal" than others now?

I really hate traffic jams!

[reboot246]

It has been learned that nearly all the traffic jams in the United States are caused by only one driver. Her name is Maude Jones and she's a very active octogenarian. She's been driving since before God was born and she covers a lot of miles, a real surprise since she never goes over 40 mph. Though she's never been in an accident, authorities say she's caused thousands of them.

Personally I think that maybe every city and town has a Maude (or several). She'd have to be Santa Claus to cover the whole country in one day.

Seriously, if the traffic engineers AND politicians would just do their jobs right, traffic would flow 100% better than it does now. Speaking as someone who has driven nearly two million miles, I've seen it all - and it's ugly out there. Roads, highways, intersections, etc are so poorly designed in some places that I just scratch my head and wonder wtf were they thinking.

Subdivisions have been built with no thought as to the increased traffic they produce. Hospitals are built with no thought given to traffic or parking. With businesses and strip malls all over the place our roads have become shopping aisles (think what it's like with shopping carts inside a big-box store). Schools are sometimes located in places where the traffic is already bad. Near where I live are two HUGE high schools that are only five miles apart and empty onto the same two-lane road. It's a nightmare when school lets out in the afternoon. I don't go near them when school starts in the morning.

There is hope though. Rumor has it that Maude is retiring from driving real soon.

Car-Magedon in Fremont last week

[stevew]

I happen to live exactly within the affected neighborhood. Last week we had the first of what we're calling "Car-Magedon" occur here. Cal Trans in their infinite lack of wisdom chose to fix a large pot-hole in the 680 Freeway right as rush hour was starting block 2 of 4 lanes that leaves the Silicon Valley. This is the major artery that everyone is talking about in the article. Anyway - traffic was SO BAD that it took me 15 minutes to move 5 houses from the corner to get into my driveway. I snuck in to the traffic having luckily met up with my wife who had been waiting on our street for 45 minutes inching her way to our house - she let me cut in front of her! We had a linear parking lot in front of our house for around 4 hours.

As it goes now - we are seeing mile long lines queueing up to get on the 680 before it goes through the hills at the last couple of on-ramps. That is a nightly occurrence.

Re:Car-Magedon in Fremont last week

[tepples]

Last week we had the first of what we're calling "Car-Magedon" occur here.

Perhaps you could take out your frustration by playing Carmageddon.

Re:Car-Magedon in Fremont last week

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I happen to commute through the area in question. 680 and 880 run roughly parallel "logical south" of a point a couple miles "logical north" of Mission (which is the shortest connector between them near the logical north end) with Fremont Bvd also roughly parallel and in between them for much of their run. If something clogs 680, Fremont Bvd is the only shunpike available. 880, meanwhile, is usually clogged from several miles logical north of Mission down to 237 or beyond. Again cutting over to Fremont Bvd via Mission is the preferred shunpike (though there's another on the bayward side).

It's going to get worse. Caltrans is doing construction on the relevant clog-prone section of 880. But rather than expanding it, they're turning the existing carpool-during-rush-hour lane into a pay-to-use-express lane - from AT LEAST the Dumbarton turnoff (and probably far beyond) down to 237. If they expand the limited-access times, or if the change repels rush-hour drivers into the regular lanes rather than attracting more from them, the already clogged part of 880 will get more clogged and produce more shunpikers.

Re:Car-Magedon in Fremont last week

[k6mfw]

Reminds me of someone who just moved from So Cal to the bay area. She said down there is freeway construction but they actually do something and finish the work. Here there are many sites of freeway construction but nothing ever gets done (the temporary barriers have become permanent fixtures), i.e. 101 in Palo Alto where more lanes being added/repaired. Except mods to Wolfe Ave exits from 280 for the new Apple Saucer.

yes this WILL push it to other neighborhoods

[thewolfkin]

take care of the traffic and this won't be a problem. Fix the jobs situation so people don't need to drive that far, fix the roads so they can handle the traffic, fix the economy so we're not all on the road at the same time.

Trying to "game" the traffic apps is like sweeping the dirt under the rug it doesn't help. It just hids.

How we used to fix congestion in the old days

[John Jorsett]

We'd build more capacity. Which in California now is about as likely as building more housing, building more water storage capacity, NOT building a stupid waste of money called High Speed [sic] Rail ...

Re:How we used to fix congestion in the old days

[jeff4747]

It is not possible to build capacity fast enough. Demand just rises until you reach the current equilibrium.

The way you fix it is via zoning. You have to allow higher density and mixed-use development.

Re:How we used to fix congestion in the old days

[green1]

Only if you have infinite cars....

In a universe with finite cars, you can build enough capacity. But it means that the capacity you built in the 1950s and 1960s has to be upgraded!

Re:How we used to fix congestion in the old days

[jeff4747]

Only if you have infinite cars....

Because you can build infinite freeway lanes?

you can build enough capacity. But it means that the capacity you built in the 1950s and 1960s has to be upgraded!

It has been continuously upgraded. After every single upgrade, the equilibrium is restored. Congestion rises to meet capacity.

First, more distant suburbs become "practical" for commuters.

Second, the people and businesses you displace with your new highway cause the city to become more spread out, thus increasing the demand on highways - people have to drive farther because you moved their job/school/supermarket/whatever.

City Planners

[b783719]

and no 'traffic engineers"?

In traffic engineering, traffic system can be calculated for optimized traffic flow. Clearly, there hasn't been any engineer to continue upgrade the system as the existing system is unable to keep up with the capacity. Waze and other traffic apps are just fixing their problem for them. If they get a few engineers, they can at least find alternatives to maximize traffic flow before considering infrastructure upgrades.

Just a few examples, including increasing the green light time for peak traffic into city, recommending specific route for low traffic, shifting lanes, changing intersection phasing (priority warning for drivers required), redirect city traffic permanently (not recommended but feasible depend on traffic).

Optimal routing

[thisisauniqueid]

How is solving traffic as a global optimization problem a bad thing? If people don't like it, they should go live in a cul-de-sac.

Drivers need to outsmart Waze as well

[SuperKendall]

I take instructions Waz gives me with a grain of salt these days, because something tricky it's telling you to do might give you an extra MINUTE vs. just stating on the highway... also Wze traffic understanding is inherently a little delayed. So now when I think about Waze detours I look carefully at what ahead is triggering going around - if it's an accident more than 30 minutes old, that's probably gone and it will be better to stay on. If rush hour is winding down, the predictions of heavy traffic may evaporate. Conversely, If rush hour had just started the rosy prediction about how awesome the freeway will be is probably wrong.

Also anymore if I do decide to take the Waze side street detour, I take a side street parallel to the one Waze suggests - because after all Waze is sending a lot of people down that street and increasing traffic more than it knows!

Re:Drivers need to outsmart Waze as well

[mjwx]

I take instructions Waz gives me with a grain of salt these days, because something tricky it's telling you to do might give you an extra MINUTE vs. just stating on the highway... also Wze traffic understanding is inherently a little delayed.

I used Waze once because they had the Clarkson, Hammond and May voice set... which really just turned out to be mostly May. I've gone back to using Google Maps for navigation because Google Maps tells you which lanes to choose where as Waze doesn't.

Re:Drivers need to outsmart Waze as well

[SuperKendall]

I use Apple Maps for navigation (it usually works better than Google Maps nav for me), but leave that in the background and have Waze in the foreground. I still get turn by turn from the audio but can see hazards around me in Waze. If I know traffic will be especially bad I do use Waze for navigation as it is much, much better than Google Maps or Apple Maps at giving you immediate re-routing as traffic changes just up ahead. It's really just the route and time predictions I feel Waze gets wrong, for knowing the road ahead of you the next five minutes Waze is better than anything.

Re:Drivers need to outsmart Waze as well

[mjwx]

I use Apple Maps for navigation (it usually works better than Google Maps nav for me).

I use Google Maps because when I set the nav for Brighton, I dont want to end up in Northumberland.

I also dont care about traffic cameras and Google maps is the best I've seen for predicting traffic conditions and dealing with live traffic updates (which are quite good here in Southern England).

Re:Drivers need to outsmart Waze as well

[SuperKendall]

I don't care about traffic cameras either. But I care very much about road hazards like potholes or other objects on the road, which Waze can and will warn you about and no other app will...

Apple maps finds Brighton just fine for me (in England). The thing about Apple Maps is that I've found it's routing is better between endpoints, it also offers a nicer selection of possible routes. In the early days of Apple Maps it would route me to home along the route I took because I knew it was faster whereas Google Maps took me a bit out of the way compared to my shortcut...

"Logical North, Physical West"

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Regarding "logical north/south" in Silicon Valley":

- Much of the pacific coast of California is not north-south, but northwest-southeast, making "north-south" major highways about 45 degrees off from the nominal direction.
  - In addition, in the area around Silicon Valley (especially the southern part of San Francisco Bay) there is an additional rotation due to the arrangement of faults and the resulting layout of the bay, peninsula, and surrounding mountains (or "big hills" if you don't count them as mountains unless they're snowcapped year around).

So, in and around Silicon Valley, many "north-south" highways actually run almost exactly east-west.

It seems appropriate that, in this part of California, the roads lean about 90 degrees to the left. B-)

Perhaps

[hduff]

Perhaps municipalities should address the needs rather than game the system.

Hazard

[emaname]

I live and have lived in a neighborhood that people use as a shortcut around a busy, traffic-light controlled intersection. They are driving through a residential area with a posted speed limit of 25mph. The people trying to bypass the intersection will drive as fast as 50mph (more typically at 40mph). Again, the posted speed limit is 25mph and it's a RESIDENTIAL AREA.

The neighborhoods have no sidewalks so people walk in the street near the edge. There are children riding bicycles in the street and people walking their dogs or just out walking.

The point is, if you're going to bypass a slowdown or a backup and you choose to exit and go through a residential area, please respect the speed limit. Recognize you're in a residential area and be respectful and courteous and mindful for the safety of the people who live there.

I suspect the hazard of people driving at highway speeds through residential areas is one of the concerns of city planners.

Re:Hazard

[djinn6]

Why don't they just enforce the speed limit? I mean, you can put in speed bumps that makes your own commute more annoying, or you can put in some speed cameras.

Off ramp metering

[PPH]

On ramp metering worked so well to smooth out freeway traffic, local governments have learned from that lesson and will begin implementing off ramp metering. When traffic on local roads starts to become congested, signal lights on the freeway off ramps can be used to meter the flow into that area. When asked how this scheme would affect freeway congestion, local governments took a cue from the response given when on ramp metering was installed and replied, "Not our problem."

Joking aside, local and freeway traffic planners have been working at odds for far too long. Local communities have lobbied for far too many freeway on/off ramps. Often to divert what should be local traffic onto a nearby freeway for a mile or two in order to avoid building or upgrading arterials through their communities. Perhaps it's time to close off some of these redundant ramps, making it more difficult for drivers to just hop on and off the freeway. And then get municipalities to build adequate local roads that can carry traffic between these more distant ramps and destinations. An added benefit of fewer on/off ramps is a reduction in merging congestion and improvement in traffic flow on the freeway. So less people will be motivated to cut through town.

You're missing the point

[bradley13]

"God forbid that someone gets off a freeway and discovers a local establishment while passing through."

I live in a neighborhood affected by this: there is a narrow road connecting our town to the next town over, that gives commuters a handy shortcut. This road runs through the middle of our town, past three schools and a kindergarten. Commuters - in their blind rush to get from A to B - are not interested in stopping at a local restaurant. They're interested in driving as fast as possible through town, maybe taking a couple of kids along as hood ornaments.

We tried to just close the segment of the road connecting us to the next town, even though this would inconvenience local residents. An administrative court denied this, even though it's a town road, paid for by town funds. So we dropped the speed limit to 20mph, and spent too much money installing obstructions and speed bumps to physically enforce the new speed limit. Whiz through at 40mph, and your suspension will now punch a hole in your roof.

The fact that a road is a "public" road does not make it suitable for long-distance commuters. Really, there ought to be a simple, legal way to restrict local roads to local traffic. It shouldn't be necessary for neighborhoods like ours to spend millions just to keep our local roads from being abused as substitute highways.

Re:You're missing the point

[Gr8Apes]

A few sharp speed bumps will only cost a couple of thousand, and will definitely slow down traffic. Or, enlist a few citizens as ticket writers, with a 20 mph speed limit, you should be able to lower your taxes on top of providing more jobs.

Re:You're missing the point

[farble1670]

Really, there ought to be a simple, legal way to restrict local roads to local traffic.

Really, there ought to be a way to make people who propose such things personally foot the bill for installation and maintenance of the road. That'll change their opinion on the matter real fast.

They are not made to handle traffic

[aepervius]

A highway and a public road have different way to be constructed, various layers, which use up at different rates, depending on the traffic. If you reroute a highway traffic, in a sizeable manner , through a smaller road, it will suffer, and generally will require maintenance far more quickly. I can't be sure for this specific local road, but usually they are in the budget of the city. Then you have additional problem like having the passerby or local resident having to endure far more traffic than the road should have, possibly lowering significantly the price of the house they bought.

So no it isn't as simple as you push it.

Re:Everyone into the jam

[cstacy]

This is because Waze (Google) is very shitty at reporting traffic conditions in real time. I observed that it has around 30 minutes delay.

In the areas I drive (both city and highway), the traffic on Google is accurate to within a minute or two.

Electric vs diesel

[jago25_98]

I don't mind you driving by my front door with a quiet, clean electric car.

A diesel semi, that's another matter.

Maybe they should fix the problem

[CharlieG]

If there is a regular enough problem that is short enough to bypass on local streets, maybe said traffic engineers should spend their time actually FIXING the problem that is causing the traffic jam

Automatic tolling + time exemptions

[Aqualung812]

Why not put automatic tolling during commute hours, at a fairly high rate, that is exempted when you enter the area but spend at least 30 minutes there before leaving?

It would capture funds from the people just cutting through during rush hour, or deter them from using the street.

If you decide to stop from breakfast or other forms of business within the area, you're not tolled as you spent more than X minutes in the area.

Re:Howzit pronounced?

[dwillden]

It's pronounced ways as in: It helps you find the fastest ways home.

Too bad, so sad

[thunderclees]

I can understand the neighborhood distress over cars driving past their expensive houses but since public money built and maintains those roads it is really too bad. What will happen eventually is they will add lights, exuberant police enforcement or have the speed limit set to crawl to try and dissuade errant motorists.

Re:Here is an idea..

[green1]

Traffic engineers know this. but their political masters have given them an impossible task. They've been asked to ignore the public good, and cater only to those who make the most noise, special interest groups. Additionally they've been given a budget that allows for maybe a few street signs and maybe a couple of jersey barriers, but certainly not enough to maintain existing roads, let alone build new ones.

This isn't an engineering problem, it's a political problem.

Wow, a lot of passionate comments

[jediborg]

But really, isn't this just regular old network theory at work? Isn't this situation analogous to Internet routing? If one line is congested you use smaller, alternate lines to get around the congestion. This is just natural behavior that should be completely normal, predictable and i bet there are research papers analyzing Internet traffic patterns, and the patterns of blood cells traveling through our veins that can help describe this situation with more clarity.

While i understand the reaction of the locals to implement turn restrictions and harsh speed control mechanisms to deter this, it sounds like they are fighting nature. (yes humans are part of nature) Instead of fighting perfectly logical, natural behavior, there should be another way to solve/tackle this problem, and i don't think any of the comments thus far (which seem to fall either into "MORE MASS TRANSIT" or "BIGGER FATTER ROADS") are the optimal solution

Children playing?

[Bruce66423]

Once upon a time it was safe to let children play in the street - or at least walk to a friend's house on the sidewalk. This reflected the fact that the traffic was limited in residential areas. The idea that we should sacrifice our kids safety to motor vehicles who have no NEED to be in an area is one that needs further thought. The rise in traffic flows in residential areas is a classic example of the boiled frog problem - one where an issue has got worse so slowly that noone has reacted to what is actually a massive loss for the community.

Dunno

[Bruce66423]

All I can point to is the policy of our local council here where such narrow humps are standard policy on new traffic calming measures - though that may just be their way of saving money!

And you know this... how?

[DerekLyons]

I often stop at restaurants, grocery stores, other retail, bars, etc. and they are all slammed. Often the parking lots are near capacity. I like taking care of my todo list while traffic thins out and it appears that many thousands of other commuters feel the same.

And you know they're commuters and not folks a few blocks from home... how exactly?

Not to mention, you're a stupidly clueless as the original poster - failing to note the discussion was about people forced off the freeway, not people choosing to get off the freeway.

Stop repeating BS and learn something..

[thesupraman]

That would be because they were fucking idiots.

They specifically tested models of bikes that took no considerations at ALL for either efficiency or pollution, and there is strong evidence that they
actually jiggered them up a bit to make it even worse (people subsequently ran tests on similar bikes, and got WAY WAY lower numbers).
And even when you took their numbers, they were talking percentages. when you took simple 'pollution per mile' even their messed with bikes were
better than a car!

Good old politics, got to love it.

Now, look at the figures for a modern commuter bike.
Take a Honda Grom 125 (yes, stupid name). 105MPG. Scooters regularly get 150-200MPG.
Hell, a CBR 250R, a small SPORTS bike, gets towards 70..
There are plenty of 'California spec' bikes with catalytic converters, etc - although at those fuel economies its almost irrelevant as absolution emissions are so low.

Re:And you know this... how?

[LunaticTippy]

Why the hostility? Are you having a bad day/life or something? It's within your power to improve things! Try being nice to people, you will be happier and your life and day will go better.

I'm on 680, the robot tells me to get off at mission, I follow about a hundred cars doing the same. I see a store I want to shop at and follow about a dozen cars into the lot. They are all getting off the freeway and going to the packed store. I watch them do it. I talk to people in the store, we share some gallows humor about the traffic. I'm not just making shit up here, ok?