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Mapping Apps Like Waze, Google Maps, and Apple Maps May Make Traffic Conditions Worse in Some Areas, New Research Suggests (theatlantic.com)
From an Atlantic story, originally titled "The Perfect Selfishness of Mapping Apps": In the pre-mobile-app days, drivers' selfishness was limited by their knowledge of the road network. In those conditions, both simulation and real-world experience showed that most people stuck to the freeways and arterial roads. Sure, there were always people who knew the crazy, back-road route, but the bulk of people just stuck to the routes that transportation planners had designated as the preferred way to get from A to B. Now, however, a new information layer is destroying the nudging infrastructure that traffic planners built into cities. Commuters armed with mobile mapping apps, route-following Lyft and Uber drivers, and software-optimized truckers can all act with a more perfect selfishness.
In some happy universe, this would lead to socially optimal outcomes, too. But a new body of research at the University of California's Institute of Transportation Studies suggests that the reality is far more complicated. In some scenarios, traffic-beating apps might work for an individual, but make congestion worse overall. And autonomous vehicles, touted as an answer to traffic-y streets, could deepen the problem. "This problem has been vastly overlooked," Alexandre Bayen, the director of UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies, told me. "It is just the beginning of something that is gonna be much worse." Bayen and a team of researchers presented their work earlier this year at the Transportation Research Board's annual meeting and at the Cal Future conference at Berkeley in May 2017. They've also published work examining the negative externalities of high levels of automatic routing.
In some happy universe, this would lead to socially optimal outcomes, too. But a new body of research at the University of California's Institute of Transportation Studies suggests that the reality is far more complicated. In some scenarios, traffic-beating apps might work for an individual, but make congestion worse overall. And autonomous vehicles, touted as an answer to traffic-y streets, could deepen the problem. "This problem has been vastly overlooked," Alexandre Bayen, the director of UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies, told me. "It is just the beginning of something that is gonna be much worse." Bayen and a team of researchers presented their work earlier this year at the Transportation Research Board's annual meeting and at the Cal Future conference at Berkeley in May 2017. They've also published work examining the negative externalities of high levels of automatic routing.
"Selfnishness" means to optimize for themselves. It's a well established term in economics, biology, etc., without a moral subtext
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
That's your own psychological problem
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Just because people are using the information that's available to them? Perhaps the government should start planning transportation according to smart people instead of sheeps. Madness, to accuse people of selfishness when it's obviously lack of planning that's the problem.
Not quite. It's a problem that isn't solvable by some government design, but only solvable through some very strict control of actions (road rules and we all love those).
Consider someone who's unhappy that the traffic is doing 50 in a 60 zone and there's a free lane to the left that is ending. He jumps in, goes to the front and then merges back. Selfishness for using the infrastructure when what he has done is cause a brake-light wave to propagate through the traffic behind him making it worse.
The same applies to short-cutting. Taking one of those shortcuts often may end you on a sensor light that otherwise wouldn't impede traffic. The solution to that is either to put in dead-end streets (piss off everyone) or put in place "local traffic only" rules (piss off people who are anti-government and think just because they pay taxes they can do what they want).
It is selfish. We are selfish.