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.

Comments

Selfishness?

[cerberusss]

[quote]Commuters armed with mobile mapping apps, route-following Lyft and Uber drivers, and software-optimized truckers can all act with a more perfect selfishness.[/quote]

Selfishness? 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.

I'm not saying that building more roads is the solution. Lots of governments are about to go bankrupt on road maintenance alone. However I think technology can save us here. When I was young, I thought we'd have special equipment alongside roads, so we'd have self-driving cars. But that hasn't happened, and tech companies are now fixing this problem themselves, using AI to drive on imperfect roads.

Re:Selfishness?

[Knuckles]

"Selfnishness" means to optimize for themselves. It's a well established term in economics, biology, etc., without a moral subtext

Re: Selfishness?

[Knuckles]

That's your own psychological problem

Re:Selfishness?

[_Sharp'r_]

The article contradicts much of the summary:

Bayen said that nobody has managed to do a multi-scale analysis that can determine if the apps, even if they create local problems, are better or worse for whole traffic basins.

And

That said, they have not proven this yet. While it’s clear that these apps can put stress on local side streets, we still don’t know what effect they may have on highways, or for traffic systems as a whole.

So basically, someone has a theory that a counter-intuitive result which doesn't match people's experience and implies people getting off a stopped freeway makes traffic worse (but that people can't figure that out over time in a scenario which plays out frequently on their daily commute), but hasn't actually come up with evidence for that theory (at least, not in this article nor paper), but hey, look at the shiny theory!!!

Re:Selfishness?

[scamper_22]

No, what's madness is you taking such offense to being called selfish.

Most people, me included, mainly use Waze/Google Maps in a selfish manner to get to your destination quicker.

We're not thinking about overall traffic flow....

LifeProTip... the most effective way to deal with someone who says you're selfish... is to say... I am... now what.

We're all selfish. Selfishness taken too far can be a problem. I wouldn't consider this a case of being selfish taken too far though.

Re:Selfishness?

[Zocalo]

It's not "selfish" in the context of human attitudes towards achieving a solution to a problem, it's in the context of game theory - the alternative would be to choose the option that leads to the greater good, even if it means you personally benefit less than the alternative option. Assuming that the paper is correct, then the problem we have at the moment is that the software tools need to evolve to a point where they can dynamically determine the optimum number of cars to direct off a congested highway to achieve the most efficient overall flow. I guess the ideal would be that the navigational systems work in real-time to direct enough traffic off the highway that it increases congestion on the sideroads to the point that all possible routes would take the same amount of time, although that would almost certainly be NP complete, given the number of vehicles and unique destinations to account for.

Re:Selfishness?

[Rip!ey]

"Selfishness? Just because people are using the information that's available to them?"

Well yes, actually. Let's go back a few years. About 20 years to be exact. In a city on the other side of the world to most of the USA. We had a power cut. City wide. In winter. For two days straight.

I've never gotten to work faster. Without traffic lights, people gave way. Without the enforced controls that those traffic lights provide, every.single.driver assessed the immediate (visual range) traffic conditions and let the busiest routes through. Mine was not the busiest route. But when those on the busiest routes play the same game the same way, everybody wins. Traffic lights alone cannot achieve the same. Their fixed rules are too simple

Fast forward to today and tell me what has changed. Business is selfish. And the employees play the same game. The mapping apps are no better than the traffic lights alone from 20 years ago. Fixed rules are replaced by selfish ones. Matters are worse. We will need an order of magnitude faster computing power and mobile network bandwidth to make a difference. And centralized control. In a decentralized control world.

I foresee a world where paying more for an Uber get's you there faster.

Re:Selfishness?

[geekmux]

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.

Since the problem is massive congestion on our roadways, the problem to solve is capacity, which is sometimes difficult to budget based on estimated future use. And of course you can't forget about the greed and corruption within construction. Gotta keep pockets lined in perpetuity with never-ending maintenance and expansion.

I'm not saying that building more roads is the solution. Lots of governments are about to go bankrupt on road maintenance alone.

Oh, they've solved that whole budget thing around me. Every new road being built is a fucking toll road. Problem solved.

However I think technology can save us here.

There was hardly any road traffic last week when kids were on spring break, proving just how much of an impact school alone can be with congestion. We have high-speed internet at home, inexpensive VPN technology, and cloud collaboration. Companies have the capacity to support remote work. They refuse to do so. Same goes with high school. Millions could be saved if we converted high-school to virtual school.

We have the technology already today to fix the congestion problem. The real problem is ignorance and refusal to embrace it.

Re:Selfishness?

[thegarbz]

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.

Re:Selfishness?

[cayenne8]

Same goes with high school. Millions could be saved if we converted high-school to virtual school.

This would be a BAD idea....

Going to school at a kid is a way to socialize them...give them the tools they need to interact with others....to create relationships, hell, to learn how to get laid!!!

Kids today are already being more and more isolated due in large part to them not playing outside as much as kids, and with nothing but social apps and texting as means to connect with others, rather than talking in person.

If you didn't throw them together physically in the school systems, you're exacerbate a problem we're already seeing that is having a harmful effect on the younger generations that don't have good real life, in person social skills.

In other words

[93 Escort Wagon]

Thanks to Waze, Dr. Bayen’s formerly uncongested secret route into work is now full of cars.

Re:In other words

[thegarbz]

It doesn't even need to be that. It could be his own street, in small quiet suburbia, once safe to let your kids run around on has now turned into a highway. Google tells me to do just that every day, rather than drive the 700m further to go down the highway it takes me through a school zone where I can run slalom between cars and kids.

Spreading traffic

[JaredOfEuropa]

The solution proposed by Bayer is to spread out diverting drivers to different routes. You'd think that happens automatically as the shortcuts fill up and the apps start routing around those blockages, but the problem is that the traffic data available to the apps tend to lag quite a bit. Drivers know this. And that's why that video of the simulation hasn't convinced me. When apps suggest a detour but the off-ramp to that detour is congested, people often elect not to take the detour even if the app tells them it's faster. And once the freeway starts moving again, I usually see that "residual congestion" at the off-ramp clear in seconds, no one chooses the detour anymore in that case and just drives on instead.

Re:Fuck California and its "wisdom".

[VernonNemitz]

I'm wondering if they are taking into account the overall general increase in the total number of vehicles on the road. If someone leaves a major highway to try a back road, isn't that a hint that the major highway is full of traffic? So I'm interpreting this report as noticing that all the extra cars on the road are filling up the back roads, since the major highways are about as full as they can handle.

it's a software bug

[mapkinase]

Get over with it. Instead of sending everybody on the same route, send them probabilistically. I suspect Waze already does that, verified several times experimentally.

Re:Lack of Experience.

[hazardPPP]

It is a bit less convenient for people who live in those areas? Sure. In which case lean on your town planners to avoid narrowing main roads for more bus/special/cycleway lanes, and make the primary roads larger.. because thats what services the majority, rather than pandering to a minority.

Actually, no. You have it all wrong.

Planners have always created residential streets which are meant only for local traffic, not through-traffic. That is wholly a good thing, because maybe people who live there for one, don't want all the noise and pollution (there is a reason why freeways are surrounded by walls, and why generally one's back yard does not face a freeway directly, without obstruction), and for two, they might want to use that street for something other than a mass of cars flowing through (e.g. their children playing in it). I'm always fascinated by people who, once they get in their car, think the entire world (or at least every road) is just empty space that is supposed to have one use and one use only - to get them to their destination...but I digress.

What this study shows is that you can't fix an overcongested road system with optimization (alternative routes, self-driving cars, whatever). If there are too many cars on the road for the network to handle, you will get traffic jams. Simple as that. Now, experience (from the last 60 years or so) shows that widening roads generally does not help - it's only a short-term fix, and if you add a lane, it will soon be filled up. Unless it's - wait for it - a bus lane. Yes, because a bus lane (or a streetcar/LRT right-of-way) can transport magnitudes more people than a car lane (assuming you've got the bus service to enable that, of course - an empty bus lane or one which sees one bus an hour is wasted space).

So the answer is more bus lanes - and more buses - and more public transit in general - not less. That's because experience shows that if you've got a city with millions of people living in it, the proper way to organize it is 1) build it at high density and 2) move people around primarily using high-capacity public transit, not cars. This is exactly the opposite of the way California does it, and in her sprawling car-oriented suburbia, no amount of extra freeways, intelligent GPS machine-learning routing apps, or smart self-driving cars is going to fix traffic problems. As long as the approach is the same, the results will be the same - traffic jams, traffic jams, traffic jams. There is simply a tipping point in terms of population where a primarily car-based transport system becomes inefficient.

Multiple reasons

[DrYak]

If someone leaves a major highway to try a back road, isn't that a hint that the major highway is full of traffic? So I'm interpreting this report as noticing that all the extra cars on the road are filling up the back roads, since the major highways are about as full as they can handle.

Yup, that was also my impression, specially regarding apps that try to be "smart" and guess where traffic is stuck.
Be it apps that leverage big data (Waze is supposed to autolearn traffic fluidity). Or plain old normal GPS apps that rely on the traffic announcement over FM RDS (and whatever its upcoming DAB+ successor is) to offer alternate course like almost any in-car built-in satnav.

Also : other very mundane reasons :
- not so smart apps.

not every single app has precise fluidity information for every last metet of road.
some of them fall back to plain old "speed (based on official limitation) x distance (on map)" heuristic to determin optimal path.
And thus end up advertising completely stupid routes, just because they happen to look shorter on the map, and are tagged with the same speed limit (e.g.: 50 km/h in residential area), but one is a large arterial road, the other is a tiny passage way.

Google Maps has been an offender in my experience (probably I live on the wrong side of the atlantic pond regarding to where has their cloud the most informations about), as from time to time even specialised satnav vendor such as Tomtom (Yes, I know that the pass through the montain seems much shorter on the map than taking the highway aroudn the whole mountain. But it's winter and the pass might not even be open)

---

Last, regarding the whole part autonomous cars :

Remember that the whole big advantage touted behind autonomous cars and any other shared form of transportation (shared cars as in lots of big cities including plain old non-autonomous shared cars, and even ride sharing systems as the mentioned Uber and Lyft), is that it *reduces* the number of cars on the road.
(Has been even studied, with some studies showing that 1 single shared (non-autonomous) car, replaces 4 cars).

So if autonomous cars rise in numbers, that will decrease the total flow of car and actually result in lest congestionned small streets. Not more.
(as is already the case with car sharing systems)

Re: Multiple reasons

[Terwin]

Overall conditions will inherently get WORSE as time optimized routing increases. If my app drives my car ten miles farther to avoid a constant traffic snarl that takes 12 minutes to ge through, i save two minutes. My car drives another ten miles. I am disrupting traffic at my usual places plus ten miles of circuitous but time optimal for me. Maybe i make a hundred people one second slower for each extra mile i drive. That's a thousand people seconds. Which means my saving two minutes just cost you sixteen minutes if you are the designated scape goat of the day. You will then do the same to me and a thousand others. Net result, we have three traffic snarls and but 45 mins getting through them while driving twice as far.

Why?
Bc f u i got mine. Even if i no longer do a year later bc everyone else does the same tragedy of the commons shit.

Road network capacity is vehicles over time.
If you spend 2 minutes less on the road then you are taking less road capacity. Even if you add to congestion elsewhere, you are reducing congestion on your normal route, so you are not adding to overall congestion.

Unless you decide to engage in frequent behaviors that cause hard breaking for other vehicles (ie cutting people off) only on alternate routes and not on your main route, taking a longer but faster route should reduce overall congestion and help everyone get to their destinations faster.

As a 'good' alternate route is one that has little or no congestion, the preferred scenario of taking an alternate route should not involve additional congestion for anyone because you would want to select a route that is far enough below capacity that it is not congested to get the best speed.

Re:Lack of Experience.

[yabos]

Actually this is not the first time I've read about this. People that live on residential streets that are close to major highways have had problems with Waze and the like routing way more cars through their streets than it was designed for. They design residential streets for a typical traffic flow and not for a lot of cars bypassing traffic on a regular basis. Imagine living on one of these streets and having hundreds of cars come down there daily, when it was never designed for that and thus making your quiet residential road into a high traffic road.
A quick google search turns up lots of stores and people complaining about this.
http://kalw.org/post/driving-a...
https://www.waze.com/forum/vie...
http://www.latimes.com/opinion...
https://www.usatoday.com/story...

Re:Traffic

[swb]

I think a big part of traffic problems is that urban planners have become ideologically opposed to cars and have begun to array urban planning tools against cars to make driving difficult. We get "traffic calming" which translates as lanes removed and parking removed in favor of dedicated bike lanes (it's also snowy and below freezing about 4 months out of the year).

The hope is people will find driving so difficult they give up cars for bikes or transit without considering that both are a poor substitute for cars in many cases -- distance, poor transit systems, weather, need to carry packages, etc.

I'll grant them that suburban car-centric planning is a disaster, but mostly I consider it just pseudo-planning. To this day there are suburban shopping areas where it's like 5 large tenants built buildings and lots and whatever adjoining space was left becomes a "road" which results in absurdities like requiring 4 left turns to get anywhere.

I just figure there has to be a middle way that's not so anti-car it makes things impossible but not so pro car you wind up with a wasteland of roads.

Re:Lack of Experience.

[TheRaven64]

They are for public use, but the road surfaces are often cheaper because they are intended for less traffic. If you increase traffic significantly, you will damage the road surfaces. This, in turn, will increase the wear on the cars travelling over it. When the municipality eventually repairs the road, they will either spend more on a tougher road surface or they will add measures to discourage through traffic (chicanes, speed bumps, one way systems, barriers, and so on).

Re:Lack of Experience.

[AmiMoJo]

Companies should offer flexible working hours, with say core mandatory hours between 11 and 3. Then there isn't a mad rush for everyone to get in a t 9 AM, overloading the road network.