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LA Councilman Asks City Attorney To 'Review Possible Legal Action' Against Waze (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Yet another Los Angeles city councilman has taken Waze to task for creating "dangerous conditions" in his district, and the politician is now "asking the City to review possible legal action." "Waze has upended our City's traffic plans, residential neighborhoods, and public safety for far too long," LA City Councilman David Ryu said in a statement released Wednesday. "Their responses have been inadequate and their solutions, non-existent. They say the crises of congestion they cause is the price for innovation -- I say that's a false choice." In a new letter sent to the City Attorney's Office, Ryu formally asked Los Angeles' top attorney to examine Waze's behavior. While Ryu said he supported "advances in technology," he decried Waze and its parent company, Google, for refusing "any responsibility for the traffic problems their app creates or the concerns of residents and City officials."
The solution is really simple. Mark the street as "No Thru Traffic" since that's essentially what he wants. Waze and others will update their maps accordingly. In OpenStreetMap it's just a matter of adding an "access=destination" attribute and I'm sure Waze, Google, Apple and others have similarly simple ways of representing this. They will then stop routing people through that street. The city does no even need to enforce the street sign since all they want to avoid is the excess traffic driven by the apps. Problem solved.
But only the city (or maybe some county/state department) has the authority to make that decision so he should work on it instead of making an ass of himself and wasting everyone else's time.
... if you don't like people driving on a public road, then... well, it's a public road.
By definition, the public can go on a public road.
Are people speeding? Give them tickets.
Are people not stopping at lights/stop signs? Give them tickets.
Otherwise STFU.
The city could have pushed through a road reclassification. Had they done so the routing would be updated and problem solved. But this lets someone stand up to Big Bad Google, rather than actually fixing the problem.
I'm with Waze/Google on this one. They route based on accurate and legal road information. Once they start tweaking it things will break. The city can change the road signage to match what they want for traffic and map routing ( not just Waze, but any app based on the actual road network ) will change to match.
It always bugs me when Waze routes me through residential streets. I wish there were a setting to stick to thoroughfares.
There is nothing that compels you to follow the directions that waze gives you. If you don't want to drive through a residential street, don't. Waze will happily recalculate the route for you. If you aren't interested in getting to your destination in a timely fashion, why are you using a navigation app that does just that?
Its because the traffic planning is so bad that they use these apps. I know quite a few bottle necks that if they fixed in LA would clean up a lot of traffic.
Or add "NO THROUGH TRAFFIC" signs on the roads that they desire no through traffic to be on. This is exactly why signage and traffic laws exist.
Everything that Waze is doing is legal. There just isn't any room for argument from municipalities as there might be with AirBNB and Uber.
Pretty much this.
Google's "refusal to fix" the issue is a subtle way of saying: "Fix your goddamn roads so our software wouldn't have to direct people through terrible routes that are still faster than the main ones."
Politicians just can't wrap their heads around cause and effect.
Still, those roads were funded by the public, which includes federal dollars, state dollars, county dollars, and special taxes on fuel. They weren't funded by the council or this ass-hat. He doesn't get to tell the public they can't use the roads they funded, and he doesn't get to tell Waze (or google) they can't help those who want to use them coordinate.
LA has a traffic problem, and to help distribute the load, Waze has come up with a pretty ingenious idea. Where was the councilman then? Not giving a rats ass about anyone or anything except his little district.
Always trying to legislate or litigate away people's freedom, these ass hats.
Driving Manhattan Beach to Santa Monica, I tried many many different routes to avoid the 405. Turns out, none of them were significantly faster. 45 to 75 minutes guaranteed. All Waze and Google maps did was direct me along obnoxious circuitous routes that got me stuck at too many stop signs. Of course, it took me nearly 3 months of trying to reach that conclusion: statistically tracking peak traffic times, determining when traffic was worst on which streets. So imagine if every driver was trying this, which they obviously are.
I certainly wouldn't have been driving at all if there was a metro line that didn't take 2-3 hours to complete the same route. Though to take the metro from Manhattan Beach it's the Green line to the Blue line to the Expo line and then walk or take the bus another half mile to the office. Or it's take the bus to the LAX and then another bus up Sepulveda and then another bus along Wilshire.
Eventually I just decided to ride my bike because it took just as long and I got to ride on the beach every day. LA traffic sucks enough that people would take public transit if it meant you didn't have to drive the freeways. I will certainly use proximity to a metro line to influence the next place I live.
48 Hours without Google Maps or Waze for the LA Metro area....
So, instead of addressing the problem they combat a solution. Classic politics.
So, are you going to have cops sitting at the entrance and exit of this neighborhood, recording everyone that enters, relaying that information to the exit cop, and then having them try to match any cars that drove through?
No, the whole discussion is about an app routing via the faster route (because the main route is congested). Not the couple of people who decide to drive that way on their own.
The app doesn't need a police officer to enforce the routing, it just needs to be marked as "no through":
The whole discussion appears to be that Waze believes they are in the business of distributing information about roads, not in the business of lying about roads, so if the city doesn't want the app to route people via that road, they need to put up the signs.
If those cars weren't taking the side streets the other roads would get more traffic and would probably need to be two or three times as many lanes anyways. If anything Waze or any map application is reducing congestion.
In Texas, the state has been trying to force San Antonio to build toll roads and has deliberately allowed traffic to get worse in main areas (281/1604 comes to mind) since we keep voting against those toll roads every time it comes up.
I love waze/google maps. I use it even on routes I know. It's like having a scout in front of me checking for accidents and making sure all is open for me
It's because we see ourselves as individuals rather than groups. It's a good thing but does have some repercussions.
How does he know the drivers are using Waze? I was taking shortcuts through neighborhoods a decade before there were any commercial navigation products.