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LA Councilman Asks City Attorney To 'Review Possible Legal Action' Against Waze (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the price-for-innovation dept.

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."

16 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Mark the street as "No Thru Traffic" by fgouget · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Mark the street as "No Thru Traffic" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      That doesn't let the councilman grandstand.

    2. Re: Mark the street as "No Thru Traffic" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Our city has signed my street with âoethrough traffic prohibitedâ and sent a letter to Waze of the change. Nothing has happened. Phone staring zombies still speeding through the neighborhood. Los Altos Hills has had some success but then Alphabet big wigs live there.

    3. Re:Mark the street as "No Thru Traffic" by msauve · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Mark the street as "No Thru Traffic"

      Fuck that. Streets are paid for by all taxpayers, and "rights of way" are long established. What Waze does falls under free speech. You don't want people taking a shortcut through your neighborhood, then stop with the "Waze has upended our City's traffic plans" bullshit and make it so the major roads work better than the side roads. It really is that simple.

      Or, just build out an efficient, useful, and desirable mass transit system.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    4. Re:Mark the street as "No Thru Traffic" by n3r0.m4dski11z · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Face it, companies like google arent going to bow down to your pithy little laws. Silicon valley is all about disruption and rule breaking. Breaking society is part of the programme for tech these days (or maybe it always had that ethos by some: "Who else is going to change the world, Marty? Greenpeace?")

      Waze, airbnb, uber, etc are all about gaming regulatory systems that are set up to protect the people mostly. Having a multi room vacation housing without proper sprinklers, for instance. There are no "good" for-profit companies. You can't "do no evil" and "always make profit" at the same time. Companies side with their financial masters when push comes to shove. Tech may even be more susceptible to this than most other for-profits that, you know, actually and reliably turn an actual profit.

      For profit corporations are evil. pure and simple.

      --
      -
    5. Re:Mark the street as "No Thru Traffic" by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Problem is if everyone acts selfishly it just makes the traffic worse all round. Yes, it might take you an extra 5 minutes to do the long way around that the city wants you to take, but if everyone takes the shortcut it ends up taking everyone 30 minutes more. There can be down-stream issues too, like excessive numbers of people trying to merge back onto the main route causing that to slow down too, excessive wear on local roads that are not able to handle the load, disruption to other local road users etc.

      It's the classic tragedy of the commons that government is supposed to solve.

      In this case there is a safety issue too. The road in question is extremely steep and a lot of vehicles have trouble with it, either lacking the power to go up at a reasonable speed or struggling to resist gravity on the way down.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:Mark the street as "No Thru Traffic" by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Mark the street as "No Thru Traffic"

      Fuck that. Streets are paid for by all taxpayers, and "rights of way" are long established. What Waze does falls under free speech. You don't want people taking a shortcut through your neighborhood, then stop with the "Waze has upended our City's traffic plans" bullshit and make it so the major roads work better than the side roads. It really is that simple.

      Dang straight. If the major roads aren't faster than the side roads then the problem is the government handling of the roads, not from some app.

  2. It's a public road... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... 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.

    1. Re:It's a public road... by jittles · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ... 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.

      I would agree with you if people weren't selfish assholes in general. Waze routes people through my neighborhood and then they end up not realizing that the way they want to go only has one lane of access from a two lane thoroughfare. So they block traffic and make people stop unnecessarily so that they can avoid going to the next light to make their turn, or make a u-turn. So what happens? It takes me 15 minutes to drive a distance that the slowest, most geriatric person you know could walk in about 5 minutes and it's absolutely infuriating. I don't really care if they drive through my neighborhood but for the love of god, know where you are going or just accept that you can't end up where you want to be and let everyone else go by accepting the consequences of your actions.

    2. Re: It's a public road... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Traffic engineers and planners design roads based on a number of factors including vehicle types, design speeds, traffic rates, services on those roads, etc. The result are roads designed to handle a certain types and rates of traffic, and classified by their function (major and minor arterials and collectors, local roads). From this the road pavement construction is often specified based on use. Same goes for road maintenance. Minor or local roads are low on the totum pole of maintenance programs as compared major arterials.

      And then their is Waze. It reroutes arterial traffic onto minor, residential roads that were not designed for the amount and type of traffic volumes it is now seeing. They might even be seeing truck traffic (STAA, KPRA) loads that the pavement was not designed for. Of course traffic engineers anticipate some amount of alternative routing, but what Waze is encouraging is unmanageable.

      Yea yea, congestion is a sign of traffic issues. Unfortunately there is often little that can be done to sufficiently solve the problem of congestion. Jurisdictions have limited rights of way to improve roads short of taking land (eminent domain) and then often have limited funding for road. (Remember that measure you voted against?) And population (traffic volumes) are increasing so quickly that the common joke is that as soon as a road improvement is finished it is undersized.

      One way I see planners managing this problem is by designing residential roads to be non-through street âoedead endsâ. For some reason I am envisioning a somewhat apocalyptic future where communities go vigilante under the cover of darkness and plunk concrete barricades on one end of their road to physically prevent through traffic.

      Other alternatives might be traffic calming measures: chicanes, speed tables, (narrowing, removing lanes, shared uses), etc. that physically prevent vehicles from safely traveling faster than 35mph. I know we all hate these bastards so I am sure that loads of people will avoid those alternative routes.

      My point is, from a transportation management standpoint, Waze is a nightmare.

      I used it once and was sent on a circuitous route on frontage roads, under expressways, along a river, and routed through an industrial area before being spit out one block from the expressway I was originally on (near an exit ramp to boot), not more than a few miles from where I got off the expressway. Fuck that. Iâ(TM)d rather stick to the slow moving access controlled expressway than save 3 minutes on another one of those routes.

  3. Another grandstanding politician by MDMurphy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Tech bros never heard of tragedy of the commons by orion205 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It always bugs me when Waze routes me through residential streets. I wish there were a setting to stick to thoroughfares.

  5. Maybe by neoRUR · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:Simple solution by www.goatse.ru · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re: Simple solution by saloomy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:Simple solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.