Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war • Hacker News Board

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#31

Post by jdblair » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:07 PM UTC

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #25

jdblair wrote: post #17

The City of Berkeley, CA, fixed this problem a long time ago, before Waze or even widespread GPS. Every few blocks they block side streets to all vehicles except bicycles. The effect is to be forced to take right or left turns that guide you back to the main through street. Streets parallel to the through streets that are now impassible to cars are marked as "bicycle boulevards" and provide safer routes for cyclists.…

Maryland has snow. Berkeley does not. Bikes only reduce traffic when people can ride them. Applying a Berkeley solution to a Maryland problem could only worsen congestion and quality of life.

You misunderstand - its not the bikes that are reducing traffic, the bike access is a side-effect of the traffic calming barriers. The same barriers with no bike pass-through would be just as effective at stopping through traffic in a neighborhood. The point is to block routes through a neighborhood and force car traffic back to the main roads, stopping through traffic in a residential neighborhood.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#32

Post by geofft » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:07 PM UTC

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #25

jdblair wrote: post #17

The City of Berkeley, CA, fixed this problem a long time ago, before Waze or even widespread GPS. Every few blocks they block side streets to all vehicles except bicycles. The effect is to be forced to take right or left turns that guide you back to the main through street. Streets parallel to the through streets that are now impassible to cars are marked as "bicycle boulevards" and provide safer routes for cyclists.…

Maryland has snow. Berkeley does not. Bikes only reduce traffic when people can ride them. Applying a Berkeley solution to a Maryland problem could only worsen congestion and quality of life.

But a "bicycle" boulevard with no bicycles still solves the problem: you can use non-major streets for local car traffic, but not for through traffic. A bicycle boulevard isn't closed to cars; it just has a barricade every couple of blocks. You can still reach everywhere you want to reach by car.

Contrary to the stereotype there are plenty of Berkeley residents who don't own bikes.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#33

Post by superuser2 » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #4

If it's faster to take a neighborhood street than the interstate , there's a problem. It's not normal. It sounds like residents are at war with transportation infrastructure instead.

10mph is blazingly, exceptionally fast for an interstate in a major city during commute hours.

Building bigger highways sparks further-flung suburbs and the new traffic brings everyone else's commute times back to equilibrium.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#34

Post by HillaryBriss » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #21

morninj wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way that the trickle of revenue is greater than the cost of enforcement. Officer salary and benefits, equipment maintenance, and all the costs associated with the court system...

The use of traffic tickets as supplemental revenue is a time-honored tradition with many real-world examples. Some places fund their entire police department this way. I don't know why you'd think it couldn't be greater than the cost, either. It takes, what, five minutes to write a ticket, which might average $100? That's $1,200/hour of revenue. No way the officer costs that much, even including benefits and equipmen…

In LA, for example, most of the driving infractions are violations of the California vehicle code, not city-specific vehicle codes. And so it turns out that a very substantial portion of ticket revenues go to the state, not the city.

California even has a law preventing cities from creating these kinds of local vehicle code laws that could generate local revenue.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#35

Post by thenipper » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:09 PM UTC

jdblair wrote: post #31

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maryland has snow. Berkeley does not. Bikes only reduce traffic when people can ride them. Applying a Berkeley solution to a Maryland problem could only worsen congestion and quality of life.

You misunderstand - its not the bikes that are reducing traffic, the bike access is a side-effect of the traffic calming barriers. The same barriers with no bike pass-through would be just as effective at stopping through traffic in a neighborhood. The point is to block routes through a neighborhood and force car traffic back to the main roads, stopping through traffic in a residential neighborhood.

It'd probably make plowing a lot worse though as the plows had to cut in and out.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#36

Post by astrodust » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:09 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #23

> Connor and his neighbors put up “No Through Traffic” signs. And their city councilman, Tim Male, tried to get Google Maps to take note of the official detour, by calling the company and flagging it through the apps’ feedback feature. Assuming the road itself is a public road (not a driveway or gated community), is there any legality to this?

Zero.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#37

Post by mikeash » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:10 PM UTC

HillaryBriss wrote: post #34

mikeash wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The use of traffic tickets as supplemental revenue is a time-honored tradition with many real-world examples. Some places fund their entire police department this way. I don't know why you'd think it couldn't be greater than the cost, either. It takes, what, five minutes to write a ticket, which might average $100? That's $1,200/hour of revenue. No way the officer costs that much, even including benefits and equipmen…

In LA, for example, most of the driving infractions are violations of the California vehicle code, not city-specific vehicle codes. And so it turns out that a very substantial portion of ticket revenues go to the state, not the city. California even has a law preventing cities from creating these kinds of local vehicle code laws that could generate local revenue.

I imagine that jurisdictions which place a heavy emphasis on revenue from traffic enforcement are also careful to place a heavy emphasis on infractions which provide revenue to the local government.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#38

Post by astrodust » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #5

This quote seems very telling: > It used to be that only locals knew all the cut-through routes, but Google Maps and Waze are letting everyone know So they don't have a problem with people cutting through as long as they're "locals"; it's when the outgroup starts doing the same thing that people get up in arms. If the through traffic is breaking traffic laws, that's a solvable problem. If the street has insufficient…

There's a certain amount of irony here that people are complaining about cars clogging up their streets but think nothing of what they do when they're driving through other neighbourhoods, especially more urban ones.

Suddenly they get a taste of why people living downtown are not too enthused about highways bringing in more people.

A lot of this mess stems from the absurd designs of modern American subdivisions with their pointlessly twisty roads. A grid-based layout might mean more through traffic, but the traffic can filter through many, many different cross-routes rather than funnelling through the singular optimal route.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#39

Post by PaulHoule » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

Ithaca had this problem arise spontaneously about a decade ago.

If you're driving to the Wegmans supermarket from east of town, the official routes you are supposed to use are badly congested, and drivers "in the know" have long been aware you can save a few minutes sitting in traffic by going through a certain residential neighborhood.

When they put traffic calming in place and made it illegal to drive through the neighborhood, congestion immediately got worse on the official routes.

The idea that drivers benefited from less congestion was entirely left out of the public debate, especially the fact that drivers taking the shortcut reduce congestion on the major roads.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#40

Post by potatolicious » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 3:14 PM UTC

theseatoms wrote: post #16

voiper1 wrote: post #3

I actually recall this... 15 years ago, living parallel to a busy street. The various extra stop signs didn't keep people from using it. As @FroshKiller said though, it's not "my street". However, it was still a problem: there were frequently people way over the speed limit when we'd hardly expect it...

> However, it was still a problem: there were frequently people way over the speed limit when we'd hardly expect it... Sounds like recourse should be attainable via law enforcement.

You can't ticket your way out of this problem - nor can you afford to over long periods of time. Stationing cops in enough places to actually discourage speeding is not practicable.

There are fortunately lots of ways to fix this without stationing a cop every few blocks.

Speed bumps are common, but imperfect. In my hometown on smaller residential streets struggling with too much through-traffic they've put traffic circles at the intersections. Locals coming home aren't much impacted but it heavily discourages fast through traffic.

Another major issue is that suburban streets are simply too wide, many neighborhoods give more than the 12-foot standard width to a lane (itself a specification that is way too generous), and we know that wide lanes result in faster speeds as drivers feel safer (and everyone else feels less safe). Narrowing lanes have a proven effect of increasing driver awareness and reducing speed, and also reclaims land for use by actual people.

The solution to traffic is intelligent redesign of streets - enforcement doesn't really work, especially at scale, and neither does simply telling people to stop doing bad things. Just like web engineering, user behavior is governed by what you build, not arbitrary rules that you attach to systems where it's easier to misuse them than use them properly.