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Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

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Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#111

Post by takno »

omginternets wrote: post #88
Piskvorrr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London, Paris, Rome - all have a gasp workable public transport (can't speak for Shanghai or MC), dwarfing the vehicular traffic. Unless I had no option to choose at all, separated public transit beat the car traffic each and every time; even the delay of leaving the car at the outskirts and taking the train downtown is quicker than hopping along, a meter a minute (and then getting the privilege of hopping around blo…

>London, Paris, Rome - all have a gasp workable public transport (can't speak for Shanghai or MC), dwarfing the vehicular traffic Yet they still have crippling rush-hour gridlocks.

The approach in the UK is increasingly to regard the gridlock as an educational opportunity, whereby drivers learn to leave their cars at home and take public transport. combined with decent public transport investment, heavy road calming on non-main roads and progressive removal of parking spaces in town centres it's really having a very positive impact for everybody except the people who bizarrely still choose to sit in the gridlock.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#112

Post by gjolund »

pjlegato wrote: post #42
astrodust wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Grids don't help much. Take a look at Google Maps' traffic report of Los Angeles' perfect grid layout during rush hour: the entire grid is usually solid red, almost every day. Like most other plans for ameliorating heavy traffic, it is somewhat effective for a short time, but it soon just causes that many more cars to try to drive through the area.

LA traffic defies reason.

I've hit gridlock at 3am on the 101 before. The whole city feels like it was designed to be some elaborate torture device for commuters.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#113

Post by breischl »

throw7 wrote: post #103
breischl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But locals also know the area better, pretty much by definition. That usually makes them safer drivers. I know that the streets near my house are filled with kids because of the three schools nearby that use the park as a playground, that almost (not quite) every other intersection is a two-way stop instead of a four-way, and that even though the streets are wide the speed limit is 25. A flash mob of commuters is not…

It's the opposite... knowing an area well usually makes dangerous drivers. Most accidents happen within some miles from home, mainly because one "knows" the area so well one lets their guard down.

Certainly knowing an area can breed inattention, or risky behavior based on familiarity. My hunch is that it still works out to be safer on average, but admittedly I have no data for that.

I was always under the impression that accidents happen close to home because that's where people spend most of their time so they get a lot more chances to have an accident there.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#114

Post by omginternets »

takno wrote: post #111
omginternets wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>London, Paris, Rome - all have a gasp workable public transport (can't speak for Shanghai or MC), dwarfing the vehicular traffic Yet they still have crippling rush-hour gridlocks.

The approach in the UK is increasingly to regard the gridlock as an educational opportunity, whereby drivers learn to leave their cars at home and take public transport. combined with decent public transport investment, heavy road calming on non-main roads and progressive removal of parking spaces in town centres it's really having a very positive impact for everybody except the people who bizarrely still choose to s…

Fair enough, but that tells you that the solution is not "just provide public transportation". That was my point and, I suspect, the original commenter's point as well.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#115

Post by gaius »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #105
gaius wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP/capita is the important figure.

GDP/capita is an important figure. But it doesn't tell the whole story. (e.g. I don't think GDP/capita takes into account crowded freeways overflowing onto residential streets.) More generally GDP/capita does not take into account the unevenness of changes in quality of life which occurred on the way to a higher overall GDP/capita. Can we really say that one statistic is "the important figure" ?

You are correct. But it is still more meaningful than GDP alone. For example here in the UK a plot of GDP says the country is getting richer, but a plot of GDP/capita says everyone in it, is getting poorer.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#116

Post by HillaryBriss »

gjolund wrote: post #112
pjlegato wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grids don't help much. Take a look at Google Maps' traffic report of Los Angeles' perfect grid layout during rush hour: the entire grid is usually solid red, almost every day. Like most other plans for ameliorating heavy traffic, it is somewhat effective for a short time, but it soon just causes that many more cars to try to drive through the area.

LA traffic defies reason. I've hit gridlock at 3am on the 101 before. The whole city feels like it was designed to be some elaborate torture device for commuters.

It was designed for a smaller number of single car drivers than it has today. And it was not designed for quick/cheap expansion.

I guess any system of transportation would feel like torture for commuters if that system is overloaded and operating beyond its reasonable capacity.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#117

Post by Piskvorrr »

breischl wrote: post #100
Piskvorrr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier, you say? Now someone has to curate the list of "forbidden streets," someone has to keep track of who's allowed to request additions/removals, you obviously need to add that into the algorithms somehow, etc. So, you're not actually solving anything: you're just passing the buck, pushing the traffic planners' job to Waze. And guess what: there isn't One Waze To Rule Them All - push a blocklist hard enough, and…

Spoken like someone who has never witnessed the process of changing streetscapes. There's a project on another street near me to do some traffic calming along a ~10 block stretch. It's actually a relatively small project - they're going to move the existing street parking out next to traffic, move the existing bike lane next to the curb, and make a few minor pedestrian & signage improvements. That effort has been goi…

Got a crystal ball, eh? Don't worry, I'm acutely aware what a PITA any sort of street change is - just changing the designation of a 1-block residential street to a living street is Impossible (TM), and physically, that's just signage.

I'm not saying that street planning is easy, not at all. In my opinion, you seem to be saying "I understand street development, but I don't do software; therefore if the former is hard, the latter can't be hard (because world is somehow binary); plus it's Somebody Else's Problem now. Bam, problem solved! Magic!" - nope, you just moved the mess to a place it's harder to see.

Or in other words: is street design slow, because it takes a lot of time to repaint lanes and/or add a virtual barrier into the database, or is it slow because of all the non-technical issues surrounding it?

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#118

Post by [deleted] »

breischl wrote: post #100
Piskvorrr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier, you say? Now someone has to curate the list of "forbidden streets," someone has to keep track of who's allowed to request additions/removals, you obviously need to add that into the algorithms somehow, etc. So, you're not actually solving anything: you're just passing the buck, pushing the traffic planners' job to Waze. And guess what: there isn't One Waze To Rule Them All - push a blocklist hard enough, and…

Spoken like someone who has never witnessed the process of changing streetscapes. There's a project on another street near me to do some traffic calming along a ~10 block stretch. It's actually a relatively small project - they're going to move the existing street parking out next to traffic, move the existing bike lane next to the curb, and make a few minor pedestrian & signage improvements. That effort has been goi…

[deleted]

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#119

Post by beachstartup »

morninj wrote: post #13
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a ticket for one of these types of things, some local ordinance prohibiting through traffic during rush hour. It's a great revenue generator for the local PDs. Lots of one-off traffic laws that people passing through won't (and really, can't) know about.

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 ticket revenue is greater than the marginal cost of enforcement. the cops are already out there. they just need to give them more reasons to write tickets.

economies of scale!

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#120

Post by birdmanjeremy »

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…

Locals only, brah. Go back to the marked detour you kook.
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