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

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#201

Post by pixl97 » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 6:06 PM UTC

oftenwrong wrote: post #181

CWuestefeld wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About a year ago, a traffic accident caused Waze to route me through a residential area. I actually respected the speed limit as I went through, and at one point saw kids playing in the street just as I was making a turn, so I slowed further. That didn't stop some busybody dad from flagging me down. I opened my window and he told me I'd better slow down (I had) because there were kids playing. My response to him was…

Streets are not just paths for cars to pass-through on. They are a part of the places we live. They should be safe even for playing children. Cars can pass through cautiously, allowing children to move out of the way. It's not hard to share the space.

>It's not hard to share the space.

It is easy to share a pie between two people. It is very hard to share a pie between 400 people. In the US roads ARE NOT designed as a shared space between people and cars. If you play in the road you could very well die due to one person on a phone when they shouldn't be.

Stay alive, keep off the road.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#202

Post by mankyd » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 6:06 PM UTC

gooseus wrote: post #196

As a Waze user, this has actually been a source of increasing frustration for me. I do not want to save 1-3 minutes on a commute by cutting through unfamiliar residential areas where deaf kids play and homeowners give me dirty looks as I go over their oversized speed bumps. I use Waze not so much as a super-optimal routing tool, but as an aggravation-avoidance tool. Traffic and speed-traps aggravate me, sure... but n…

Indeed. I have the same issue. I want to avoid major traffic and construction, not _all_ traffic in construction.

In Boston, where I live, the side streets are often narrow, one way, and labyrinthine. A lot of times, I'd rather just drive the extra minute through the traffic light rather than zig-zag around it.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#203

Post by prodigal_erik » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 6:06 PM UTC

street wrote: post #74

CWuestefeld wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About a year ago, a traffic accident caused Waze to route me through a residential area. I actually respected the speed limit as I went through, and at one point saw kids playing in the street just as I was making a turn, so I slowed further. That didn't stop some busybody dad from flagging me down. I opened my window and he told me I'd better slow down (I had) because there were kids playing. My response to him was…

Why can't kids play on a street designed only for traffic to houses on that street? I played on the street all the time as a child. Of course, my streets weren't flooded with drivers trying to save a few minutes by driving through residential areas.

If we wanted that to be a neighborhood playground, we wouldn't have made it out of cement and we wouldn't have allowed any cars, not even residents'.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#204

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 6:07 PM UTC

iambyteman wrote: post #101

Seems like Waze should probably try to send thru traffic down double-yellow-line roads. Those roads are typically better able to handle the traffic at least where I live (in Baltimore). Sending folks down a single lane (but not technically one way) street is nuts and doesn't really save much time.

those roads typically have higher speed limits and will be faster routes -- until they are clogged with traffic. Which is when Waze (and, for that matter, Google Maps, and any other traffic-aware routing system) will use alternative routes which are slower in the ideal case, but faster with the actual current traffic loads.

There's ways to avoid this:

(1) Design residential districts so that through traffic is impossible. (Lots of places do this, by having branching patterns rather than grids; this, of course, also makes it more possible for accidents, etc., to prevent ingress/egress.)

(2) Provide capacity on arterial roads so that they don't jam up and leave residential roads as faster through routes.

(3) Improve public transport capacity so that the existing capacity of arterial roads is sufficient.

Long before Waze and similar systems, people who frequently drove in an area would learn over time the alternate routes (including those through residential neighborhoods) that provided better times when main routes clogged up and use them freely. Technology just makes it so that information is more rapidly acquired by commuters. Its irrational, however, to expect commuters that have that information, whether through trial-and-error born of frustration (and then spread through word of mouth) or through modern technology to not use it.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#205

Post by justin66 » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 6:08 PM UTC

Piskvorrr wrote: post #172

jws wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once Waze integrates that law into their dataset the problem is solved. No sign required. I suppose they can't crowdsource that information or people would lie. There must be a system for getting traffic information from municipalities to the road databases. Apple Maps told me there was no way to drive home a couple days ago, on examination the street in front of my house was marked as closed for the day, they were p…

Sign still required for those w/o Waze, but you bring up a fair point: not all municipalities are willing to open their data. Having a countrywide open database - updated by the municipalities directly, not crowdsourced like OSM - would help with many things, not just routing.

At the municipal level, plenty of governments are still using papyrus or cuneiform tablets. Not going to happen.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#206

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 6:08 PM UTC

underwater wrote: post #135

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.

"No Thru Traffic" signs are enforceable!? What law does that fall under?

The law that says disobeying officially posted traffic-control signage is a prohibited?

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#207

Post by pjlegato » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 6:09 PM UTC

arebop wrote: post #122

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.

You think it would be better if it were a dendritic system? It's hard to believe that e.g., randomly walling off half of those grid links would make traffic better.

I doubt it. It won't fix the fundamental problem of moving lots of people to where they want to go in the city. You can only do that by making the area undesirable to go to for whatever reason (probably not a good option), or by providing some alternate means of getting places. Unfortunately, due to the sprawling way LA is laid out, all of the other options are even worse than driving there.

In a dense area like Manhattan, transport is not so bad because walking, cabs, or the subway are all viable alternatives in many cases.

In a lower density sprawl area like Los Angeles, cabs are prohibitively expensive for most trips, the subway usually doesn't go anywhere near where you are or where you want to go, the buses are stuck in traffic like any other vehicle, and walking is dangerous (due to the lack of pedestrian-friendly sidewalks in many areas) and would take many hours for each trip.

I think the best way to fix LA traffic would be to greatly increase the density and start building upwards so that walking and public transport become viable options for many more cases, but that seems very unlikely to happen anytime soon. It'd take decades to do anyway. So for now, it looks like LA is just stuck with its insane traffic status quo.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#208

Post by mikeash » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 6:09 PM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #205

Piskvorrr wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sign still required for those w/o Waze, but you bring up a fair point: not all municipalities are willing to open their data. Having a countrywide open database - updated by the municipalities directly, not crowdsourced like OSM - would help with many things, not just routing.

At the municipal level, plenty of governments are still using papyrus or cuneiform tablets. Not going to happen.

Sounds like an opportunity for a disruptive startup deploying the latest in OCR (Optical Cuneiform Recognition) technology.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#209

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 6:09 PM UTC

zyxley wrote: post #92

mikeash wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't things like that usually have signs?

I'm sure they do, somewhere that nobody actually driving on one of the streets in question will ever see it. > "But the plans were on display..." > "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them." > "That's the display department." > "With a flashlight." > "Ah, well the lights had probably gone." > "So had the stairs." > "But look, you found the notice didn't you?" > "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I di…

> I'm sure they do, somewhere that nobody actually driving on one of the streets in question will ever see it.

Improperly posted signage is generally a defense against an offense of disobeying a sign.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#210

Post by ciconia » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 6:10 PM UTC

gooseus wrote: post #196

As a Waze user, this has actually been a source of increasing frustration for me. I do not want to save 1-3 minutes on a commute by cutting through unfamiliar residential areas where deaf kids play and homeowners give me dirty looks as I go over their oversized speed bumps. I use Waze not so much as a super-optimal routing tool, but as an aggravation-avoidance tool. Traffic and speed-traps aggravate me, sure... but n…

I actually decided to stop using Waze for that reason. It felt like its routing algorithm is way too aggressive and would take me on shortcuts through smaller streets, just to shave off a minute or two. This in turn would require being much more attentive, since you need to make a turn much more often. I absolutely hated it.