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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

#291

Post by eastWestMath »

nir wrote: post #264
Jacqued wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> neighborhoods who didn't voluntarily agree to increased traffic just to make my commute shorter, this is free loading and their roads are for them to get to and from their home It's nothing against you but is this a common opinion in the US? People in neighborhoods "own" the streets? As a Frenchman saying this is astonishing as I would naturally consider that I do own the street just as much as they do and it's my…

I'm neither American nor European, but have lived in both for a while, so at the risk of appearing like I'm trolling - the likely explanation IMHO is just that people in the US are nice and don't want to feel like they're being a nuisance to someone, even if legally they're in the right :)

I think that's a bit tone deaf. He doesn't think he owns his street so it doesn't occur to him that other people feel that way, and that's a pretty fair stance. That mindset is why a lot of people hate the suburbs.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#292

Post by pc86 »

breischl wrote: post #85
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…

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…

A flash mob of commuters is going to know whether a stop is 2-way or 4-way (there are signs), and they are going to know what the speed limit is (there are signs). If someone is as attentive as they need to be while driving, it's irrelevant whether the park is a playground or there are three schools nearby or whether there are kids in a given house. I don't know about you, but if I'm somewhere I've never been before because I'm going around a traffic jam, I am even more attentive than normal.

If someone isn't as attentive as they need to be, that's a different problem altogether.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#293

Post by balls187 »

Jacqued wrote: post #254
cmurf wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped using Waze because of its nutty directions: deep dives into neighborhoods, stop signs every two blocks, piles of turns, circuitous routes, etc. I do not like coming to a complete stop every two blocks, I'll take 5mph continuous over that. I do not like dumping my traffic annoyances onto neighborhoods who didn't voluntarily agree to increased traffic just to make my commute shorter, this is free loading and…

> neighborhoods who didn't voluntarily agree to increased traffic just to make my commute shorter, this is free loading and their roads are for them to get to and from their home It's nothing against you but is this a common opinion in the US? People in neighborhoods "own" the streets? As a Frenchman saying this is astonishing as I would naturally consider that I do own the street just as much as they do and it's my…

> It's nothing against you but is this a common opinion in the US? People in neighborhoods "own" the streets?

Yes, but it's nuanced. Own the streets in order to control the environment of our mini-castles (our homes), but know that we don't have a legal basis to stand on.

Neighborhood streets weren't organized in a manner to accommodate high traffic patterns, and it ends up being a real issue for local residents. It's not too much of a stretch to be upset that your once quiet neighborhood is now a major traffic jam because of a mobile app.

> It's like having their cake (single-family home with a parking space) and eating it too (avoiding traffic nuisance which they impose on others).

Multi-family units with multi parking spaces cause significantly more traffic issues than single family home.

> As a Frenchman...and it's my right to use it to cut traffic as I see fit.

Is this why people in Paris don't clean up after their dogs on sidewalks? I know Parisians don't represent all the french, but it definitely was a culture shock seeing all that excrement.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#295

Post by balls187 »

davidw wrote: post #268
Jacqued wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> neighborhoods who didn't voluntarily agree to increased traffic just to make my commute shorter, this is free loading and their roads are for them to get to and from their home It's nothing against you but is this a common opinion in the US? People in neighborhoods "own" the streets? As a Frenchman saying this is astonishing as I would naturally consider that I do own the street just as much as they do and it's my…

The NIMBYism is very strong in the US.

Checkout the Neighborhood App for examples.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#296

Post by dasil003 »

Jacqued wrote: post #254
cmurf wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped using Waze because of its nutty directions: deep dives into neighborhoods, stop signs every two blocks, piles of turns, circuitous routes, etc. I do not like coming to a complete stop every two blocks, I'll take 5mph continuous over that. I do not like dumping my traffic annoyances onto neighborhoods who didn't voluntarily agree to increased traffic just to make my commute shorter, this is free loading and…

> neighborhoods who didn't voluntarily agree to increased traffic just to make my commute shorter, this is free loading and their roads are for them to get to and from their home It's nothing against you but is this a common opinion in the US? People in neighborhoods "own" the streets? As a Frenchman saying this is astonishing as I would naturally consider that I do own the street just as much as they do and it's my…

One factor is that in Europe cities are older and roads are narrower, so there is a natural disincentive to cutting and speeding through many residential streets. Having lived in London I can tell you that people speeding through narrow residential streets to avoid traffic was a significant local issue in my borough (Wandsworth).

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#297

Post by warcher »

sib wrote: post #151
warcher wrote: post #90

I have gotten in not one, but several, extremely heated discussions over the years after parking on a public street in front of somebody's house. I'm not a big defender of, say, Airbnb running gypsy hotels in secret defiance of leasing and HOA agreements, but people have a lot of funny ideas about ownership of things that aren't theirs to own .

While I hear you, and in many ways agree, I will say that, when I was a homeowner, I had a next-door neighbor who always parked his cars in front of my house instead of his own (he filled his garage with stuff.) Yes, it was a public street and yes, he had the legal right to do so, but it was pretty annoying to have to look at his cars when he had clearly wanted to avoid looking at them himself. After a while, I began…

The last interaction resulted in my then-girlfriend's next door neighbor banging on her door and literally screaming at her. I'm not exaggerating. I've never seen a grown man foam at the mouth, but yeah, that apparently did it.

Never, ever, ever buy a house without off-street parking. I don't even care if you don't have a car. Just don't. I would hate to live that man's life.

I will say that I have seen the kind of people bitching about this Waze thing, and... sigh. The suburbs, man. People are funny.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#298

Post by catawbasam »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #278
kqr2 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palo Alto has a lot of these traffic calming measures and roadblocks to prevent traffic through local neighborhoods. Sometimes it can get out of hand. From http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/pub/nimby.html Just a few months ago, in Palo Alto, residents near downtown put up a vicious collection of roadblocks to get cars off their streets. The folly was exposed when a thief escaped because the police chasing him were…

We don't actually have any information about whether that was folly or not. Let's say 2 children avoid a trip to the hospital over the next 5 years, but four thieves escape. That would be a perfectly acceptable compromise to me.

I disagree. At this point the neighbors have effectively privatized a public facility. They should have to pay 100%.

(I'm a U.S. suburban Dad with 2 young kids who do stupid things on their bikes.)

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#300

Post by olentangy »

I want Waze to add new features: 1. Crowd source bad roads. Some interstates are atrocious, I'd happily turn on [X] avoid potholes and uneven pavement. Maybe use the motion sensors to do this automatically. 2. Get me know altitude. This would made planning trips through the mountains way better - avoiding high mountain passes would be very helpful. 3. Overlay radar when thunderstorms are hopscotching across the land.
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