Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 582 posts

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#421

Post by hx87 »

lliamander wrote: post #376
FroshKiller wrote: post #2

I'm a homeowner and an active Waze user. The street I live on is not "my" street. It's a public street that any licensed driver may use. I did have an issue with drivers coming around a blind curve too quickly to be safe, though, so I did what these homeowners ought to be doing and contacted my local government about getting my street assessed for a traffic calming project. The city created a three-way stop before th…

> Anything else just feels like NIMBY entitlement. I disagree. I also think there is a sense that our urban/suburban planning should serve more that just the interests of motorists, and should support activities other than just driving to/from work. My wife and I used to drive 45 minutes just to park on the outside of a nice residential neighborhood so we could take a walk. Now we can get to family, friends, parks, b…

The problem in your case is that the sidewalks were inadequate or nonexistent; the solution then would be to widen them at the expense of the streets, perhaps install more crosswalks, not preventing nonresident drivers from coming through.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#422

Post by twoodfin »

sokoloff wrote: post #358
twoodfin wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be mistaken, but from following along with my helpful city councilor's email list, I believe Cambridge actually has to get state approval for all of these. I think that's a good thing.

Could well be on the first point. I have no idea. On the second point, I tend to disagree, believing that local government governs best and that travel/turn restrictions on residential side streets in Cambridge ought to be a city matter, not a state matter, IMO. (As a thought experiment, why shouldn't they need Federal approval for them? Why state exactly?)

I can think of a few reasons. Drivers should be protected from a mishmash of locality-specific traffic configurations and rules, so it's beneficial to have the state enforce some uniformity and best practices (and obviously a good bit of that is derived from the Feds).

Also, the state (and thus the state's taxpayers) ends up paying for a good chunk of local roads. Cambridge or any other locality shouldn't have free reign to let NIMBYism make life difficult for out-of-town commuters.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#423

Post by AnthonyMouse »

24gttghh wrote: post #393
driverdan wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies have shown that traffic is slower on roads without lines. If your goal is to slow down traffic you don't want a line.

Conversely, painting lines, and narrowing the "american standard" lane width will slow drivers down, as the more narrow lane makes drivers feel like they are going faster. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14668160 http://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/stree...

Of course it also makes collisions more likely at a given speed because there is less margin for error in estimating how much space you need on either side of your vehicle.

I still can't understand this logic of "let's make the roads safer by making them more dangerous" as if the only factor is how fast people are going. Wouldn't it be better to make roads that are safe at the speeds people want to drive? Build sidewalks so pedestrians don't have to be walking in the street etc., and let bicycles use them because a bicyclist is clearly more like a pedestrian than a car?

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#424

Post by sgnelson »

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.

Suppose that the thieves escaped, and then later that night they killed your Uncle Ben. At that point you realize that with great power comes great responsibility. You go home, design a suit with a spider emblem on it, and then use your newly created powers, brought on by a radioactive spider bite for societal good, not personal gain.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#425

Post by hx87 »

radlad wrote: post #408
hx87 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, an excessive feeling of ownership over neighborhood roads leads to the Tragedy of the Anticommons: everyone keeps the roads in their neighborhood off limits to outsiders, so everyone gets stuck in traffic longer, with all the entailing health and environmental costs, and thus a formerly public resource (roads) becomes underutilized.

OTOH, neighborhood roads aren't designed for the same amount of traffic as main roads -- maintenance happens less often, the roads are made of cheaper materials, there are no street lights, etc. I don't believe that they are "underutilized" by being used solely as neighborhood roads -- that is, in fact, all they were designed for.

You're right that they are designed for lower loads. But perhaps they shouldn't be, and retrofitting them might be a good use of public money.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#426

Post by idbehold »

jdbernard wrote: post #354
JoshTriplett wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot more reasonable in a dead-end or cul-de-sac, where any car is either going to one of the houses there or got lost, and where no vehicle should be moving at more than walking speed.

The same logic applies to non-dead-ends if only people who live in the neighborhood use them. That's why people don't want "their" neighborhood streets used as cut-throughs.

Then those people should move to dead-end streets. Because again, it isn't "their" street. It's the public's street.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#427

Post by uremog »

mseebach wrote: post #84
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…

To get to 12 tickets an hour, you need at least 12 offenders an hour which is probably the bottleneck the GP alluded to. That said, 5 minutes per ticket pretty much requires offenders to present themselves in a nice, orderly line. A more normal scenario where the officer has to cruise around, pull someone over, get out, talk to the person ("no no, I'm not passing through, my sick uncle lives over there"), write the t…

I'm pretty sure that most states, if not all, have certain freeways where police could have a constant feed of speeders.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#428

Post by pnathan »

niccaluim wrote: post #311
pnathan wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a homeowner and an active Waze user. The street I live on is not "my" street. It's a public street that any licensed driver may use. This is the correct analysis. Unless it's a gated subdivision, the streets are operated by the government for the broad public benefit; not the local benefit of the homeowners.

It's the correct legal analysis, sure, but does it encourage considerate behavior? Does it help or hurt the goals behind zoning laws and traffic engineering? I think it's one-sided to write the whole problem off this way.

It is entirely one-sided to side with the general public, and I am firmly for looking at the broad scope. The US is stuffed with local control, and it's produced a global minima as people attempt to optimize for local maxima. Time for that to end.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#429

Post by pnathan »

heydabop wrote: post #379
pilsetnieks wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually such a thing as city planning and many streets could, in fact, not be operated by the government for broad public benefit but for the benefit of the people living nearby. E.g. in a residential zone in a suburb the streets may actually be intended to connect the homes not for through traffic.

Streets are kind of built for an expected load too right? I live on a dead end and have to assume my street would wear out faster than the neighborhood thoroughfare if it had an equal level of traffic.

That is a common suburb design: it tends to fail on the generational level. New Urbanism has a long list of evidence about the problems with suburban design.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#430

Post by TelAviv_1 »

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?

If you read the article, you'd know that was a "pirate" sign erected by one of the homeowners.
Post reply on HN