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

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#431

Post by nickbauman » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 10:12 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #246

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…

> 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.

Broad public benefit is not the same as optimal traffic utilization. There's more to life than what can be quantified / sold / made to go faster. I think this goes to the heart of the idea of what humans are for. People in the tech world tend to think humans are machines in a cosmic factory used to maximize economic output.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#432

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

corndoge wrote: post #419

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The city created a three-way stop before the curve that has slowed traffic on the street and seems to have reduced non-local traffic. How is this not the same NIMBY entitlement? "There are too many people using this public road, let's make it more arduous to use and let someone else suffer the traffic." That doesn't actually reduce traffic, it only redirects it. And if the people now receiving the traffic respond i…

That escalation from stop signs to funding terrorists was entertaining to say the least

Pretty much anything that requires vehicles to use their brakes funds terrorism because every stop requires subsequent acceleration. Sure, the net effect from adding one stop sign is negligible, but it's tragedy of the commons. If everybody does it then it adds up.

And it's not just wasted fuel, it's wear on the vehicles (which harms used car reliability and negatively impacts the poor), stress on the vehicle occupants, time wasted, delayed emergency response time, etc. Multiply by a hundred million stop signs and turns into something worth optimizing.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#433

Post by celticjames » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

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…

Roads are subject to wear and tear. Higher traffic means more wear and thus more repairs. Repairs for most roads come out of municipal budgets. Municipal budgets are paid for by property taxes. The homeowners bought that road. So who's got an entitlement problem here?

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#434

Post by vermontdevil » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 10:17 PM UTC

Not all roads are created equal. Residential roads have different maintenance and capacity than main roads.

If traffic increases due to shortcut traffic, towns will have to increase budgets to accommodate more wear and tear upkeep.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#435

Post by radlad » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 10:18 PM UTC

hx87 wrote: post #425

radlad wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At that point, why not expand "public" roads?

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#436

Post by jkraker » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 10:20 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #246

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…

> 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.

A fine point in an ideal world. The problem is that as traffic increases, the number of people that drive in a way that doesn't respect the safety of the neighborhood increases. There's a distribution of types of drivers at play here--more samples necessarily results in more observations of people driving poorly even if they are outnumbered. People who have a tendency to look at their phones rather than the road due to their use of an app probably skews the distribution a bit as well.

I'm all for utilization of public infrastructure, but I'm also sympathetic to the homeowners who observe the safety of their neighborhoods decrease as a result of increased traffic volume.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#437

Post by zippergz » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 10:21 PM UTC

jd20 wrote: post #330

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 don't really think Waze can be blamed here though... it's not as though it's going out of its way to choose more dangerous routes. It has no notion of how well-lit a street is, or the incline, or how many cars are parked along the curb. No GPS app has all this data. As drivers, it's our responsibility to be aware of our surroundings and make wise choices, not to rely on an app for that. If you don't feel comfortabl…

> It has no notion of how well-lit a street is, or the incline, or how many cars are parked along the curb.

GPS also has no notion of speed traps or potholes, but Waze does because they crowdsource it. They could add a way for people to report routes that are undesirable for other reasons.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#438

Post by knodi123 » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 10:22 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #412

droopyEyelids wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

(Shrug) When I was a child, I was taught not to play in the street. Meanwhile, access for emergency vehicles can be pretty important for the rest of us.

Yes, all children should be taught not to play in the street. But we should not have a death penalty for children whose parents don't do that correctly...

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#439

Post by bpchaps » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

xraystyle wrote: post #228

HillaryBriss wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Los Angeles the policy is just to parking-ticket the hell out of drivers at every opportunity. The 'unofficial' policy of parking enforcement here is to ticket everything you see, regardless of whether or not the car is actually in violation of something. They know it's far cheaper for drivers to just pay the fines than it is to fight the tickets. Arguing a parking ticket can literally take several entire days. Fo…

Somebody should really fight the LA ticket system in bulk.

It's what I'm doing in Chicago, and it's actually not as much money as you'd think it is. Don't get me wrong, it's still a lot and is about as predatory as it gets, but it's not in the billions, compared to many other things.

Of the parsable ones I have, the total since 2009 up until March of this year, there's been a total of $764,775,070 marked as "paid". Tickets marked with a bankruptcy flag has added up to 18,433,390.0.

Wanted to finish up some code to get better output, but I have to run.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#440

Post by wtallis » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 10:25 PM UTC

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.

Wear and tear to pavement is roughly proportional to vehicle weight to the fourth power; thus cars and SUVs are almost negligible compared to the damage caused by commercial trucks and weather. If a residential street is already marked as "no trucks", then that's all the damage prevention that is worthwhile.