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

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#461

Post by shivsta » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 11:12 PM UTC

Dr_tldr wrote: post #370

niccaluim wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The implication that people who have more knowledge about a local area have more right to publicly maintained resources than those who don't is even more troubling. Maintaining unequal access to public resources is a form of corruption, discrimination, or both. A traffic engineer whose designs are only effective when there's information asymmetry is either A) dealing with impossible project restraints/requirements B)…

I agree that all information should be free for everyone, but your assessment is too harsh. Impossible projects are probably pretty common in many dense cities.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#462

Post by CamperBob2 » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 11:19 PM UTC

lsllc wrote: post #303

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…

Agreed. I often ignore it -- Waze really over-optimizes; you end up going left-right-left-right down narrow streets just to save a minute. Mostly, I'd rather sit in the traffic on the main thoroughfare and just chill out listening to music or the radio. Not to mention, the increased mileage, wear and tear and fuel consumption from the back roads and constant turns (and disrupting otherwise quiet neighborhoods). Waze…

+1, that's a big pet peeve of mine with respect to all turn-by-turn apps I've ever used. Most of them provide check boxes to avoid toll roads, highways, ferries and drawbridges, and the like. Why in the world don't they offer an option to avoid left turns?

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#463

Post by spuz » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 11:22 PM UTC

tomphoolery wrote: post #447

lliamander wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> that doesn't mean that all streets should be maximally employed to reduce that congestion. It does, actually, because all streets are connected and part of the same network. No matter what philosophy you subscribe to as to what the "goal" of suburban neighborhood planning is, the fact remains that since (almost) all streets are (eventually) connected, and thus the problem of lots of cars being able to drive on stre…

The opposite of this is also a viable option in some cases. Create a shared road space where there is no delineation between sidewalk and roadway and pedestrians maintain right of way. It is a planning solution used in some city centres [1]

I remember watching a programme about how they introduced this on a busy city centre road and weirdly it increased traffic flow while also allowing more pedestrian traffic (presumably because people and cars can move simultaneously).

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#464

Post by enoch_r » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 11:23 PM UTC

dkhenry wrote: post #346

Yes what we should do is complain that people are starting to use side streets because no one plans on increased traffic when developers and homeowners are building mega suburbs. If you want sub-urban sprawl, but don't want to invest in infrastructure then your street should be over run with commuters.

One of the examples in the article is Clinton St, a designated "bike boulevard" in a dense residential neighborhood of Portland, 1-2 blocks south of one of the bigger, cooler commercial streets in the city. This is not a case of suburbanites suffering for their sins in some morality play--some of the best bike infrastructure in the city is what's being overrun by commuters. Neither the people living along Clinton, nor the bicyclists who were incredibly unhappy to lose a low-stress route through the city, are looking to maintain a suburban lifestyle.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#465

Post by yellowapple » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 11:26 PM UTC

> For one thing, the system knows if you’re not actually in motion. More important, it constantly self-corrects, based on data from other drivers.

> “The nature of crowdsourcing is that if you put in a fake accident, the next 10 people are going to report that it’s not there,” said Julie Mossler, Waze’s head of communications.

This sounds like something solvable with a farm of Android VMs and fake location data. Get an estimate of how many cars are cutting through the neighborhood, spin up enough VMs to out-vote them, feed Waze fake location data (pretty sure you can do this through developer options, though I don't know if Android supports spoofed motion specifically), and simulate an accident or some other blockage.

On an unrelated note, if you're stuck in traffic, wouldn't there still be a lack of motion? That seems like a weird sanity check. It's probably an oversimplified description of what's actually being detected against (stop-and-go versus just standing there), but it sounds like even this check could be defeated with an ordinary GPS-enabled smartphone and a bicycle.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#466

Post by mturmon » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 11:26 PM UTC

chrisbennet wrote: post #397

tormeh wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point was more along the lines of "you don't get to appropriate the road that I helped fund with tax money and that belongs to everyone". I support that, actually. If it's a public road and I drive legally and responsibly then there's no problem. Just because your house is big doesn't mean that it's a farm where all surrounding land belongs to you.

I guess I can understand that feeling. Let's break it down though: "you don't get to appropriate the road that I helped fund with tax money and that belongs to everyone" When Waze sends me off into some neighborhood it's not usually someplace I'm familiar with, certainly not even the same town I pay taxes in i.e. I didn't help fund that road. "If it's a public road and I drive legally and responsibly then there's no…

"The people who take a short cut to save time are probably not the ones who are willing to go 20 miles an hour looking for kids on bikes, house cats in roads, etc."

This is the problem.

Where I live, people taking shortcuts roll thru stop signs and bomb down side streets, peering at their phones, speeding up as needed to validate their choice of this time-saving shortcut.

The local cops (LAPD) have bigger things on their plate than traffic scofflaws, so it leaves residents with little recourse.

The abstract principles here ("it's a public road") don't translate well into what is in reality a complex situation.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#467

Post by yellowapple » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 11:34 PM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #418

dragonwriter wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How does your average driver know that the traffic control signage is official when the residents are putting up their own privately owned signs for traffic control? If they have to 'err on the side of caution', then the residents win, despite having no legal right.

I'm pretty sure there are laws against posting fake signs on government-maintained roads.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#468

Post by analog31 » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 11:34 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…

In my view, the "entitlement" card can be played on anybody, which makes it meaningless.

For instance, "Nobody owns this street, so I can do whatever I want with it," could be portrayed as being equally entitled.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#469

Post by ThrustVectoring » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 11:41 PM UTC

tomphoolery wrote: post #447

lliamander wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> that doesn't mean that all streets should be maximally employed to reduce that congestion. It does, actually, because all streets are connected and part of the same network. No matter what philosophy you subscribe to as to what the "goal" of suburban neighborhood planning is, the fact remains that since (almost) all streets are (eventually) connected, and thus the problem of lots of cars being able to drive on stre…

There's an important difference between streets (paved surfaces within a built-up area) and roads (an improved path connecting two points). They're different things with different purposes. The goal of streets is to enable valuable economic activity between the people and property on it, while the goal of a road is to connect separate economic areas. If you close a street to vehicles, it's still valuable, since you can walk down it to buy groceries. If you close a road to vehicles, it's basically pointless.

Basically, the problem boils down to suburban streets being too hospitable to vehicular traffic. Remove the center dividing line, remove street parking, and narrow the street down to 18 feet wide at most (this provides just enough room for two SUVs side-by-side). Allow redevelopment up to the new desired edge of the street to make it even more visually narrow. Nobody is going to commute through these kinds of streets.

And an alternative for the low-density suburban junk - replace the asphalt with gravel when it starts needing repairs. Seriously. It's both cheaper and discourages through traffic.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#470

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Jun 06, 2016, 11:48 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.

Are cul-de-sacs not a thing in the states?