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

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#501

Post by tgb » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 1:39 AM UTC

treebeard901 wrote: post #472

FireBeyond wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile maybe two children die in drowning incidents because fire engines and ambulances aren't able to effectively navigate your makeshift 'traffic abatement' program. How's your compromise now?

Suppose the two children were the thieves and the traffic abatement program let them get away from the police.

Moreover, the city planners get to pick one of three doors only one of which has a traffic abatement program. After choosing a door, one of the other doors is revealed to have a goat behind it. Should they switch doors?

http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4132

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#502

Post by bbarn » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 1:46 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #143

jbmorgado wrote: post #66

Perhaps we could be more positive and instead of spending so much time trying to get his street off Waze instead help change the public opinion and city official to improve the public transit system or get more people to use bicycles, or both.

No doubt the subject of this article drives a car to work, probably annoying someone with the traffic he is a part of. "You're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic." A more realistic way of solving the traffic problem is not to get people out of their cars (that is going to be super-expensive), but the eliminate rush hours where everyone goes to work at the same time. "No income tax if you work from 12-8," or someth…

That's nice to think, but the reality of most business is it works with other business. They need to be roughly on the same schedule in general for that to work. You'll note that B to C business employees often work those staggered hours - so that the other consumers can get there off business hours.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#503

Post by tgb » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 1:48 AM UTC

bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #489

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sidew…

Have you looked at any studies, many point to wider lanes being more dangerous because people drive faster on them. Don't just assume that 'wider == safer' without any data. http://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/05/27/compelling-evidence-th...

Admittedly, he claimed only "for a given speed" so that's a different point, albeit probably the more important one.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#504

Post by steveax » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 1:49 AM UTC

enoch_r wrote: post #480

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…

It's important to note that not all these debates take the shape of "homeowners vs. commuters." The article used Clinton Street in Portland as an example. Who was upset that Clinton street was being used as cut-through by impatient drivers? Homeowners along Clinton were among those calling for change, but the loudest voices calling for diverters to reduce through-traffic were people who commuted or traveled along Cli…

Yep, same thing happening in my 'hood (Sellwood) on Umatilla. With the Sellwood bridge construction the traffic on Tacoma has been worse and drivers have been dipping down to Umatilla to avoid it and cutting back in right before the bridge. It's a mess and especially galling as the vast majority of traffic over the Sellwood bridge originates in Clackamas county where the residents were too cheap to pitch in $5/year (yes, per year) to help pay for the new bridge.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#505

Post by rahimnathwani » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

radlad wrote: post #435

hx87 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Expand them how? Make them wider, and get rid of the sidewalk? Make them multi-level?

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#506

Post by plttn » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 2:12 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #432

corndoge wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 occupan…

So every single gallon of gasoline used in every country is all provided by conflict petroleum?

By the same token, every plastic spork is funding terrorism.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#507

Post by terom » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 2:12 AM UTC

spuz wrote: post #463

tomphoolery wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (presum…

This sounds familiar to the traffic models in some parts of large Asian cities, although more as an organic result of a lack of planning solutions? :P

Writing based on the experience in e.g. Kathmandu's Thamel district, where the same tiny roadways are shared by all pedestrians, bicycles, rickshaws and dual-way taxi and moped traffic alike. Traffic signs??

It's a totally different traffic culture to what you're used to in Europe, and it does work in its own way.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#508

Post by threatofrain » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 2:20 AM UTC

nickbauman wrote: post #431

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.

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.

He did not even slightly mention the frame of optimal traffic distribution. He's talking about whether roads belong to homeowners. Optimal traffic is your frame of discussion, and then you go off talking about how tech people model human systems as factories.

It is worth framing this homeowners Waze sabotage as a NIMBY problem, because if the cars aren't being routed through their neighborhood, then it's being routed through someone else's neighborhood. The consequence of unequal distribution of traffic burden means that some people shoulder more burden because they lost in some conflict or competition, whether that's the war of politics or not having enough money or whatever.

There should at least be the empty-handed gesture of discussing why other (poor) people should shoulder disproportionate burden.

If people aren't discussing a substantial global reduction in vehicles, a revolutionary new transportation method without the same issues, or a decline in US population that outpaces growth, then they're talking in code about pushing the problem to somebody else.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#509

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 2:23 AM UTC

bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #489

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sidew…

Have you looked at any studies, many point to wider lanes being more dangerous because people drive faster on them. Don't just assume that 'wider == safer' without any data. http://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/05/27/compelling-evidence-th...

The flaw is thinking that the improvement comes for free. You're basically gaming human behavior. The narrower lanes eat most of the safety improvement of people driving slower. You only get the tiny bit that was left over by mistake because people slightly overcompensate for the danger you put them in.

But to get that tiny bit you're still paying the entire cost of slowing vehicles down. It takes longer to get where you're going, including for emergency vehicles. The most fuel efficient cruising speed for most vehicles is at or above 40MPH, which you're diverging from.

You're paying full costs for fractional benefits. You would be better off putting some cops on the side of the road with an EMP cannon to disable any cars that show up. Sure, it sounds crazy, but it improves safety by slowing people down so we should do it, right?

Except that there are other, better ways to improve safety. Like building sidewalks, and making sure there is enough capacity on the highways that people don't come down to surface streets to avoid it, and improving mass transit so there aren't as many people driving to begin with.

Re: Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war

#510

Post by mback00 » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 2:26 AM UTC

The problem here is not the app. People need to understand that the road /is/ public! Your neighborhood does /not/ own the road - everyone does. IMO, The solution to the problem of conjestion is opening of carpool lanes to all travelers, aggressive clearing accidents, creation of visual barriers (blinds) to accidents, and above all global acceptance of driverless systems.