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Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”

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Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”

#61

Post by 01100011 »

tjr225 wrote: post #25
duxup wrote: post #5

In LA are these shortcuts worth it? I was surprised to find with Google maps more often than not it suggests to just take that busy highway that is crawling alone because ... it really is faster. I've tried to defy google maps ... rarely do I win. Granted google maps is wrong at times. During snowstorms it loves to send me down off streets that haven't yet been plowed or ... worse random county roads you do not want…

For about six months before I moved closer to work I had a super commute between Olympia, WA to Kent, WA just south of Seattle. I do not recommend this. Anyways- for the first month or so I used Waze religiously as this is a notoriously bad commute. I realized after a few nasty trips through Fife that unless you were among th very first few people to catch a rerouting, the roads people were routed to were painfully u…

Waze has given me a lot of stupid advice in the last couple years. It will take me off a freeway, requiring many lane changes in heavy traffic, only to route me onto a clogged surface street and back onto the freeway after an exit or two. It usually fails to save me any time, and causes a lot of headaches. I stick with Google Maps now unless I need the police and hazard warnings(long road trips mostly).

Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”

#62

Post by lemmox »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #51
lemmox wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, so you're suggesting that the Google and Apple navigation apps are also crowd-sourced social networks like Waze? If that's true I wonder why Waze is singled out for these types of articles.

AFAIK, this is not really accurate; Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze often pick different routes between the same two points at the same time of day in my (admittedly informal) experiments. Google and Apple pretty consistently favored major roads unless there were serious traffic backups on them, while during anything remotely resembling commuting hour, Waze was frequently acting like your crazy uncle who swears tak…

That was similar to my experience but I haven't used it in several years, shortly after the Google acquisition my account broke. Waze seemed to want to route me through school zones all the time. Google Navigate didn't seem to suffer from this quirk. It never occurred to me that those quirky routes could be due to competition in an anon social network ranking contest.

Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”

#63

Post by geofft »

soup10 wrote: post #39
beowulfey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s generally accepted that more lanes does not equal less traffic, and can often lead to the opposite effect due to the effect of induced demand [1]. I personally believe providing multiple alternative transport options is more effective but obviously that’s a matter of opinion... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

By that logic we shouldn't upgrade internet infrastructure either.

The implicit context of this argument is that space is limited and we can't indefinitely expand roads. We almost certainly can indefinitely lay more fiber.

That said, the logic does apply to wireless spectrum, which is a limited resource. If we allocate enough spectrum that people can replace wired connections, there will definitely be significant and unsustainable demand for even more bands.

Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”

#65

Post by zeckalpha »

geofft wrote: post #45

I feel like I must be missing something because the following potential solutions seem obvious to me: - Mark a street as "No thru traffic," or charge tolls (via video camera) to vehicles not registered in the neighborhood and not stopping on the street. - Suspend the driver's license of anyone using Waze, and use that as negotiating leverage with Waze to give edit access to city planners. What's preventing local/stat…

It will increase load on the bottleneck.

Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”

#66

Post by bsder »

duxup wrote: post #5

In LA are these shortcuts worth it? I was surprised to find with Google maps more often than not it suggests to just take that busy highway that is crawling alone because ... it really is faster. I've tried to defy google maps ... rarely do I win. Granted google maps is wrong at times. During snowstorms it loves to send me down off streets that haven't yet been plowed or ... worse random county roads you do not want…

> In LA are these shortcuts worth it?

Nowadays I suspect not. Google has so much telemetry that it probably doesn't miss any real paths anymore.

Anything attempting to reroute me to save less than 5 minutes certainly isn't worth the grief of the odd turns, streets, etc. that I will have to navigate for the first time.

Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”

#67

Post by Aloha »

tjr225 wrote: post #25
duxup wrote: post #5

In LA are these shortcuts worth it? I was surprised to find with Google maps more often than not it suggests to just take that busy highway that is crawling alone because ... it really is faster. I've tried to defy google maps ... rarely do I win. Granted google maps is wrong at times. During snowstorms it loves to send me down off streets that haven't yet been plowed or ... worse random county roads you do not want…

For about six months before I moved closer to work I had a super commute between Olympia, WA to Kent, WA just south of Seattle. I do not recommend this. Anyways- for the first month or so I used Waze religiously as this is a notoriously bad commute. I realized after a few nasty trips through Fife that unless you were among th very first few people to catch a rerouting, the roads people were routed to were painfully u…

Ironically, I did the reverse commute for several months, which wasn't bad at all, provided I timed my trip thru JBLM correctly.

Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”

#68

Post by rrix2 »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #19
someguydave wrote: post #11

If the government wants to be the big daddy of traffic control then it should also build sufficient lanes to keep the roads moving.

Traffic doesn’t work like that. You seem to have a mental model where traffic is modeled like a liquid (traffic has a definite volume and does not expand to fill its container) while many studies show traffic behaves more like a gas (traffic expands to fill its container). Basically, more lanes doesn’t mean less traffic, it generally means the same amount of traffic.

This is a really good analogy that i haven't come across before. thanks

Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”

#69

Post by Aloha »

geofft wrote: post #45

I feel like I must be missing something because the following potential solutions seem obvious to me: - Mark a street as "No thru traffic," or charge tolls (via video camera) to vehicles not registered in the neighborhood and not stopping on the street. - Suspend the driver's license of anyone using Waze, and use that as negotiating leverage with Waze to give edit access to city planners. What's preventing local/stat…

Large annoying Speed bumps are a better solution for the first one, the app will route people even if it's marked as not thru.

The second one is unethical at best, and would certainly require changes to state law - in addition to being somewhat unenforceable.

Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”

#70

Post by tlrobinson »

tjr225 wrote: post #25
duxup wrote: post #5

In LA are these shortcuts worth it? I was surprised to find with Google maps more often than not it suggests to just take that busy highway that is crawling alone because ... it really is faster. I've tried to defy google maps ... rarely do I win. Granted google maps is wrong at times. During snowstorms it loves to send me down off streets that haven't yet been plowed or ... worse random county roads you do not want…

For about six months before I moved closer to work I had a super commute between Olympia, WA to Kent, WA just south of Seattle. I do not recommend this. Anyways- for the first month or so I used Waze religiously as this is a notoriously bad commute. I realized after a few nasty trips through Fife that unless you were among th very first few people to catch a rerouting, the roads people were routed to were painfully u…

It seems like Waze should be smarter by slowly shunting a portion of traffic to alternative routes, and seeing how much it can support.
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