If the government wants to be the big daddy of traffic control then it should also build sufficient lanes to keep the roads moving.
We can also hand over the streets to Taggart Toll Roads, would that be better?
Yes, it would.
Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”
171–180 of 311 posts
Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”
#172It’s disappointing to see LADOT neglecting to use a road management tool already at their disposal to stop Waze’s abuse of their residential zones: No Thru Traffic. Posting NTT signs at entry points into residential neighborhoods and specifying even as little as a $5 fine would make entry for thru routing unlawful, stopping Waze. Whether or not the city enforces these signs would be irrelevant, as long as the traffic…
What if Waze labeled these as possibly $5 toll roads? If the penalty to the driver is $5 that is never enforced, what is the penalty to Waze if they just inform users there may be a penalty (and maybe even add the ability for people to record if it is being enforced or not)?
Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
Am I the only one that finds that using that theory to justify not adding capacity is utterly idiotic? If you add capacity and it ends up being all used up, it just means you didn't add enough and should add even more if possible! Kind of like saying that in a famine it's useless to provide more food because it's going to be eaten all up anyway since some people are no longer dying of famine...
No, this canard gets raised in every traffic thread. The real reason why “induced demand” exists is because roads in urban areas are usually so under built that any reasonably good road is crushed by extra users once it is built. If governments actually kept sufficient roads available then there would not be induced demand.
Alternatively, the government should charge all road users a sufficiently high toll to keep the roads moving.
Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”
#174It’s disappointing to see LADOT neglecting to use a road management tool already at their disposal to stop Waze’s abuse of their residential zones: No Thru Traffic. Posting NTT signs at entry points into residential neighborhoods and specifying even as little as a $5 fine would make entry for thru routing unlawful, stopping Waze. Whether or not the city enforces these signs would be irrelevant, as long as the traffic…
Posting signs would also mean dedicating police resources to enforcement, which tends to be a pretty unpopular use of public services. The proper option would be for Waze to work with LA/LADOT to mark roads, but it seems like they are either unable or actively hostile to resolving the core issue of overloading streets.
Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”
#175> These thousands of homeowners and renters have arguably been injured by Waze’s and Google’s successful privatization of formerly public streets. That's a... very creative interpetation of what public and private mean. If you don't want your side street to be driven on at 30 mph, then you can't drive on it at 30 mph either. Traffic calming measures are a thing. Make it even more winding, add road bumps, bottlenecks.…
These "NIMBY" people always make me laught. if you dont want to have a ton of traffic dont buy a house on a major road. There is a street on the subdivision i live in with the same issue. it is the main entry point to the subdivision. people bought houses there, then fought the city for years over traffic? they put up stop signs, speed bumps, etc. they wanted the lower house prices associated with living on main road…
>they wanted the lower house prices associated with living on main roads, but then tried to redirect traffic elsewhere?
If it works, why not? Buy a lower priced house due to traffic. Get politicians to change traffic. Sell house at higher value now that traffic conditions or better (or otherwise enjoy the now higher valued house). Are we to suggest that it is wrong to encourage politicians to act in a way that benefits an individual?
Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
Am I the only one that finds that using that theory to justify not adding capacity is utterly idiotic? If you add capacity and it ends up being all used up, it just means you didn't add enough and should add even more if possible! Kind of like saying that in a famine it's useless to provide more food because it's going to be eaten all up anyway since some people are no longer dying of famine...
This canard is also used to justify taking taxes meant for road improvement and spending them on dubious public transport schemes. For some reason they are rarely invested in well run commuter buses, for instance.
Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”
#177> These thousands of homeowners and renters have arguably been injured by Waze’s and Google’s successful privatization of formerly public streets. That's a... very creative interpetation of what public and private mean. If you don't want your side street to be driven on at 30 mph, then you can't drive on it at 30 mph either. Traffic calming measures are a thing. Make it even more winding, add road bumps, bottlenecks.…
These "NIMBY" people always make me laught. if you dont want to have a ton of traffic dont buy a house on a major road. There is a street on the subdivision i live in with the same issue. it is the main entry point to the subdivision. people bought houses there, then fought the city for years over traffic? they put up stop signs, speed bumps, etc. they wanted the lower house prices associated with living on main road…
I think the point is that residents of formerly quiet side streets are not happy about living on a Waze-induced thoroughfare... and understandably so, in my opinion.
Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”
#178If 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.
Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”
#179The article tries to paint Waze as an "evil" corporation, but to me it sounds like they haven't perfected their algorithms yet. If Waze reroutes 1,000 cars to a shortcut that can only handle 100, that's idiotic and does not provide a good service to users. But if their algorithms took the road's capacity into account, everyone would benefit since there would be no "synthetic" traffic jams. In my experience traffic ap…
I've started to avoid using GPS navigation whenever possible for these reasons. Navigation is a valuable skill and using GPS means you don't develop it or forget it. I've noticed a strange phenomenon where people will listen to the GPS even if they know it's not right. It's better to learn to navigate.
I find GPS most useful if I already know the route -- it can give me advance notice of traffic out of my vision, or it can tell me which of two routes will be faster (an example is picking either the car or truck lanes, or east or west spur of the NJ Turnpike, which has multiple mostly-parallel routes).
In cases where I don't know where I'm going, I try to set any GPS app to keep to freeways and arterial roads when possible, since those tend to signed the best.
Re: Traffic apps turned L.A.’s neighborhoods into ”shortcuts”
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Waze doesn't seem to allow you to specify whether you're a trade vehicle or not so it keeps routing trade vehicles into Regents (and the other Royal) Park which they are prohibited from and liable to be fined.
They probably infer your vehicle type from acceleration data
How would that be possible? My sister has a new VW Polo with a 1.0L 65bhp engine, the official time to 60 is a glacial 16.5 seconds. I'm sure its acceleration profile would match that of a fully loaded HGV.