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posted by janrinok on Thursday April 30 2015, @08:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the shortest-distance-between-two-points dept.

An L.A. Councilman is attempting to blame the application Waze for neighborhood "cut-throughs", where people divert to side streets during traffic congestion.

In his view this is a new phenomenon that has never happened before, although it is widespread around the world and has been so for many years, certainly existing long before 'apps' became popular. The councilor is planning on using a data sharing agreement with Waze in order to strong-arm the application into becoming less useful, which will not solve the problem because people will just use other applications, and those with local knowledge will still know the quickest route from A to B.

The popularity of Waze is largely because it helps drivers avoid delays and to find alternative routes based on the the reports received from other drivers. Applying the measures that the councilor is hoping for will neuter the app completely, rendering it pointless. However, the councilor does make one good point - there are more pedestrian safety facilities (e.g. crossing points, barriers etc) on major routes and that the practice might lead to increased casualty rates in residential areas.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by jcross on Thursday April 30 2015, @01:03PM

    by jcross (4009) on Thursday April 30 2015, @01:03PM (#177060)

    When I used to work in L.A. about 10 years ago, a lot of locals seemed to have GPS units in their cars, but this was before smartphones so I don't think there was any traffic-based routing. After a couple experiences of getting stuck on the freeway, we bought a map book and navigated through the local and residential streets, where there was often no other traffic at all. One thing that struck me was how wide residential streets tend to be there. A lot of them looked like they were 3 or 4 lanes wide, and really straight, and of course really flat (at least where the common folk live), in a nice grid with the only complicating factor being that some towns have their streets turned 45 degrees in the Spanish style [wikipedia.org] and others don't.

    Now there are a bunch of ways to calm traffic, from the cul-de-sacs you mention to slaloms, speed bumps, traffic circles, increasing the number of T intersections, decreasing visibility, and so on, but the residential streets of L.A. are the exact opposite in every respect. It's a city built around the automobile, and that's going to be tricky to change in a meaningful way. The big change here is automating the person in the passenger seat with a paper map and some geographic know-how, but L.A. is also the perfect setup for that automation to run amok.

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