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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.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday May 01 2015, @03:33AM
Often the highways have features from 1950s-1970s designs that are inefficient, and those bottlenecks can also be fixed for less than the ideas you suggest.
We could also expand our public transit so highways connect to subway lines, but rarely do. Even the garages that do fill up before 7AM. So clearly there is unmet demand. But we don't want to induce parking demand, apparently.
That's exactly what they do one street over from me. The road is one-way forbidden during commute hours because people there want their kids to be able to play in the streets; Street hockey, mostly.
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