Traffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war, again. Guess who’s winning?

[AlexandriaVA]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/traffic-weary-homeowners-and-waze-are-at-war-again-guess-whos-winning/2016/06/05/c466df46-299d-11e6-b989-4e5479715b54_story.html

When the traffic on Timothy Connor's quiet Maryland street suddenly jumped by several hundred cars an hour, he knew who was partly to blame: the disembodied female voice he could hear through the occasional open window saying, "Continue on Elm Avenue . . . ."

While I'm certainly empathetic to people's previously "secret" streets being "discovered" by commuters, my thought is this: The public may drive on public roads. If the public is driving unsafely on public roads, then a grievance is justified. However, to buy a house on a public street and expect people not to use it is no different than living near an airport and complaining about jet noise (which also happens in the DC area...)

It also goes to show the importance of a true street grid. In most of DC and the inner suburbs, if 7th street is jammed, you can usually just go to 8th or 6th easily (notional examples), and continue on your war. However, in the more outer suburbs, which depend more on heirarchical road networks, if the local parkway or medium-capacity thoroughfare is jammed, you're in trouble, and the few connector roads will get overwhelmed.

[Joe The Dragon]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/traffic-weary-homeowners-and-waze-are-at-war-again-guess-whos-winning/2016/06/05/c466df46-299d-11e6-b989-4e5479715b54_story.html

When the traffic on Timothy Connor's quiet Maryland street suddenly jumped by several hundred cars an hour, he knew who was partly to blame: the disembodied female voice he could hear through the occasional open window saying, "Continue on Elm Avenue . . . ."

While I'm certainly empathetic to people's previously "secret" streets being "discovered" by commuters, my thought is this: The public may drive on public roads. If the public is driving unsafely on public roads, then a grievance is justified. However, to buy a house on a public street and expect people not to use it is no different than living near an airport and complaining about jet noise (which also happens in the DC area...)

It also goes to show the importance of a true street grid. In most of DC and the inner suburbs, if 7th street is jammed, you can usually just go to 8th or 6th easily (notional examples), and continue on your war. However, in the more outer suburbs, which depend more on heirarchical road networks, if the local parkway or medium-capacity thoroughfare is jammed, you're in trouble, and the few connector roads will get overwhelmed.

Just wait fro auto drive cars to start makeing the same moves.

[kalvado]

This is definitely a place where full grid exist; Elm ave, Takoma park MD is well within beltway, and there are a lot of bigger streets around. But I assume they get saturated during rush hour..
A few general thoughts: the street is really narrow, 25 MPH one. There is not much room - one parking and one driving lane total (not each way): https://www.google.com/maps/place/51+Elm+Ave,+Takoma+Park,+MD+20912/@38.9745046,-77.0012959,3a,66.8y,76.95h,84.09t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sXQpBRq-Oun8rIHSJwcSwXg!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x89b7c62835a601f7:0x8eb6efdd641796e
Pavement doesn't look highway grade, and likely suffers under heavy traffic - and we know how often side streets get fixed.
Last, but not the least - I've seen those maps send traffic through side street not because the main one is backed up, but because side street is 20' shorter drive...
Although, I must admit that Wase was doing miracles during my last trip to Chicago. When you're not local and don't know which roads are commonly backed up... ("all of them!" seems about right, but sort of useless).  Can make a difference between getting to that meeting on time or missing it, or being at the airport in time for the plane.

[SP Cook]

I actually like Waze and have used it some.  However, because it is a garbage in-garbage out self-selected deal, the solution to Mr. Connors' problem is pretty simple.  Get a Waze account (or better yet 20 of them) and report Elm Avenue as totally backed up every day. 

As to self-driving cars, since the main function of GPS is to get you lost (challenge:  ask any mapping program a proper route for 20 random multi-state trips and at least one will be wrong in terms of mileage or time by at least 20% )  and because one of the main limitations of GPS based systems is the inability to distinguish quality of non-Interstates, self-driving cars pouring over residential streets, or hopeless creeping along on rural roads not designed for thru travel will indeed be a problem.

[froggie]

I actually like Waze and have used it some.  However, because it is a garbage in-garbage out self-selected deal, the solution to Mr. Connors' problem is pretty simple.  Get a Waze account (or better yet 20 of them) and report Elm Avenue as totally backed up every day. 

Guessing you didn't read the article.  He'd already tried that.

[empirestate]

I was hoping the article would address the legality of the "No Thru Traffic" signs that the residents purchased of their own volition. Not to mention how one enforces a "No Thru Traffic" sign generally, let alone one that is a yellow diamond when it should be a white rectangle.

Just wait fro auto drive cars to start makeing the same moves.

Will be less likely. For one thing, self-driving cars can still be efficient at much higher levels of congestion, since they don't need anywhere near the physical and reactional lead time as human-driven cars; thus, they won't need to seek detour routes nearly so often because of congestion. For another, they can all talk to each other (without coming to blows during the morning commute) and sort out a network-wide plan so that not all of them have to use the same side street as a detour, should one become necessary.

One key difference between self-driving cars and human-driven cars is that the self-driving car will not always aim for the very fastest possible route; it will select any available route that gets it to its destination within the given parameters and will often even adjust its speed downward to make the network flow better. Now, there will surely be an option for the passenger to select "fastest route", but the car will only apply that to the extent possible within the network. Obviously, it's not possible for every car on the road to be granted the actual fastest route whenever requested, because doing so would require pre-empting other vehicles, which defeats the whole point of the network and will presumably be reserved only for emergency vehicles.

[jeffandnicole]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/traffic-weary-homeowners-and-waze-are-at-war-again-guess-whos-winning/2016/06/05/c466df46-299d-11e6-b989-4e5479715b54_story.html

When the traffic on Timothy Connor's quiet Maryland street suddenly jumped by several hundred cars an hour, he knew who was partly to blame: the disembodied female voice he could hear through the occasional open window saying, "Continue on Elm Avenue . . . ."

While I'm certainly empathetic to people's previously "secret" streets being "discovered" by commuters, my thought is this: The public may drive on public roads. If the public is driving unsafely on public roads, then a grievance is justified. However, to buy a house on a public street and expect people not to use it is no different than living near an airport and complaining about jet noise (which also happens in the DC area...)

It also goes to show the importance of a true street grid. In most of DC and the inner suburbs, if 7th street is jammed, you can usually just go to 8th or 6th easily (notional examples), and continue on your war. However, in the more outer suburbs, which depend more on heirarchical road networks, if the local parkway or medium-capacity thoroughfare is jammed, you're in trouble, and the few connector roads will get overwhelmed.

I do have a certain sense of sympathy for these people.  If you purchase a hope in a development-type area off a main road, you expect it to be mostly people living in that development.

There was this interesting quote:

"We had traffic jams, people were honking. It was pretty harrowing."

If there's traffic jams, why is Waze still sending them down that road?

The article hinted at the street in question: Elm Avenue, in Takoma Park, MD.  Taking an aerial look, you can see why it's a convenient cut-thru road.  But taking a GSV look at it, you can see why the residents would be upset as the road is quite narrow and doesn't allow for efficient two-way traffic.  What usually comes next isn't in the favor of residents either...restricting curbside parking!

It's really a fault of road planning ages ago, when developers would make some roads easy for the residents to cut to either side of the neighborhood.  But that was in an era of lower traffic volumes and main roads that could handle the traffic volumes.  In today's age, most developments don't allow for cutting thru, or make it trickier to do so.  My neighborhood, built long ago, actually does have these advantages.  Of the 4 main roads surrounding the development, we have access to 3 of them.  There is only one road that allows a direct cut-thru, but it's parallel to one of the main roads.  It's not heavily utilized unless there's an issue on that main road  They also installed a few 4-way stop intersections to try to prevent it from becoming an often-used alternative, which does seem to work.

It's one of those things where I understand the "It's a public road, so you gotta expect the public to use it". I get that POV.  But until you're the "victim", you don't really get it.  If you suddenly can't back out of your driveway, or a pleasant 1 minute drive down a side road turns into a 10 minute wait, you will change that POV fairly quickly!

[MisterSG1]

I always thought this issue was known as "rat running", there are many things city governments can do to discourage rat running, which can be double edged swords to the residents, such as speed bumps everywhere, time restricted turns, a confusing set of one ways that will send you back to the road you tried to escape from.

In my opinion, when this issue happens, it's a failure of traffic engineering, if you want to keep the arterials and collectors less congested than widen existing freeways and build new freeways, it really is that simple. I seen the positive effect of freeway construction myself in Brampton, when the 410 was extended, it took an immense burden off Heart Lake Road, which used to be jammed nearly all times of the day.

A lot of the issues with rat running has to do with traffic signal phasing around here at least, obviously you are going to try to do something else if it takes you five cycles of a busy suburban intersection to make a left turn. It seems like in my opinion, the powers that be like to make things difficult to discourage driving as much as possible.

[empirestate]

If there's traffic jams, why is Waze still sending them down that road?

Perhaps Waze is discounting reports of jams on that road, because of all the false positives planted by the residents?

[kalvado]

I was hoping the article would address the legality of the "No Thru Traffic" signs that the residents purchased of their own volition. Not to mention how one enforces a "No Thru Traffic" sign generally, let alone one that is a yellow diamond when it should be a white rectangle.

Maybe that is the big point in defence - this is apparently not a real sign, if someone acted based on that - this is their problem/

Just wait fro auto drive cars to start makeing the same moves.

Will be less likely. For one thing, self-driving cars can still be efficient at much higher levels of congestion, since they don't need anywhere near the physical and reactional lead time as human-driven cars; thus, they won't need to seek detour routes nearly so often because of congestion. For another, they can all talk to each other (without coming to blows during the morning commute) and sort out a network-wide plan so that not all of them have to use the same side street as a detour, should one become necessary.

One key difference between self-driving cars and human-driven cars is that the self-driving car will not always aim for the very fastest possible route; it will select any available route that gets it to its destination within the given parameters and will often even adjust its speed downward to make the network flow better. Now, there will surely be an option for the passenger to select "fastest route", but the car will only apply that to the extent possible within the network. Obviously, it's not possible for every car on the road to be granted the actual fastest route whenever requested, because doing so would require pre-empting other vehicles, which defeats the whole point of the network and will presumably be reserved only for emergency vehicles.

Cars which are sold today have expected lifespan of about 20 years. So even if industry switches to 100% self-driving today (unlikely due to costs etc) - 10 years from now we are going to have just 50-50 mix on the road as a best case scenario.
And you're talking about algorithms in such cars as if they are in mass production for few decades, and didn't change much for past 10-20 years ...

[kalvado]

In my opinion, when this issue happens, it's a failure of traffic engineering, if you want to keep the arterials and collectors less congested than widen existing freeways and build new freeways, it really is that simple. I seen the positive effect of freeway construction myself in Brampton, when the 410 was extended, it took an immense burden off Heart Lake Road, which used to be jammed nearly all times of the day.

How many new freeways are being built in US? Even if you can sort out right of way and imminent domain issues (political nightmare preventing any action), there is no money to pay for that anyway.

[Mapmikey]

I was hoping the article would address the legality of the "No Thru Traffic" signs that the residents purchased of their own volition. Not to mention how one enforces a "No Thru Traffic" sign generally, let alone one that is a yellow diamond when it should be a white rectangle.

On a similar vein, I work with a guy who got a ticket for violating this sign - https://goo.gl/maps/jqX9RPaFmZ72

Cop was sitting in the one driveway before the stop sign and writing up folks who drove by him on the side road...essentially to enforce that type of sign you need a cop doing a stake out...and possibly a short stretch of road subject to a prohibition like that.

I've also seen cops in Austin TX enforcing via ticket the signed prohibition to drive on a shoulder (to escape sitting in a long line to turn right at a busy stoplight ahead of here: https://goo.gl/maps/eFa1MPDsqvn )...

[vdeane]

I have to side with the homeowners on this.  There is no way a street like that can handle 10k cars a day, much less 45k.  In order for it to handle that many, it would have to be a six lane divided suburban arterial, not a dinky little residential street.  The homeowners NEED a street that isn't backed up just to get to/from their house.  If it gets backed up regularly, you might as well demolish all the homes, because their is no point in living in a house you can't get in or out of.

Waze's mission is to distribute traffic more efficiently across the grid of public streets, Mossler said, not to create traffic jams.

Clearly, if that's their mission, they have failed miserably.

I was hoping the article would address the legality of the "No Thru Traffic" signs that the residents purchased of their own volition. Not to mention how one enforces a "No Thru Traffic" sign generally, let alone one that is a yellow diamond when it should be a white rectangle.

Just wait fro auto drive cars to start makeing the same moves.

Will be less likely. For one thing, self-driving cars can still be efficient at much higher levels of congestion, since they don't need anywhere near the physical and reactional lead time as human-driven cars; thus, they won't need to seek detour routes nearly so often because of congestion. For another, they can all talk to each other (without coming to blows during the morning commute) and sort out a network-wide plan so that not all of them have to use the same side street as a detour, should one become necessary.

One key difference between self-driving cars and human-driven cars is that the self-driving car will not always aim for the very fastest possible route; it will select any available route that gets it to its destination within the given parameters and will often even adjust its speed downward to make the network flow better. Now, there will surely be an option for the passenger to select "fastest route", but the car will only apply that to the extent possible within the network. Obviously, it's not possible for every car on the road to be granted the actual fastest route whenever requested, because doing so would require pre-empting other vehicles, which defeats the whole point of the network and will presumably be reserved only for emergency vehicles.

Of course, as soon as you throw in even one human-driven car, the whole system has to revert to the way it is now, so unless driving is banned, I'm not sure how much they'll help.  Plus there's the congestion that would be caused by the expected usage changes.

In my opinion, when this issue happens, it's a failure of traffic engineering, if you want to keep the arterials and collectors less congested than widen existing freeways and build new freeways, it really is that simple. I seen the positive effect of freeway construction myself in Brampton, when the 410 was extended, it took an immense burden off Heart Lake Road, which used to be jammed nearly all times of the day.

How many new freeways are being built in US? Even if you can sort out right of way and imminent domain issues (political nightmare preventing any action), there is no money to pay for that anyway.

A few, but most of them are in North Carolina.

[jeffandnicole]

I've also seen cops in Austin TX enforcing via ticket the signed prohibition to drive on a shoulder (to escape sitting in a long line to turn right at a busy stoplight ahead of here: https://goo.gl/maps/eFa1MPDsqvn )...

At least that you don't need a sign for!

[kalvado]

How many new freeways are being built in US? Even if you can sort out right of way and imminent domain issues (political nightmare preventing any action), there is no money to pay for that anyway.

A few, but most of them are in North Carolina.

Since His Excellency, Honorable Governor of NY Mr. Cuomo II ordered boycott of NC - that doesn't count!

[AlexandriaVA]

I enjoin anyone who sides with the homeowners here to never use a side street when driving around a major metro area, or really any area where they don't live.

The way I see it is that a road is either public or it isn't. If the citizens of the neigborhood want to purchase the road from the local government, then they might begin to have a case, but I highly doubt anyone would bother.

Besides, if a neighborhood road becomes too backed-up, then Waze users won't bother using it. It's self-correcting.

[kalvado]

I enjoin anyone who sides with the homeowners here to never use a side street when driving around a major metro area, or really any area where they don't live.

The way I see it is that a road is either public or it isn't. If the citizens of the neigborhood want to purchase the road from the local government, then they might begin to have a case, but I highly doubt anyone would bother.

Besides, if a neighborhood road becomes too backed-up, then Waze users won't bother using it. It's self-correcting.

In many newer developments, developer builds those roads and then hands them over to municipality - talking about buyout.
As for overall situation, I do see that as a grey area. Some of those side roads are clearly not designed and not maintained for the loads they can get.

[AlexandriaVA]

I enjoin anyone who sides with the homeowners here to never use a side street when driving around a major metro area, or really any area where they don't live.

The way I see it is that a road is either public or it isn't. If the citizens of the neigborhood want to purchase the road from the local government, then they might begin to have a case, but I highly doubt anyone would bother.

Besides, if a neighborhood road becomes too backed-up, then Waze users won't bother using it. It's self-correcting.

In many newer developments, developer builds those roads and then hands them over to municipality - talking about buyout.
As for overall situation, I do see that as a grey area. Some of those side roads are clearly not designed and not maintained for the loads they can get.

Plenty of public amenities are overused relative to their intended level. Schools get overcrowded all the time, for example.

What I don't see is how this is a grey area. When schools are over-capacity, they don't ban the excess students. They accomodate them.

Basically, the homeowner wants other roads that go through other people's neigborhoods more crowded so that they will necessarily lighten the traffic load on the roads that go through his neighborhood.

[cl94]

As a researcher in the field, I can say that stuff like Waze is what we've been wanting for a while: technology that routes vehicles in a way that optimizes available capacity to achieve the system optimal. If you don't want people driving down your street, live on a dead-end road or in a gated community where the public isn't allowed. It's a public road, not your road. I have zero sympathy for these people. Once you start banning people from public property, a new legal can of worms is opened.

And here's the thing: Waze routes people based on real-time travel speeds. If the side road is faster, it will route people down the side road. Only way to change that is to reduce the speed of the cutoff, whether it be by traffic calming or blocking a couple of streets off.

[empirestate]

Cars which are sold today have expected lifespan of about 20 years. So even if industry switches to 100% self-driving today (unlikely due to costs etc) - 10 years from now we are going to have just 50-50 mix on the road as a best case scenario.
And you're talking about algorithms in such cars as if they are in mass production for few decades, and didn't change much for past 10-20 years ...

That's correct, I'm describing the system as it would be fully deployed.

Of course, as soon as you throw in even one human-driven car, the whole system has to revert to the way it is now, so unless driving is banned, I'm not sure how much they'll help.  Plus there's the congestion that would be caused by the expected usage changes.

Yes, so the same caveat applies. However, while the system is being developed, I don't predict the same intermingling of modes as you describe. Self-driving cars will at first be limited to segregated facilities in order to operate in a fully autonomous mode. Those vehicles operating in mixed traffic will be subject to the limitations of mixed-mode facilities: that is, they will have to allow for the presence of some human-driven vehicles. As a result, and this is the pertinent point*, a self-driving vehicle using the detour from the article scenario won't have any noticeable effect that a regular vehicle wouldn't have, because it will be functioning within the predominantly human-driven network we have now.

Once the system is fully autonomous, moreover, you still wouldn't notice an effect for a different reason: the network will operate vastly differently and so the whole concept of even needing a detour like this will be largely obsolete.

*The specific point I'm responding to, as a reminder, was this:

Just wait fro auto drive cars to start makeing the same moves.

[Sykotyk]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/traffic-weary-homeowners-and-waze-are-at-war-again-guess-whos-winning/2016/06/05/c466df46-299d-11e6-b989-4e5479715b54_story.html

When the traffic on Timothy Connor's quiet Maryland street suddenly jumped by several hundred cars an hour, he knew who was partly to blame: the disembodied female voice he could hear through the occasional open window saying, "Continue on Elm Avenue . . . ."

While I'm certainly empathetic to people's previously "secret" streets being "discovered" by commuters, my thought is this: The public may drive on public roads. If the public is driving unsafely on public roads, then a grievance is justified. However, to buy a house on a public street and expect people not to use it is no different than living near an airport and complaining about jet noise (which also happens in the DC area...)

It also goes to show the importance of a true street grid. In most of DC and the inner suburbs, if 7th street is jammed, you can usually just go to 8th or 6th easily (notional examples), and continue on your war. However, in the more outer suburbs, which depend more on heirarchical road networks, if the local parkway or medium-capacity thoroughfare is jammed, you're in trouble, and the few connector roads will get overwhelmed.

Just wait fro auto drive cars to start makeing the same moves.

A typo that fits so well referencing DC.

[hbelkins]

Similar situation in the mountains of eastern Kentucky recently -- all four lanes of US 23 between Prestonsburg and Pikeville were closed due to a rock/mudslide. Traffic was routed over KY 1428, a narrow, crooked, hilly road lined by homes. Vehicles were bumper-to-bumper, big trucks had trouble negotiating some of the curves, especially when meeting other big rigs, and residents had trouble getting in and out of their homes. There was no other practical detour for the busiest north-south route in eastern Kentucky.

[vdeane]

I enjoin anyone who sides with the homeowners here to never use a side street when driving around a major metro area, or really any area where they don't live.

The way I see it is that a road is either public or it isn't. If the citizens of the neigborhood want to purchase the road from the local government, then they might begin to have a case, but I highly doubt anyone would bother.

Besides, if a neighborhood road becomes too backed-up, then Waze users won't bother using it. It's self-correcting.

It's not a binary issue.  A few people on a side street for whatever reason is one thing 10k or more, on the other hand, is a different matter.  As I said, the people living there need to be able to get in and out of their driveways.  Making it impossible for them to get to/from their homes is an unreasonable infringement on their quality of life (one that I have experienced a couple times on a road I commute on (Forts Ferry for the curious), thanks to a water main break and the opening of a nearby Sonic (on the day it opened, the line extended onto the Northway SB lanes past the Twin Bridges (not exaggerating), and it took a month or two for the Sonic Effect to dissipate to reasonable levels, and a few more for all the effects to go away, most notably the opening of the Sonic driveway directly off of NY 7 WB)).  People who live in/near an area have rights too.  I would not consider "the road will get jammed because some stupid app developers are unable to prevent their code from routing thousands of people down a street that can't handle those traffic counts" to be a reasonable thing that one could predict.

[kalvado]

Plenty of public amenities are overused relative to their intended level. Schools get overcrowded all the time, for example.

What I don't see is how this is a grey area. When schools are over-capacity, they don't ban the excess students. They accomodate them.

Well, if schools are getting over capacity, there are usually some remedies beyond sqeezing 50-60 bodies in a class. New/temporary schools, more teachers... That is not cheap, but way cheaper and easier than couple of new arterials, nad usually accommodated under "our kids need that!" banner. 

[Duke87]

As to self-driving cars, since the main function of GPS is to get you lost (challenge:  ask any mapping program a proper route for 20 random multi-state trips and at least one will be wrong in terms of mileage or time by at least 20% )  and because one of the main limitations of GPS based systems is the inability to distinguish quality of non-Interstates, self-driving cars pouring over residential streets, or hopeless creeping along on rural roads not designed for thru travel will indeed be a problem.

And will remain so because routing traffic is an NP-hard problem. There is no way to write a computer program that efficiently and correctly identifies the shortest or fastest route between two points in a complex network 100% of the time.

Programs attempting to account for traffic in their routing can, even if something does not unpredictably change the circumstances, fail spectacularly in their attempts to find the fastest route. I've noted that when there is significant traffic on the GW and Verrazano Bridges, Google has been known to suggest cutting across midtown Manhattan as a faster alternative. Protip: don't do this. Google is failing to correctly identify the fastest route because it assumes any street which it does not have traffic data for is free-flowing. Some of the crosstown streets in Manhattan may at times be streets where Google lacks traffic data. To assume they are free-flowing in such a circumstance is, of course, horribly wrong.

Even when things are not particularly trafficky, Google tends to overestimate average speeds on surface streets in NYC because their algorithm is failing to properly account for the impact of the city's generally poorly coordinated signals.

As a researcher in the field, I can say that stuff like Waze is what we've been wanting for a while: technology that routes vehicles in a way that optimizes available capacity to achieve the system optimal. If you don't want people driving down your street, live on a dead-end road or in a gated community where the public isn't allowed. It's a public road, not your road. I have zero sympathy for these people. Once you start banning people from public property, a new legal can of worms is opened.

Lots of public property restricts access to authorized individuals only. Try walking into the White House and see how far you get.

Even with roads specifically, as car drivers we're not used to worrying about bans on through traffic but they're common as dirt for trucks.

Also, while it isn't relevant for law in the US, there is precedent from other countries of doing this sort of thing. The city of Madrid has signs like these, which state that the street in question is closed to all cars except those belonging to local residents.




As for the broader issue here, I'm going to take the side that if it's a public road, the the public is allowed to use it, and the people living on it do not have any inherent right for it to not be congested.

That said - the homeowners do have legitimate cause for complaint. Their complaints, however, should be directed at the authorities who have failed to build a sufficient transportation network to meet traffic demands. Not at the drivers using the street or at Waze for sending them there.