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I've noticed some of the "Waze shortcuts' making their way into Google maps. Some of these are pretty hairy. For anyone familiar with SF, here's an example:

To get from 8th & Bryant to 3rd & Bryant, Google Maps/Waze wants you to get on I-80 at 8th and exit at 4th. That would be OK but you enter 80 from the left side of the interstate and must exit within a quarter mile to the right side of the interstate. This means crossing 4 lanes to get there. It's actually do-able in bumper-to-bumper gridlock but when traffic is moving it's pretty dangerous. Why not just go down Bryant Street? The "shortcut" can't save more 2 minutes at best and at worst costs 10+ minutes.

Waze used to be good for spotting cops and speed traps. Now it's just a collection of bad "short cuts".

One of my favorite Waze "shortcuts" in Los Angeles has me crossing all 8 lanes of Wilshire Boulevard at an uncontrolled intersection. I always avoid this route in the hope that Google will figure out this is a dangerous intersection but so far it keeps popping up.
A few weeks back, after heading back home from a conference during "rush-hour", the Google maps app sent me through a very very dodgy area. It was run-down, semi-shanty town. Generally that wouldn't be a bad thing, but this being South Africa, with one of the highest crime-rates in the world, it was quite disturbing. You don't want to go through "bad parts" of town unless you really have to, especially if you look out of place as either a different skincolor, or nationality. Of which I am both.
A shortcut is supposed to be difficult; if it was easy, it would just be 'the way'.
Dangerously so?
This problem is solved in Berzerkeley and for cheap. [0]

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8633369,-122.2652156,3a,75y,...

This seems to be really common in the Bay Area and was one of the reasons I absolutely hated the city of Berkeley when I was there. You just can't direct traffic like this if your infrastructure can't handle the load to begin with; it's selfish beyond belief.

In Los Angeles, people were using Fullerton Road like this for years. The county finally got funding and actually realigned it to a proper road for people to use to commute on and the original Fullerton Road is back to what it was -- a small residential street.

It's called filtered permeability, and is a common retrofit in some countries in Europe. Wealth doesn't come into it — you will find it in some really poor parts of London, as well as the City (financial district) and some very rich neighbourhoods.

The point is that the non-arterial road can't handle the load, so the barrier returns it to its original purpose — the residents of and visitors to that street.

The intention is that the people who were using this route either - use the main road (slightly increasing the traffic there) - use public transport or a bicycle instead - stop making the journey altogether

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeability_(spatial_and_tran...

"just can't direct traffic like this if your infrastructure can't handle the load to begin with; it's selfish beyond belief."

This is the same thing the pedestrian, transit, and bicycle fans that make up the majority in Berkeley think about your choice to drive a car at all in their city. And they're right.

> You just can't direct traffic like this if your infrastructure can't handle the load to begin with; it's selfish beyond belief.

I don't see what's "selfish" about this. Different roads serve different purposes--these sorts of neighborhood streets are meant to be quiet streets shared by a variety of modes of transportation heading in various directions, freeways like the 405 are designed to accommodate large numbers of motor vehicles heading in a single direction. They are designed for these distinct purposes--they differ in their construction materials, in the number of intersections, in their safety features, and in their proximity to homes.

To me, the idea that we should just declare the two equivalent when traffic is sufficiently bad sounds a bit like saying that it's selfish of pedestrians to not allow drivers to use the sidewalk at rush hour.

Yes, you can. The roads weren't designed for huge amounts of commuter traffic, so maybe you should stop using them for huge amounts of commuter traffic.
Mountain View has done the same thing.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3814583,-122.0585511,3a,75y,...

Wow, if you look at the map where that is, they did it just slightly south of that road as well. Basically you can't get from the east side of that neighborhood to the west side without leaving it.
"you can't get from the east side of that neighborhood to the west"

Of course you can, just use your feet.

That doesn't work to well in the suburbs.
These are all over St. Louis, but for a totally different reason: crime prevention.

* https://www.google.com/maps/@38.6280859,-90.2583063,3a,75y,2...

* https://www.google.com/maps/@38.6289577,-90.2580606,3a,75y,2...

Can you explain how it's supposed to work? I mean why is it crime preventing?
Here's an article that explains the theory pretty well: http://www.popcenter.org/Responses/closing_streets/print/
Add diverters so it's not practical to use a street for through traffic. Portland is starting to do this on certain "neighborhood greenways".
LA has always seemed like a terrible quality-of-life city to live in because of the traffic. The amount of time spent commuting makes me wonder why tech people, at least, don't want to move out of there.
I wouldn't call it terrible, life is nice in your car compared to say walking around in an east coast city during the winter if you have no car. Especially when it comes to grocery shopping. So I'd call it a trade off. Maybe SF is exempt from this a bit, but city living in a city that has some real weather (my experience was on the east coast) always struck me as very hard on it's human inhabitants compared to the car centric LA lifestyle.
You don't commute. AFAIK most of tech is in Silicon Beach and most people live within 20-30 mins
Bollards. Give residents proximity sensors which allow them and only them access thru the bollards. Piggy backing will happen but they'll be waiting a log time.

Not saying place them everywhere just make it so the open streets are more mazelike so when friends need to visit there is a way in, it just happens to be byzantine, frustrating interlopers who want to cut through.

That's called a gated community and you don't get to fund them with taxpayer money. If you don't want to deal with plebeians on your roads, then you need to pay a developer to build private roads.

LA streets do not belong to the neighborhoods, they belong to the city. If neighbors are concerned about congestion, perhaps they should support policy that promotes density and mass transit.

Promote an over-supply of housing (many story apartments) and small consumer service establishments (ground floors) near job clusters.

For mass transit to work best make it /fast/ above all else make it fast. If it takes longer to take the transit than it does to drive it's not a viable option.

Another possibility for alleviating congestion is to provide parking silos at the edge of the city network and well connected local transit from them.

However the best thing that can be done to end gridlock? Self driving cars save us please!

> That's called a gated community and you don't get to fund them with taxpayer money.

Sure you do. All you need is to make up a majority of the local voters. Won't work in LA; might work in, say, Long Beach.

Residents pass traffic ordinances screwing over drivers for practically no gain to themselves all the time. You're only allowed to vote on policies for where you live, not where you drive.

The city is the functional unit for making that distinction, though, not the neighborhood. LA could vote to exclude non-LA residents, but a specific neighborhood or block could not vote to exclude other city residents.
Local neighborhoods frequently are "the city". There's a sense in which Anaheim, Long Beach, etc etc etc aren't part of LA, but not any sense a person who doesn't vote in the area would care about.
But isn't that exactly how neighborhood parking permits work?
Neighborhoods (and universities) that reserve space for permit-holding affiliates usually have some paid street or garage parking for visitors. Or street parking is allowed to visitors for a few hours, or for a fee, etc.

Entirely denying passage to outsiders (or charging a toll) is much more extreme. A better analogy might be the Seventeen Mile Drive in Monterey.

"Local Traffic Only" signs are very common, and legally enforceable.
For specific blocks under construction, where "local" means "your destination is on this block" not "you own a home in this neighborhood."

Have you ever seen a permanent one?

Yes. They look like this: http://i.imgur.com/KVTe4zp.jpg
Taking the side streets to avoid the main road is called "rat-running" in Britain.

Raising/lowering bollards are expensive, and tend only to be used where some vehicles (typically buses) are permitted but others aren't. Tailgating doesn't work [1]!

The more common solution is fixed bollards, gates or similar, configured so cyclists can pass, which means they can perhaps make a route using only the quiet streets.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRCA8MvedIo (before anyone defends the tailgaters, the signs are exceptionally clear.)

  Taking the side streets to avoid the main road is called "rat-running" in Britain.
Here, it's called Waze.

Waze has actually created a lot of angst in some previously-quieter areas, like Los Gatos CA being inundated with Waze users seeking ways around beach-bound traffic.

Since I occasionally use that highway (and don't cut through), I have a suggestion for Los Gatos. If they don't want their streets used, close the southbound entrance to 17. No one will cut through and highway traffic will improve, because there isn't an uncontrolled merge onto a 2 lane highway. Of course those that live there like having an uncontrolled merge, because it makes their life easier so don't hold your breath.
I doubt that CHP would allow that. It would also prevent natives from heading southbound.
That's not a solution but a workaround.

White people should get over their fear of using public transport. As long as they don't, the necessary investments won't be made to make public transport better.

I can see how some people avoid public transport out of elitism.

But in Silicon Valley (for example), the problem is that the routes were largely drawn for political motives, not to meet actual needs.

Take, for example, the VTA light rail routes. The trains are so empty that farebox returns barely make a dent in operating costs, let alone debt service, worker benefits, etc. I have to wait at crossings for the Mountain View / Tasman line often, and I rarely see more than 2-3 people per car. It seems to have been designed to serve the Lockheed complex first and foremost, except that Lockheed now has a fraction of the employees that it did when the line was drawn. Head of the House Transportation Committee then? Norm Mineta. In 1995, Mineta quit his seat mid-term after losing his chairmanship (forcing a chain reaction of special elections that cost county taxpayers tens of millions of dollars... but that's another rant) to become an executive in the private sector. Guess where? Yup, Lockheed Martin.

Overall, the VTA bus/rail system has a farebox return of about 14%, last I checked. It would be cheaper to buy ridesharing-company rides at retail for every passenger at public expense than VTA costs taxpayers overall.

They even artificially boost ridership stats by allowing homeless to just ride and sleep on buses, end to end for the whole route, all night.

Meanwhile, Caltrain is so crowded that most trains need standing room for at least part of the route... because Caltrain actually goes where people need to go and is comparatively well-run.

It's not elitism, for the most part; it's functionality.

> White people should get over their fear of using public transport.

Can we drop the racism and focus on making constructive comments? This is HN not some generic forum.

What does this have to do with white people?
Apps that change their users' behavior can have massive public policy effects. Whether you think this change in traffic patterns is okay or not, it was not made with the public's interests in mind, nor with the input of democratically-elected representatives.
"nor with the input of democratic..."

Really? The public and elected officials never decided to build and open public streets that everyone has a right to travel on?

A republic isn't a place where every new decision and idea requires government approval -- that's a totalitarian dictatorship. A republic is where we elect people to set and enforce the rules for us and then we work within the rules absolutely any way we please to fulfill our own individual visions without asking permission from anyone.

What if you phrased it differently: “the roads were designed under different assumptions”?

In the past it was often assumed that most people would stay on major roads because only locals memorized chains of streets and even the people who planned routes (Thomas Brothers maps were a hallmark of the SoCal commuter, after all) would chain a few routes together but generally still kept it to what a human could remember since you couldn't safely read a map while driving.

Now that that has completely changed, it's probably true to say that the majority of local roads and traffic flows need to be reconsidered to see whether the signage or structure should change to enforce the way it was previously assumed they'd be used.

When's the 710 getting finished?
Congested streets are the result of them being managed by the government, they aren't caused by poor road design.

All roads should be privatized, and consumers should pay for them like every other good and service they use.

How do popular restaurants, sports stadiums, and every other aspect of the economy deal with massive demand and limited supply?

Raising prices, and in the long-term making capital investments to increase supply.

Street congestion should be the quintessential textbook example in Econ 101 to explain the concepts of economic shortages.

Can you imagine any other good or service whose price never changes based on demand NOT having shortages?

Imagine a concert hall that charged the same price for seats whether the Rolling Stones or Vanilla Ice is playing?

The experiment with public streets has been a massive failure, and it's time to be ended.

Why down votes? At least explain why you're down voting.