Waaah, Drivers Are Using Their Taxpayer-Funded Street
I love Waze, or, as I call it, "Wazie," the app I use to get from place to place without sitting for eons in parked LA traffic.
Waze, through crowd-sourcing, tells you the fastest way to get where you're going, often helping you find side streets you wouldn't otherwise know of unless you lived in the neighborhood. Via TMZ:
A glut of cars are ending up on the same side streets and it's become a nightmare for homeowners trying to leave.So the neighborhood meetings are all about torpedoing the Waze App, and they think they found a waze.
Here's the plan ... since Waze is based on crowdsourcing, residents are uniting to report congestion in their area so cars are rerouted to other streets.
Um, unlikely, because Waze can see how fast you're going, and unless you're a resident driving up and down your street, Waze is likely to see that you and a bunch of other people in your reporting area have not moved, except maybe on foot, from the kitchen to the bathroom.
If those residents really cannot leave, they either need better driving skills or a traffic light.
May not be as difficult as you believe:
http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/23727/hacking/waze-traffic-jams-hack.html
parabarbarian at November 16, 2014 7:31 AM
Amen to that!
"Those residents" sound like the NIMBYs in every city who oppose every project to build, widen, or speed up a road. They need to learn the lesson that they are the authors of their own problems. The need for the city to grow and accommodate more people did not end when they moved in -- and I'm glad that people can now find out how to get through in spite of people like that.
The better solution, of course, is for new developments to follow the Irvine plan, which has plenty of through streets, but no homes directly on them. That way one person's desire for a quiet neighborhood doesn't conflict with another's need to go through.
But obstructionism has no place in the modern world, and neither does hatred of cars or drivers.
jdgalt at November 16, 2014 9:36 AM
To be fair, in some circumstances the roads weren't designed for heavy traffic; heavy being both lots of cars and heavy vehicles.
Joe at November 16, 2014 10:12 AM
"... Waze can see how fast you're going [...] likely to see that you and a bunch of other people in your reporting area have not moved, ..."
IOW, like they were stuck in traffic?
(Driving their pirates to work?)
dee nile at November 16, 2014 12:23 PM
I call bullshit on this. It might be a couple of people trying this out, but I don't believe there are neighborhood associations all over West L.A. where people are getting together to do this.
Not a single person or HOA named in the whole thing. Silly.
Kevin at November 16, 2014 2:07 PM
Thanks for posting this, Amy -- my husband and I both have long commutes with various optionalities available, and having Waze available will likely help us keep our commuting time down a bit. V. cool app.
marion at November 16, 2014 5:32 PM
Does it actually help any? I've been around L.A. enough to realize that knowing how to navigate the surface streets is an important part of being able to function there. And I would assume that the experienced Lost Boys and Girls already know all the tricks, at least for the routes that they take regularly. I can just picture an app like Waze routing some clueless tourists through Compton, or the east side of Long Beach.
Cousin Dave at November 17, 2014 1:23 PM
Having lived on roads that suddenly had way more traffic than it was designed for I can feel their pain...or maybe not...I would need to know more.
In college I rented house not far off campus and the city decieded to change the flow on the next major street over...the put in a left turn lane so cars were often times blocked from making a free right. So lots of cars started shooting down the street I lived on which had been a quiet residental..cars parked on both sides meant traffic could barely pass in both directions. The city put in temporary stop signs after a couple of minor accidents and that made things worse...this jerky motion.
At my condo, the city redid the road, slowed it down, added bike lanes etc. And add a redlight cam at the same on the next major intersection over. If you wanted to make a left turn out of the condo's during traffic times it could easily be 5 minutes, 10 minutes was not unheard of and a couple people claimed 15 minutes a couple of times. It was just too much traffic and poorly timed lights on either end. The COA did complain to the city and after we paid for test said they found there was a problem but nothing they could do about it unless the COA was willing to pay for a new light and it got approved etc. Some additional red light cams add a while later seemed to help a lot.
On the other hand, a neighborhood group started a petition about a major arterial through their neighborhood....but it had been there a long time so I couldn't feel much sympathy for them...you bought it like that.
The Former Banker at November 17, 2014 7:58 PM
Banker, that's like people who buy houses next to airports or race tracks, and then complain about the noise.
Cousin Dave at November 18, 2014 8:39 AM
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