Upscale LA neighborhoods disrupt Waze

The reality in Los Angeles is that it is virtually impossible to avoid traffic during the very long rush hour(s.) This solution of the neighbors lying to an app that is already a hack of the system seems perfectly within the ethos and environment set up by the app. Whomever made the comparison to biological systems and anti-bodies had it exactly right. The false reports could be seen as an indicator of the amount of annoyance being caused by the new routing and a valuable addition to the data.

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I dunno. Iā€™m from Boston. Every time Iā€™m in LAā€¦no matter whereā€¦it seems that I end up on Sepulveda. Spooky,I tell you. That said, weā€™ve got our bastions of suburban priviledge doing pretty much the same thing hereabouts. Metrowest is by far the worst.

Like it or not, traffic patterns and controls are ecosystems.

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Nah, itā€™s not very rare in Los Angeles, even in less-affluent neighborhoods.

Couple examples:

In Toluca Lake, just north of Universal Studios and northwest of Warner Bros, the main thoroughfare west is Riverside to Moorpark. Gets kinda congested over by the Bobā€™s Big Boy near Pass Avenue. Some people used to try to sneak through the neighborhood streets south of Riverside, like taking National over to Clybourn and up to Moorpark from the south. People squawked. (Probably quite rich people; thatā€™s Bob Hopeā€™s old neighborhood.) So now National doesnā€™t go through anymore. Itā€™s blocked off a half-block west of Pass.

Just around the bend a block to the north, they did the same thing to Evergreen, just south of Riverside:

Turning around to the north, we can see Riverside. It gets quite busy.

Okay, so thatā€™s Bob Hopeā€™s neighborhood. Head on over to Pasadena, by the Carlā€™s Jr on Lake at Boylston:

Mostly a working-class neighborhood, largely African-American and Hispanic. Note the Roscoeā€™s to the north. (And eat there if your cholesterol levels permit. Yum!) But they donā€™t want you turning right out of the Carlā€™s Jr onto Boylston.

See that thing down there? The people east of that thing can get out, but youā€™re not supposed to go in.

Couldnā€™t tell you why. I used to park on Mentor Avenue a block east of Lake all the time when visiting the Autozone that used to be on Orange Grove and Lake, since their parking lot was too small. I can see no reason at all why people wouldnā€™t want you to enter that neighborhood via Boylston. But there it is. And all these blockades have been in place for years & years. The Toluca Lake one was probably installed on behalf of rich and influential people, but the Pasadena one? God only knows.

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Looks to me like people drive around those bollards.

In the example I gave, they did the same thing, the council had to come back and install more bollards to stop it.


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Ya, if waze doesnā€™t agree with my traffic speed report it seems to change the color indication to match my report for a second then it just goes back to what it thinks the speed isā€¦

Excluded middle much?

Is there any proof that speeding is an issues? If it isnā€™t; you live on a public street, everyone has the right to use it as long as they follow the laws. If you donā€™t like it, tough. Basically moving is the only option, since none thing you can do will make your street less public.

If you donā€™t want to live on a city street, then the only option is move.

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A lot of speed humps are designed with a width that affects most passenger cars, minivans, and small SUVs, but not the considerably wider full-size vans and trucks. This is to allow emergency vehicles such as ambulances to avoid the speed humps in an emergency, while calming normal traffic. However, if a lot of people have huge trucks, that can diminish their effectiveness.

Someone let me know when they get an app for LA based on the Californiansā€¦

Iā€™m actually one of the LA residents affected by this, but Iā€™m definitely not ā€œfighting back.ā€

Hereā€™s the reality: the road is basically a 1-lane road (itā€™s two car widths wide, with cars parked on one side). There are no sidewalks.

I walk my dogs there because itā€™s the safest street in this area - there arenā€™t many roads to pick from, and everything else is packed with traffic. There are a number of elderly people who walk the streets, too. Pedestrians also have a right to be on these roads.

The commuters fly through way too quickly and around blind corners. Iā€™ve had cars hit trash cans swerving to miss me, and Iā€™ve had a car swerve into the curb on a blind corner because they werenā€™t prepared for pedestrians. That is in the last 3 weeks.

I donā€™t mind people driving on that road - but I just want to stay alive and keep my dogs alive. If they didnā€™t drive dangerously or if the road was wider or had sidewalks, I wouldnā€™t have a problem.

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I have a very similar issue. I live on a quiet residential street that happens to be a really excellent N/S short cut. In addition, I live across the street from a movie studio, so during the day, I have commuters going 45 down a very narrow street, and on the weekends, at night, I have people blocking my driveway while attending events at the lot, and on the weekend, I have zombies with fancy cameras^H^H^H^H^H tourists wandering around blithely. Iā€™ve tried to talk to our councilperson about some ways to make it safer for the residents (painting no stopping zones red, enforcing the speed limit, speed humps, etc), but frankly, the movie studio has a lot more political pull than I do. While parked on the street, my car has been hit several times, and itā€™s really unsafe to get into or out of your car during rush hour. However, living in the neighborhood still has enough benefits to outweigh the nonsense, so I try not to complain too much.

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You seem to be making assumptions about the amount of traffic going through this neighborhood and the speeds that the drivers are driving. I make no assumptions.

There are probably some drivers who will drive irresponsibly regardless of which route they take. Some of them might even live in that neighborhood.

Iā€™m not suggesting that the entire amount of commuting traffic should be run through a side street, but a few cars here and there taking it as a short cut should be fine. If theyā€™re not obeying the speed limit, get the local police department to enforce the traffic laws. If the community planners donā€™t want these streets to be used in such a way, they can adjust the layout of the streets or put in obstacles (probably to the discontent of the residents).

If these roads have less traffic than the main thoroughfares and are viable routes for law-abiding drivers, thereā€™s no reason why they shouldnā€™t use the streets. This perspective that ā€œourā€ streets are just for ā€œusā€ is silly. The legal version of that perspective is called a private road, which youā€™re less likely to find in the city. If you arenā€™t willing to ā€œcompromiseā€ by having people who donā€™t live in your neighborhood drive through your neighborhood, your best option is to not live around other people.

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How many residents have complained to the police and the city planners?

They make their own in Germany:

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This is the problem line of thought. This is the flawed assumption. Itā€™s not ā€œa few cars here and thereā€ when weā€™re talking something like social media and mob mentality. ā€œItā€™s okay if only a few people do thisā€ doesnā€™t work, because itā€™s never only a few people who do something.

Itā€™s like justifying littering because ā€œIā€™m only one person, my littering alone is insignificantā€, failing to realize that if everyone starts thinking and behaving like that, it piles up very very quickly.

So much for not making assumptions. I readily admit Iā€™m making a few, but they seem like reasonable ones. Such as: ā€œIf people are taking tiny side streets to avoid congestion on the freeway, odds are very good theyā€™re going to be in a hurry and speedingā€.

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Sometimes it is just a few people. Regardless how much youā€™d wish thereā€™d be more of them.

Sometimes it is a reasonable assumption. You wonā€™t get too high percentage of people to etch circuitboards at home (and dispose the spent etchant therefore) however much youā€™d wish to (more such people, more fun for ya).

Assumptions are a good servant, and a bad master. (What isnā€™t?) Test them. Some work.

Or they are the taxi drivers who know where to take a turn to avoid that bloody always-choked-up unpredictable-time main artery road when driving me to the airport, all at normal speed. (No, I wonā€™t spend all my time reserve in a stupid traffic jam and then stress through the queues.)

Sometimes you can decide to take a known-longer (but also known-free) path to avoid a maybe shorter but maybe way way longer (and who knows) one.

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So first you say you arenā€™t making assumptionsā€¦

Then when I point out that you are and they are unreasonable one, you say ā€œNuh uh!ā€ and completely fail to defend them with any rational basisā€¦

You continue to insult and deride me for making my own assumptions despite my admitting to it and giving rational basises for them (nice implication that Iā€™m a slave to assumptions and donā€™t test them! very classy!)ā€¦

You invent a rather sadly absurd hypothetical suggesting that taxi drivers are getting off of freeways and taking side streets to avoid congestion, and somehow are doing so without any desire for hurry and are totally not speeding (why would a taxi driver care about hurrying?)ā€¦

No, Iā€™m sorry, youā€™ve failed to maintain a semblance of rational sanity, I consider the discussion closed.

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A few have - the police have said that if they put up ā€œno entrance from these hoursā€ signs, it would also apply to residents. So theyā€™re figuring out what to do next.

I donā€™t live on that road, so Iā€™m not directly involved in the discussions, but the people there have given me some updates.

My only attempt so far is that I tried to report the road to Waze and simply said that itā€™s not a commuter road - itā€™s a narrow one-lane road with a significant amount of pedestrian traffic. Waze didnā€™t care.

Waze has no contact info for this kind of thing. They have a contact for press inquiries and one for bugs, so itā€™s not like they have made it easy for me to ask for them to think this through.

Where did I say that? This is my first post in this thread.

I said a single counterclaim and backed it with an example that the what-if-everybody-did-$that kinds of assumptions do not always apply. Because often there are only very small subsets of people actually capable of doing $that.

Interesting way to interpret what I said. Somewhat creative.

Why would a taxi driver care about hurrying? Maybe because of the customerā€™s wish (and hope for a tip)? In my city they are (usually, I met a bad apple or two) good and helpful. (But donā€™t rely on that entirely, tourists have a higher chance of being screwed over.)

I go that route several times a year. If you want, I can give you the coordinates of the exact crossroad where the main artery is usually left, and if you wait until early next year (later if that one is not congested at the time of my flight, though thatā€™s not too probable), I can record you a timestamped KML file with the exact route.

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Use the bugs contact. Not using the road type in weighing the routing can be considered a bug.