It’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it?
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If it’s not just a few cars, then they will cause congestion and the app should theoretically route them away from that street. Or they use pattern recognition to see that other people are using that street too much and they find another route.
It is okay if it’s some people because not everyone can or will go that route. Whether it’s more than should be driving through there is for the city to decide. If there’s a speeding problem, then that’s a problem for the police. If its always congested, then the people who are looking for a shorter commute will look elsewhere.
Not everyone uses the app and not everyone who uses the app will always follow its directions. This is also the problem with the tactics of the people in the neighborhood. Some people will have found that the route is better in their opinion and they won’t heed the app every time it tells them the street is congested. Others won’t use the app at all and will just choose to take that route.
It’s not like littering at all because one person littering is still bad, whereas one person taking an alternate route is both legal and not contributing to congestion. You’re putting too much faith in mob mentality. That doesn’t always apply when it comes to traffic. Some people will break off from the herd and find different routes, especially if they are inclined to use an app like this to route around congestion.
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i am a poor renter in a res. dist. near an interstate highway. my street is abused as a cut-through by small delivery vehicles, such as pizza drivers. even though the street is curvy as hell, and partially obstructed by beautiful trees, the short-cutters scream through as fast as 50 mph, hitting dogs and mailboxes on occasion.
in short, people who need to get somewhere quickly feel entitled to do whatever the hell they like, and the rest of us can suck shit.
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That’s the cost you pay for delivery of warm pizzas.
Nom…!
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These hackers can hack because they’re rich. The rich typically have better access to both education and technology. Folks with less access to both are being impacted as much as the rich folks are; we’re simply not hearing their voices.
There is a difference between what Waze considers congestion worth routing around, and what residents consider congestion that decreases their quality of life.
Navarro, I’ve reported mistakes to Google Maps and been quite pleased with their turnaround time.
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Anecdotally, oh hell yes. American drivers don’t seem to grok speeds under 45, neighborhoods be damned. As one solution, I’d recommend the offended “upscale” folk get the city to install a device to measure the speeds down that street, which will then give them proof of speeding and (I expect) open the possibility of putting local police on that street to ticket the offenders. I don’t have a problem with people using public roads to avoid traffic, but they should do so within the posted speed limits.
I say this as one who has lived on many a public street with cars flying by in complete denial of the limits (and, FWIW, as one who’s gotten a sufficient share of speeding tickets on freeways to the degree that I’ve learned my lesson), and as long as those limits are clearly posted, then let the tickets flow.
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I can’t speak for all parts of the city, but where I live in the city of LA, you won’t be pulled over for speeding unless you’re not white. So while I have complained to the local police precinct about the dangerous conditions on my street, they aren’t going to actually post anyone to catch speeders. They have bigger fish to fry. Funnily enough, I just spoke with a neighbor, and they’ve been trying to raise the same issues with the city… and having as little success as I have had. Luckily, there’s an election in the spring, so maybe I can convince my city counselcritter to do something in light of my registered voter-ness.
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A friend of mine was involved in a community safety project on a residential street (near a school, no less) in Kitchener, ON. This involved putting up a police radar and recording vehicle speeds. On a street with a posted 40kph speed limit, the average recorded speed was 58kph, with the top speed recorded being 118kph. In a province where the maximum legal speed anywhere is 100kph.
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I won’t claim to have any experience in getting a speedtrap set up, although I do have to tilt my head a bit at the thought that cops don’t pull over white folks for speeding. I’ve lived all over the states, West Coast, East Coast and in between, and I’ve (sadly) gotten tickets pretty much everywhere, and (don’t tell) I’m as whitey white as they come.
Your experience about complaining to the cops about the speeding, though, yeah, I’ll buy that. I’d venture a guess that it would take more than one person to initiate that sort of change, but again, I’ve got no experience in making that happen. I do certainly wish you luck in getting it done–the car culture in America can be great and it can be terrible. The speeding, the “I gotta get mine before anyone else gets theirs” driving style, and the road rage are all things that can and should be focused on, and all of those things are a big reason why I take public transit all the time, drive as little as possible in the city and why I take backroads on long trips. It’s a little slower, a lot prettier, and it saves my sanity and probably my life.
And because BB will warn me about double-posting, @waterloonie, a brief anecdote: Maybe three days ago I approached a crosswalk on a busy city street around midday (one lane in either direction). For the few minutes it took for me to get to that position on the sidewalk, there was a woman pushing a stroller (with child) who had been waiting at that crosswalk as all the driver-jackasses barreled by, you know, because they’re in way too much of a hurry to stop and let a godamn mother and child cross the street (on a really cold and windy day, no less). While I didn’t throw myself into traffic, I did step in and force the next knucklehead to stop even though it was plain to see that they were going to blow by just like all the other fuckheads. What the actual fuck, people? In any case, that’s the wonderful thing about public transit–you get to watch all those drivers getting steamed up for nothing.
EDIT: I wanted to add that you’re absolutely right about getting your elected officials involved, @jakeline. That’s probably your best bet in getting any help on that issue.
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Why don’t they just report road closure instead?
That’s a different issue though. There’s two concerns:
a) People using residential areas as a shortcut or to route around congestion,
b) People driving like idiots.
The first is okay. The second is not. Because speeding happens doesn’t mean neighborhoods should be closed to through traffic (unless the community decides to do something about it by changing routes or whatever).
Yeah… google is awesome, huh? Their search product pointed me to a forum about their navigation product 
According to this forum post on waze.com these rich douches are wasting their time. The reports are user-submitted but the colour of the road (which indicates congestion) is not user-editable in any way.
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Berkeley residents do this with concrete planters placed in the street. It’s a huge pain in the ass when trying to get to someone’s house, because the blocked streets don’t show up as such on maps/gps.
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Many years ago, I was walking with my very young children between two public school/park district playgrounds about 100 feet apart from each other. A car came racing down the dead-end street (closed off because of the playgrounds on either side) with a police car in hot pursuit: the car jumped the curb and continued down the sidewalk the rest of the block before getting back on the actual road again. The police car followed suit, of course. We were only about 15 feet away at the time.
Within days, there were very large concrete planters placed at the end of the dead-end, entirely blocking that sort of thing from ever happening again.
Sometimes the inconvenience is there for a reason.
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