Well, see, you’re using it correctly. (-: It’s a Local street and you’re a local resident headed for a local destination.
LA’s General Circulation planning has a clear hierarchy of street designations: Primary and Secondary highways for through traffic; Local streets for local traffic; and Collectors to funnel traffic between the through highways and the web of Local streets.
Baxter is a Local street - not even a Collector. Even the safest, flattest Local streets are not designed to accommodate through traffic, and Waze and its ilk should not be routing through traffic onto Local streets – especially not Local streets as ill-suited to traffic as Baxter is.
It’s one thing, in the event of a jam, to temporarily use Collectors to re-route to other less-jammed through highways (though even that should only be done in unusual circumstances, and not just to shave 30 seconds off a routine commute).
Routing through-traffic onto Local streets is simply irresponsible, except in dire emergencies.
(And I really have to wonder: where ARE all these Waze-befuddled people on Baxter being sent to? Are they routing them down the sketchy hilltop Collector that is Alvarado, or all the way across to Echo Park Blvd. or something? Makes no sense to me, but I haven’t lived there in a while.)
