Wow, Waze asked to stop using “shortcuts” for routing

 

Interesting concept, a North Caroline town has asked Waze to stop routing traffic in some areas of the town.

See https://www.autoevolution.com/news/waze-asked-to-stop-provid...

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John from PA

world's busiest bridge

The world's busiest bridge, the George Washington Bridge, carrying route I-95, from Leonia, New Jersey to New York City, caused a problem in 2018 when Waze (and Google Maps) directed rush hour traffic through its quiet residential areas. No time was saved by those going that way. Leonia posted road signs to make the shortcut illegal, and they were sued.

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/08/609437180/new-jersey-town-res...

It always takes the same amount of time

dobs108 wrote:

The world's busiest bridge, the George Washington Bridge, carrying route I-95, from Leonia, New Jersey to New York City, caused a problem in 2018 when Waze (and Google Maps) directed rush hour traffic through its quiet residential areas. No time was saved by those going that way. Leonia posted road signs to make the shortcut illegal, and they were sued.

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/08/609437180/new-jersey-town-restricts-streets-from-commuters-to-stop-waze-traffic-nightmare

Learned a long time ago that traffic volume adjusts to minimize the travel time. If one route is faster, people figure it out and more people drive that route slowing it down! Traffic volumes are in equilibrium when all routes take the same amount of time to drive. Unless an accident or a disabled vehicle messes up the flow.
Mark

I think this trend will

I think this trend will continue.

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an94

Not Just Waze

GPSR's and nav apps also contribute to the problem.

With Waze anyway, the issue is self limiting due to crowd sourcing. As soon as a traffic jam on the alternative route is reported from the increased traffic flow, another alternative route is suggested.

The story behind the Waze story

I live three towns down the road from the town in this story. The weekend (particularly Saturday, which is weekly-rental changeover day) summer traffic jams through this town that generate a lot of cut-through traffic down their small residential streets are caused by several factors not of this town's making but primarily IMO by intransigence of town officials to their north, in Duck.

People are driving through Southern Shores to get to Duck, Corolla, and Carova. Right now, that's the only way in or out. The state highway through Duck drops to 25 mph to go through a half-mile downtown shopping district. The key is that this district has at least half a dozen crosswalks with total pedestrian right-of-way. Any pedestrian stepping on any crosswalk brings through traffic to a halt. Traffic crawls through downtown Duck and backs up miles down the highway because of all the pedestrians crossing the "highway." Drivers are short-cutting through less crowded (though still very crowded) Southern Shore residential streets to shorten their delay getting to Duck.

Duck doesn't really care about its neighbor's issues and refuses to do anything about this, despite many efforts by Southern Shores officials. What I think Duck and the state should do is have crosswalks with Walk-Don't Walk lights and enforcement for jaywalkers. Only every three minutes or so, especially on summer Saturdays, all Duck crosswalks can be used by pedestrians, and when the crosswalk Don't Walk signs all simultaneously go red, they have to wait. I believe this would reduce the traffic jam that causes cut-through traffic in Southern Shores. It wouldn't solve the problem, because there's still the 25 mph, single-lane highway that needs two lanes at 40 mph to move the traffic, but it would help.

A bridge is planned to divert some of the traffic around Duck, but it's years away from being built. (No, the the state highway can't be moved out of the downtown Duck area; it has to go through there.)

Map showing Duck and Southern Shores:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Duck,+NC/@36.1914397,-75.7...

Southern Shores has tried everything short of spike strips on its local streets, and nothing seems to help. The Waze thing is worth a shot but likely to have little impact.

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"141 could draw faster than he, but Irving was looking for 143..."

some point is good enough

Once shutdown by locking down whole world by covid created by human made but nobody say anything then why this? smile Just joking!

There's many laws coming soon to satisfy some elite people but at this point, under my opinion this is good enough.

I stop using waze since 1 year due to many reasons, but routing to small routes, small cities or villages affecting to many things not included accidents; especially there's many "foul" drivers under the stress during the peak hours

I won't vote to work for "devil" engine to continue to kill billions of people again, but this one, I'm OK enough to say.

Sincerely.