I live on an obnoxiously quaint block in South Berkeley, California, lined with trees and two-story houses. There’s a constant stream of sidewalk joggers before and after work, and plenty of (good) dogs in the yards. Trick-or-treaters from distant regions of the East Bay invade on Halloween.
Once a week, the serenity is interrupted by the sound of a horrific car crash. Sometimes, it’s a tire screech followed by the faint dint of metal on metal. Other times, a boom stirs the neighbors outside to gawk. It’s always at the intersection of Hillegass, my block, and Ashby, one of the city’s thoroughfares. It generally happens around rush hour, when the street is clogged with cars.
It wasn’t always this way. In 2001, the city designated the street as Berkeley’s first “bicycle boulevard,” presumably due to some combination of it being relatively free of traffic and its offer of a direct route from the UC Berkeley campus down into Oakland. But since that designation, another group has discovered the exploit. Here, for the hell of it, are other events that have occurred since 2001:
2005: Google Maps is launched.
2006: Waze is launched.
2009: Uber is founded.
2012: Lyft is founded.
“The phenomenon you’re experiencing is happening all over the U.S.,” says Alexandre Bayen, director of transportation studies at UC Berkeley.
Pull up a simple Google search for “neighborhood” and “Waze,” and you’re bombarded with local news stories about similar once-calm side streets now the host of rush-hour jams and late-night speed demons. It’s not only annoying as hell, it’s a scenario ripe for accidents; among the top causes of accidents are driver distraction (say, by looking at an app), unfamiliarity with the street (say, because an app took you down a new side street), and an increase in overall traffic.
“The root cause is the use of routing apps,” says Bayen, “but over the last two to three years, there’s the second layer of ride-share apps.” (...)
All that extra traffic down previously empty streets has created an odd situation in which cities are constantly playing defense against the algorithms.
“Typically, the city or county, depending on their laws, doesn’t have a way to fight this,” says Bayen, “other than by doing infrastructure upgrades.”
Fremont, California, has lobbed some of the harshest resistance, instituting rush-hour restrictions, and adding stop signs and traffic lights at points of heavy congestion. San Francisco is considering marking designated areas where people can be picked up or dropped off by ride-shares (which, hmm, seems familiar). Los Angeles has tinkered with speed bumps and changing two-way streets into one-ways. (Berkeley has finally decided to play defense on my block by installing a warning system that will slow cars at the crash-laden intersection; it will be funded by taxpayers.) (...)
Perhaps you see the problem. If cities thwart map apps and ride-share services through infrastructure changes with the intent to slow traffic down, it has the effect of slowing down traffic. So, the algorithm may tell drivers to go down another side street, and the residents who’ve been griping to the mayor may be pleased, but traffic, on the city whole, has been negatively affected, making everyone’s travel longer than before. “It’s nuts,” says Bayen, “but this is the reality of urban planning.”
Bayen points out that this is sort of a gigantic version of the prisoner’s dilemma. “If everybody’s doing the selfish thing, it’s bad for society,” says Bayen. “That’s what’s happening here.” Even though the app makes the route quicker for the user, that’s only in relation to other drivers not using the app, not to their previous drives. Now, because everyone is using the app, everyone’s drive-times are longer compared to the past. “These algorithms are not meant to improve traffic, they’re meant to steer motorists to their fastest path,” he says. “They will give hundreds of people the shortest paths, but they won’t compute for the consequences of those shortest paths.”
by Rick Paulas, Select/All | Read more:
Image: Waze
Once a week, the serenity is interrupted by the sound of a horrific car crash. Sometimes, it’s a tire screech followed by the faint dint of metal on metal. Other times, a boom stirs the neighbors outside to gawk. It’s always at the intersection of Hillegass, my block, and Ashby, one of the city’s thoroughfares. It generally happens around rush hour, when the street is clogged with cars.It wasn’t always this way. In 2001, the city designated the street as Berkeley’s first “bicycle boulevard,” presumably due to some combination of it being relatively free of traffic and its offer of a direct route from the UC Berkeley campus down into Oakland. But since that designation, another group has discovered the exploit. Here, for the hell of it, are other events that have occurred since 2001:
2005: Google Maps is launched.
2006: Waze is launched.
2009: Uber is founded.
2012: Lyft is founded.
“The phenomenon you’re experiencing is happening all over the U.S.,” says Alexandre Bayen, director of transportation studies at UC Berkeley.
Pull up a simple Google search for “neighborhood” and “Waze,” and you’re bombarded with local news stories about similar once-calm side streets now the host of rush-hour jams and late-night speed demons. It’s not only annoying as hell, it’s a scenario ripe for accidents; among the top causes of accidents are driver distraction (say, by looking at an app), unfamiliarity with the street (say, because an app took you down a new side street), and an increase in overall traffic.
“The root cause is the use of routing apps,” says Bayen, “but over the last two to three years, there’s the second layer of ride-share apps.” (...)
All that extra traffic down previously empty streets has created an odd situation in which cities are constantly playing defense against the algorithms.
“Typically, the city or county, depending on their laws, doesn’t have a way to fight this,” says Bayen, “other than by doing infrastructure upgrades.”
Fremont, California, has lobbed some of the harshest resistance, instituting rush-hour restrictions, and adding stop signs and traffic lights at points of heavy congestion. San Francisco is considering marking designated areas where people can be picked up or dropped off by ride-shares (which, hmm, seems familiar). Los Angeles has tinkered with speed bumps and changing two-way streets into one-ways. (Berkeley has finally decided to play defense on my block by installing a warning system that will slow cars at the crash-laden intersection; it will be funded by taxpayers.) (...)
Perhaps you see the problem. If cities thwart map apps and ride-share services through infrastructure changes with the intent to slow traffic down, it has the effect of slowing down traffic. So, the algorithm may tell drivers to go down another side street, and the residents who’ve been griping to the mayor may be pleased, but traffic, on the city whole, has been negatively affected, making everyone’s travel longer than before. “It’s nuts,” says Bayen, “but this is the reality of urban planning.”
Bayen points out that this is sort of a gigantic version of the prisoner’s dilemma. “If everybody’s doing the selfish thing, it’s bad for society,” says Bayen. “That’s what’s happening here.” Even though the app makes the route quicker for the user, that’s only in relation to other drivers not using the app, not to their previous drives. Now, because everyone is using the app, everyone’s drive-times are longer compared to the past. “These algorithms are not meant to improve traffic, they’re meant to steer motorists to their fastest path,” he says. “They will give hundreds of people the shortest paths, but they won’t compute for the consequences of those shortest paths.”
by Rick Paulas, Select/All | Read more:
Image: Waze
