Re Town To Fine Drivers $200 For Taking GPS-Guided Shortcuts...

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Scott Alexander <salex () dsalex org>
Date: Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 4:13 PM
Subject: Re: [IP] Re Town To Fine Drivers $200 For Taking GPS-Guided
Shortcuts...
To: <dave () farber net>
CC: Mary Shaw <mary.shaw () gmail com>


There are a few New Jersey factors that are part of this.

Based on discussions with a co-worker who lives in Leonia (the town doing
this), he had found that he has to drive very aggressively in order to do
things like break into the flow of traffic to get onto his own street or
make a left turn into his own driveway. As Mary implies, the through
drivers are not drivers who act in a cooperative way.

The co-worker also pointed out that there are major roads through the towns
(including the roads with most businesses) which are not affected by the
traffic ban. The intent is to keep traffic on the main roads and out of the
neighborhoods.

But the other challenge is that NJ is a state that believes in a very large
amount of local control. Per wikipedia, we have 565 municipalities. Each of
them has control over the roads within its borders with the exception of
some county roads and the like. An effect of this is that there is little
incentive for regional planning.

Not far from where I live, going from US 22 to I287 requires going through
some smaller towns. There are a few parallel larger roads along with many
smaller, residential roads. Each of the larger roads that would make a
reasonable connection has some stretch that is a 25 mph zone. I presume
that this is because 1) the local residents have complained about traffic,
2) it provides a constant source of income from the traffic fines, and 3)
if one town were to increase their speed limit, all the traffic would go
there. When I used to commute along that stretch, I went back and forth
between using smaller, residential roads (on which the speed limit was
sometimes 30) because the police were all along the main road and being a
better person and using the main road.

The problems of jammed traffic going to the GW Bridge should be dealt with
regionally, at the county or state level. But since that’s inconsistent
with our notions of local control, we’re much more likely to have piecewise
solutions like the one being attempted by Leonia (a solution which I
suspect the neighboring towns are watching very closely). Even if this is
struck down in court, I would expect other measures (such as extreme
enforcement of the motor vehicle code or making streets one way) to be
tried next.

Best,
Scott


On Jan 10, 2018, at 3:23 PM, Dave Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Mary Shaw <mary.shaw () gmail com>
Date: Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 2:34 PM
Subject: Re: [IP] Re Town To Fine Drivers $200 For Taking GPS-Guided
Shortcuts...
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
CC: ip <ip () listbox com>


Why not?  I've seen "no through traffic" signs in various places for
decades.

Constitutionality aside, this is a public policy question that emerges from
improvements in technology, specifically the ability to aggregate and
distribute large amounts of information and to add real-time updates to
that.

tl;dr: Drivers aren't the only stakeholders here. The people and towns that
build the roads for specific intended purposes have a stake in keeping the
usage in line with those purposes.

Back when many neighborhoods were built, the streets were designed for
neighborhood traffic. Originally they connected on all sides, more recently
developments have been complex cul-de-sacs. The latter is now regarded as
generally a bad idea, for example because pedestrians and bicyclists,
especially school children, are forced to use major roads to get from place
to place.It remains that there are lots of places where shortcuts exist.
When those are not widely known and mostly used by local residents, they
don't impose a very heave burden on the neighborhoods.

Fast forward to smartphones with GPS and real-time traffic information, and
you open the opportunity for enormous amounts of non-local traffic to flow
through streets that were simply not designed for that load.  As
non-residents, the drivers may feel no connection to the neighborhood,
hence no sense of obligation to drive carefully and at reasonable speeds
(indeed, their noses may be in their phones, because these shortcuts often
involve lots of turns, so they may be even less attentive).

A sensible approach to dealing with this would be to provide the mapping
applications with local policy, such as which roads are designated a local
neighborhoods, and for the mapping applications to incorporate this
information in routing, for example by using neighborhood streets only at
the beginning and ends of routes when the endpoints are in the
neighborhoods.  That is, routing algorithms could incorporate context such
as the objectives of the owners and principal users of those roads, not
just the individual personal objectives of drivers.

So I don't think it's a terrible idea for a town to control traffic on its
streets.  This town chose one simplistic way that is probably relatively
easy to execute.  Another would be to define residential neighborhood speed
limits of, say, 15mph, with both passive (speed humps) and active (tickets)
enforcement in hopes that the slower speeds would discourage short-cutting;
this would address speeding by locals as well. Another approach would be to
get Google, Waze, and friends to accept policy guidance from the road
owners (the towns), but that's not something one town can accomplish on its
own.

This seems like a good thing for a national council of mayors to take up,
also for groups like the national complete streets and pedestrian-bicycle
safety groups.

Mary Shaw

On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 6:24 AM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From:* Richard Crisp <rdcrisp () earthlink net>
> *Date:* January 10, 2018 at 3:05:48 AM EST
> *To:* dave () farber net
> *Subject:* *Re: [IP] Town To Fine Drivers $200 For Taking GPS-Guided
> Shortcuts...*
>
> I don’t think this is constitutional
>
> Auto-"corrected" by my IPhone
>
> On Jan 8, 2018, at 2:29 PM, Dave Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <geoff () iconia com>
> Date: Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 5:15 PM
> Subject: Town To Fine Drivers $200 For Taking GPS-Guided Shortcuts...
> To: E-mail Pamphleteer Dave Farber's Interesting People list <
> ip () listbox com>
>
>
>
> http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2018/01/05/leonia-streets-off-navigational-apps/
>
> --
> Geoff.Goodfellow () iconia com
> living as The Truth is True
> http://geoff.livejournal.com
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