![]() ![]() (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.) ![]() Los Angeles has tinkered with speed bumps and changing two-way streets into one-ways. San Francisco is considering marking designated areas where people can be picked up or dropped off by ride-shares (which, hmm, seems familiar). “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.”įremont, California, has lobbed some of the harshest resistance, instituting rush-hour restrictions, and adding stop signs and traffic lights at points of heavy congestion. (Anecdotally, I have yet to ride in a car whose driver doesn’t use Waze.) Whatever the device, it’s one dictated on concrete route efficiency, as opposed to the whims of cab drivers, who use thoroughfares or “their own” shortcuts.Īll that extra traffic down previously empty streets has created an odd situation in which cities are constantly playing defense against the algorithms. The two ride-sharing titans have each designed their own mapping apps - Lyft Navigation and Uber Driver - but Navigation was built using Google Maps, and Uber’s app has yet to be fully rolled out. There are an estimated 45,000 Uber and Lyft drivers in San Francisco, compared to 1,500 cab drivers. The second, newer layer is the fleet of ride-share vehicles. Meanwhile, Google Maps has well over 1 billion monthly users. In 2011, Waze had 7 million downloads that number climbed to 50 million by 2013, and 65 million in 185 countries by 2016. The first is the large number of drivers that utilize the apps, a percentage that grows by the day. “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.” 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. 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. “The phenomenon you’re experiencing is happening all over the U.S.,” says Alexandre Bayen, director of transportation studies at UC Berkeley. Here, for the hell of it, are other events that have occurred since 2001: But since that designation, another group has discovered the exploit. 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. It generally happens around rush hour, when the street is clogged with cars. It’s always at the intersection of Hillegass, my block, and Ashby, one of the city’s thoroughfares. Other times, a boom stirs the neighbors outside to gawk. Sometimes, it’s a tire screech followed by the faint dint of metal on metal. Once a week, the serenity is interrupted by the sound of a horrific car crash. ![]() Trick-or-treaters from distant regions of the East Bay invade on Halloween. There’s a constant stream of sidewalk joggers before and after work, and plenty of (good) dogs in the yards. I live on an obnoxiously quaint block in South Berkeley, California, lined with trees and two-story houses. ![]()
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