Navigation Apps Are Turning Quiet Neighborhoods Into Traffic Nightmares
Navigation Apps Are Turning Quiet Neighborhoods Into
Traffic Nightmares
By LISA W. FODERARO DEC. 24, 2017
LEONIA, N.J. — It is bumper to bumper as far as the eye
can see, the kind of soul-sucking traffic jam that afflicts highways the way
bad food afflicts rest stops.
Suddenly, a path to hope presents itself: An alternate
route, your smartphone suggests, can save time. Next thing you know, you’re
headed down an exit ramp, blithely following directions into the residential
streets of some unsuspecting town, along with a slew of other frustrated
motorists.
Scenes like this are playing out across the country, not
just in traffic-choked regions of the Northeast. But one town has had enough.
With services like Google Maps, Waze and Apple Maps
suggesting shortcuts for commuters through the narrow, hilly streets of Leonia,
N.J., the borough has decided to fight back against congestion that its leaders
say has reached crisis proportions.
In mid-January, the borough’s police force will close 60
streets to all drivers aside from residents and people employed in the borough
during the morning and afternoon rush periods, effectively taking most of the
town out of circulation for the popular traffic apps — and for everyone else,
for that matter.
“Without question, the game changer has been the
navigation apps,” said Tom Rowe, Leonia’s police chief. “In the morning, if I
sign onto my Waze account, I find there are 250,000 ‘Wazers’ in the area. When
the primary roads become congested, it directs vehicles into Leonia and pushes
them onto secondary and tertiary roads. We have had days when people can’t get
out of their driveways.”
Even before the proliferation of navigation apps, Leonia
was no stranger to traffic. Ringed by Interstate 95, and in the shadow of the
George Washington Bridge, Leonia sits next to some of the most congested
roadways in the country.
But Leonia is not alone. From Medford, Mass. to Fremont,
Calif., communities are grappling with the local gridlock caused by
well-intentioned traffic apps like Waze, which was purchased by Google in 2013
for $1.15 billion.
Since Waze uses crowd sourcing to update its information,
some people — frustrated at the influx of outside traffic — have taken to
fabricating reports of traffic accidents in their communities to try to deter
the app from sending motorists their way. One suburb of Tel Aviv has even sued
Waze, which was developed by an Israeli company.
Waze defends its practice of rerouting motorists from
congested highways through residential streets in nearby communities. And the
company says it shares free traffic data with municipal planners nationwide who
might, for instance, want to monitor the effectiveness of a new time sequence
for a traffic signal.
Terry Wei, a spokeswoman for Waze, said the app benefited
from a community of local volunteer editors who ensure that the maps stay
up-to-date and reflect the local law. “If a road is legally reclassified into a
private road,” she said, “our map editors will make that change. It is our goal
to work holistically with our community of drivers, map editors and city
contacts to improve the driving experience for all.”
While a number of communities have devised strategies
like turn restrictions and speed humps that affect all motorists, Leonia’s move
may be the most extreme response.
Leonia plans to issue residents yellow tags to hang in
their cars, and nonresidents who use the streets in the morning and afternoon
will face $200 fines. Its police department has already alerted the major
traffic and navigation apps to the impending changes, which will take effect on
Jan. 22 from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., and from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., seven days a week.
Chief Rowe said the borough had tried closing only a
handful of streets in the past, posting temporary signs and alerting the
navigation apps, but with little success. Traffic either got pushed onto nearby
streets or drivers simply disregarded the signs.
“It’s basically all or nothing,” Chief Rowe said. “It’s a
very extreme measure for very extreme traffic. Would I prefer not to do this?
Of course. But I would rather try something and fail than not try anything.”
Traffic on Irving Street. Melissa Soesman, who lives on
the street, said she has had to plead with motorists to make room for her to
pull out of her driveway. Credit Nanci Makroulakis
Borough officials say their measure is legal, although it
may yet get tested in court. Some traffic engineers and elected officials
elsewhere say the move may set a precedent that could encourage towns to
summarily restrict public access to outsiders.
“It’s a slippery slope,” said Samuel I. Schwartz, the
former traffic engineer for New York City known as Gridlock Sam, and the author
of the early 1990s book “Shadow Traffic’s New York Shortcuts and Traffic Tips.”
“Waze and other services are upsetting the apple cart in a lot of communities.
But these are public streets, so where do you draw the line?”
Leonia’s council, which voted unanimously this month in
favor of the new ordinance, was careful to keep open three major roadways that
are controlled by either the county or state.
Some residents outside Leonia have chafed at the
impending street closings, posting variously snarky and incredulous comments on
news sites like NJ.com: “Terrible, shortsighted idea. How about the rest of
N.J. fines Leonia residents for using all the other roads in the state?”
Mr. Schwartz pointed out that the state has ultimate
authority over local roads. “I’d rather they put up temporary barriers,” he
said. “To give people summonses who might be lost or might be frantic trying to
get to an appointment on time — I do worry about this type of strategy. Every
town can decide that we don’t want certain people to come through our
community.”
There is also concern from neighboring communities like
Fort Lee, whose place in traffic lore has been cemented by the so-called
Bridgegate scandal, where members of Gov. Chris Christie’s administration
deliberately worsened traffic by the George Washington Bridge, famously saying,
“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”
Fort Lee’s mayor, Mark Sokolich, warned Leonia that its
traffic-fighting strategy better not make things worse in his town. “If their
initiative visits gridlock upon Fort Lee and, in particular, creates problems
with our emergency service vehicles getting to and from where they need to go,
they will hear from us,” he said.
But for residents like Melissa Soesman, a 44-year-old
native of Leonia, the change cannot happen soon enough. The slender road she
lives on, Irving Street, becomes a parking lot at least two or three times a
week during the morning rush. On Tuesday, her son was a half-hour late to his
college class because his car, which was parked on the street, was hemmed in by
traffic.
Some mornings, Ms. Soesman has to plead with drivers to
make room for her to pull out of her driveway onto Irving Street. “It’s
horrific, and it’s all the time,” she said. “They will see that you are trying
to get out, but they won’t let you. People are cranky; it’s the morning. By the
time they are up here, who knows how long they have been sitting in traffic.”
A version of this article appears in print on December
25, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Choked by
App-Driven Traffic, A Community Closes Its Roads.
Comments
Post a Comment