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> The article mentions the 'LA Complete Streets Official Guide' listing which streets the planners designated as arterial vs non-arterial - guess what, if there's a mismatch between the plan and how people can reach their destinations most efficiently, then it is the plan that's wrong and needs to change, not the drivers.

I think you are failing to differentiate between use and abuse. Roads have a specific purpose. Small, narrow side streets in dense, highly populated neighborhoods are not meant for heavy thru-traffic. Drivers using them for that purpose are, in fact, abusing them, at the expense of the people that live, walk, run, bicycle, and park in that neighborhood. In these instances, it is not that the city planners were wrong. The plan wasn't wrong. The drivers heedlessly barreling down streets never meant for that are in the wrong.

> it's not the fault of drivers that this road doesn't suit their needs.

You can't always get what you want. The desire to get to work 5 minutes faster doesn't overrule the right of people to have safe streets to live on. Unnecessarily diverting loads of drivers onto roads not meant to handle them is unethical.

I would consider that any driver who's following all the rules of the road and posted signs (which would and should be different for these small, narrow side streets) should be freely able to use that road if it gets them where they want to be faster or more conveniently, and that them using these streets in that way should NOT be considered abuse.

If there's a mismatch between the planners' intent and the posted street signs, speed limits, etc - that's a fault of the plan and the planner's; street signs delineating how drivers should behave on these streets are a key part (if not the main part) of city traffic planning. Drivers have to obey the signs, and they don't have to obey some official's intent - so if some streets have lower speed limits or speed bumps because they're residental areas, then that's completely fine and both drivers and Waze will take that into account when routing.

But in general, if it's a public street, then the public (including nonlocal public!) is meant to be there if they want to; if it's not a private street of a gated neighbourhood then the drivers passing through have the exact same right to use that public street as the people who live there. It's not at the expense of the people who live there, it's simply using your own rightly deserved share of that public street instead of expecting that those other people have a monopoly on it and that you'd need their permission to share that street with you - if anything, you could label the desire to keep others off "their" street as doing so "at the expense" of these other taxpayers. You can plan and build non-arterial streets so that they're more useful for reaching local stuff and less useful for passing through; however, if the locals are allowed to drive through that street with x mph, then arbitrary numbers of other people are (and should!) also be allowed to be there on the same conditions.

Your underlying argument seems to be that planners were insufficiently psychic to foresee Waze.

The roads are public property and their use is constrained by law. The same legal authorities which can set speed limits can ban non-local traffic. That would overcome your reliance on emphasising the letter, and not intent, of the law.

> I would consider that any driver who's following all the rules of the road and posted signs (which would and should be different for these small, narrow side streets)

Sweet. So you agree that adjusting the traffic laws and/or posting signs that say "No through traffic, transit to or from neighborhood properties only" would be sufficient to then permit enforcement actions?

Those signs don't exist yet because prior to waze/maps they generally weren't required-- common decency and limited patience with convoluted paths were enough to restrict through traffic in most cases.

Now that almost everyone driving is being directed by a mechanical sociopath it has turned into an issue.

They can put up the signs if they want. I'll beat them in court because City of Lafayette vs Contra Costa County makes such selective prevention except for temporary construction work not enforceable.

Simply put: California has recognized our fair and even freedoms. You want to take them away? Molon labe.

You misunderstand the case law there-- it establishes no such right, only that such actions must follow from acts of the legislature, rather than allowing municipal authorities to override the legislature.

[And in particular, the case law in California appears to be very liberal in allowing cities to close roads to cars entirely.]

Yes, I am comfortable with the state legislature making law like this because that reflects the will of the people of the entire state. It's only when locals decide they can segregate their streets that I'm annoyed because they violate the social contract we agreed upon.

I'm also super comfortable with closing roads to cars entirely.

Fixing the issue with blunt closures in order to close off neighborhoods is frequently bad for everyone: it increases load at the remaining ingress. The neighborhood gets saved the through traffic, but congestion is increased outside of it.

Is that something you think is actually preferable to simply avoiding sending large amounts of through traffic on roads which were not designed nor are able to handle the traffic?

That seems like a cutting off ones nose to spite one's face. I don't live in LA, nor do I personally suffer from waze traffic (in fact, I have the good fortune of having been able to select my location so that such things will never be a problem for me) ... but I've lived in Florida where it's the norm for communities to be constructed with single outlets, and its clearly a bad design that leads to more roadway congestion. Yes, it keeps neighborhoods free from being speedways, but it makes driving and the community less enjoyable for everyone else.

If it's bad for everyone, then let's not do it. The current situation is equitable. I will not have government place one man above another any more than it already does.

I'm more comfortable with solutions that are even. If you want to install metering lights so be it. All will be equal under the law.

Cutting connectivity to a neighborhood to prevent through traffic is good for the neighborhood on the net, bad for everyone else... and the law is quite permissive at allowing it.

Our roads are designed so that some are arterial, some are access. The designs of these different kinds of roads are strikingly different, the costs to construct them are strikingly different, as is its durability to traffic. The impact on the surrounding properties are strikingly different as well.

Treating each kind of road according to its designed purpose is not a failure to treat the public equally.

Would you also argue that prohibiting drivers from traveling southbound in the northbound lanes is not treating them equally under the law? -- I suppose not.

But then why do you consider directing transit traffic via non-arterial roads, causing unplanned wear to the road, risk the the surrounding properties, and congestion at interconnection points to be materially different than driving the wrong way? The road is designed to be used a particular way, using in a manner contrary to the design can cause serious problems.

The law does not currently have carveouts for prohibiting transit traffic on public roads, as they weren't generally needed in the past and no doubt their enforcement would have their own costs (e.g. police stopping people to ask where they are going)... but such laws could certainly be created, and will be created if mapping companies continue to insist that they can ignore the harms they are creating by directing drivers to drive in ways contrary to the design of the road network so long as the law doesn't outright prohibit them from doing so.

With automatic plate number recognition cameras it would be relatively straight forward to automate ticketing of through traffic in posted no-through roadways...

So far municipalities cannot do this for good reasons: all the rich ones will block access to keep the poor folks out.

I'll see you at the ballot box for this one.

> Guess what, people would absolutely get sent to the major roadways if (and only if!) those roadways would actually get people where they want to go, faster. If those roadways suck compared to the alternatives, then that points towards a duty of the major to improve those major roadways

I strenuously disagree. You seem to be saying that city planners and traffic engineers have to design with the constraint that a large subset of drivers will take the instantaneously fastest route rather than sticking to intended high-throughout roads.

I suspect that this would have rather poor implications. It means that little residential streets that happen to parallel major streets will get used at their full capacity whenever the major streets drop below 25-ish mph.

This, in turn, likely means that the little streets can’t safely be used by pedestrians and become unsafe for people trying to cross or exit driveways, let alone for kids who want to play.

This sucks. It’s not clear what cities can do about it, but blaming the cities and saying that every last through street needs to be widened is not the answer.

In fact, widening every street will make the situation worse. Induced demand is a well-known phenomenon. All that will happen is that trip time will return to around the previous equilibrium but now neighbourhood roads will be much more expensive and dangerous.

The problems of roads can't be solved by building more roads.

In Portland the city has put up "diverters," which block cars from continuing along a neighborhood street while allowing pedestrians and bikes through. It makes the street useless as a cut-through. I love this model and wish they'd sprinkle them every few blocks on every neighborhood street in the city.

I only ever see shit like this in affluent neighborhoods.

It's possible that urban planners know more about urban planning than you do.

Maybe convenience to drivers is not the single purpose of urban planning.