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One problem is re-routing down very narrow roads which causes congestion and potentially accidents.  Sometimes the sat Nav can take you to a dead end, or re-route you when there is no need to

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One problem is re-routing down very narrow roads which causes congestion and potentially accidents.  Sometimes the sat Nav can take you to a dead end, or re-route you when there is no need to

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Advantages and issues with real time traffic monitoring

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Advantages and issues with real time traffic monitoring

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In this report FHWA-HRT-23-107: Predictive Real-Time Traffic Management In Large-Scale Networks Using Model-Based Artificial Intelligence

There are some benefits listed as real time traffic monitoring will help in better route optimization, which will lead to time and cost saving and It will help in incident detection, but the problems they may create are like overly relying on technology, data privacy concern and digital divide as not everyone is has access to smartphones or internet to deal with smart systems.

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This article highlights the increase in traffic on smaller, quieter roads, as real time apps reroute vehicles from traditional main roads to avoid delays. This clearly has an impact both in terms of air and noise pollution for those resident. In essence, it's contracting out traffic problems to multiple areas and is fixing the symptom rather than the root cause of poor infrastructure

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"Rat-running" on residential streets has increased dramatically in the past decade, according to statistics from the Department for Transport.

London has experienced a doubling in motor traffic on quiet C roads since 2008, while in most other parts of the UK polluting motor traffic has increased more greatly on residential streets than on A or B roads.

Motoring organisations and anti-traffic campaigners blame the internet. The AA president Edmund King has highlighted the rise of online deliveries, while urban liveability experts point the finger at smartphones and satnav apps including shortcutting app Waze.

Another reason is bloat. In 2007, there were 27m registered motor vehicles in the UK. There are now 38.3m, with experts predicting numbers will rise above 40m within the next two years. Even if all new cars and vans were powered by batteries rather than fossil fuel, that would not solve congestion or reduce road danger, say campaigners.

The government's air quality expert group said in 2019 that brake wear, tyre wear, and road surface wear contributed to more than half of the particle pollution from road transport - not something that will be solved by switching to electric vehicles.

Between 2018 and 2019, urban minor road traffic increased by 3.2% across the UK, the DfT said in a recent data release. But looking at the regional figures reveals a startling increase in the use of residential roads by motorists since 2009.

Driving on residential streets remained stable in London between 1994 and 2008. From 2009 onwards, however, motoring on such roads almost doubled from 5.5bn vehicle miles to nearly 9.5bn in 2019.

Graphs for other regions in the UK during the same period show a similar rise in rat-running. In north-west England, vehicle usage on C roads increased from 9bn miles in 2009 to just under 13bn miles last year. The same steep rise happened in north-east England, although the increase did not start until 2012.

The DfT says the general rise of road traffic is because of rising population, economic recovery and the reduced cost of owning and running motor vehicles.

"The massive increase in traffic on C roads is probably due to a combination of home shopping and van-based home services," said King. The greater use of satnavs to avoid traffic congestion was also a likely factor, he said.

Real-time smartphone routing apps such as Waze aim to reduce motorists' journey times by diverting them away from bottlenecks, which often means cutting through residential areas. You can "drive like a local with shortcuts," claims the Google-owned app.

Rolled out as FreeMap Israel in 2006 - before the iPhone had GPS, and when Android was still in development - Waze is edited on the fly by volunteerswho report traffic jams, crashes, speed cameras, and weather conditions. The app also tracks the location and speed of users to give the 130-million strong global user base real-time fastest-route information.

A Waze spokesperson said: "Roads and streets weren't built for the volume of cars that exist today. On average, the number of vehicles on UK roads has increased by 594,000 per year since 2012 and road networks have struggled to keep up with this increase. Waze routes its users through the public roads infrastructure, based on local driving laws and the road signs in the area."

The active travel charity Living Streets said smartphone apps such as Waze were "wreaking havoc on our streets".

The campaign group's Lambeth branch said: "Traffic jams are popping up on once-quiet residential roads as navigation apps like Waze direct traffic down roads that were never designed to take them."

Danny Williams, a Lambeth-based cycle campaigner said London had to "work out which roads are going to be prioritised for motor traffic and which roads are to be prioritised for people".

He said: "What London needs is an overarching plan of what it's going to do with its roads. Otherwise it's just going to keep getting messier and messier, and no one is going to be happy."

This concern is echoed by Alison Stenning, professor of social and economic geography at Newcastle University, and an activist for Living Streets on north Tyneside. "We should not be sending more traffic down residential roads that already have high levels of pollution," she said. "We need not just to see where traffic is going, but aim to reduce it."

Stenning said that many rat-running motorists - whether guided by apps or not - used residential streets to "get from A to B as fast as possible" but did not want heavy traffic and fast cars on their own street.

"We have to deal with that disconnect," she said.

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'Rat-running' increases on residential UK streets as experts blame satnav apps

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"Rat-running" on residential streets has increased dramatically in the past decade, according to statistics from the Department for Transport. London has experienced a doubling in motor traffic on quiet C roads since 2008, while in most other parts of the UK polluting motor traffic has increased more greatly on residential streets than on A or B roads.

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Neighborhood Congestion and Quality of Life

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Neighborhood Congestion and Quality of Life

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Real-time traffic routing services like Google Maps and Waze have revolutionized urban mobility by providing up-to-the-minute route suggestions based on live traffic data. These services offer substantial benefits but also introduced is the increased congestion and reduced quality of life in residential neighborhoods due to real-time traffic routing. These Apps often direct drivers off main roads and onto local streets, introducing traffic, noise, and safety risks to areas not built for such volumes. The benefits for individual drivers can come at the expense of entire communities, raising questions about the fairness of routing algorithms that prioritize individual efficiency over collective well-being.

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·         Reduced Travel Time avoiding congested road ways therefore reducing travel time.

·         Fuel Efficiency allows the driver to reach his destination in a timely manner, leading to lower fuel consumption.

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Optimisation is not without its Challenges

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Optimisation is not without its Challenges

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The use of AI technology in transport systems is at the forefront in cities like London, Milan, Singapore, New York, and Buenos Aires. These cities are enhancing traffic flow, reducing congestion, and giving their residents a more seamless and effective commute experience by implementing new solutions and incorporating AI into their transportation infrastructure.

Ye, despite their advantages, the implementation of real-time traffic management systems through urban data platforms is not without challenges.

For example:

Data Privacy and Security: Handling vast amounts of real-time data raises concerns about privacy and cybersecurity. Ensuring that sensitive information, such as vehicle tracking data, is protected is critical.

High Costs: The infrastructure required for real-time traffic management, including sensors, communication networks, and data processing systems, can be expensive to implement and maintain.

Integration with Legacy Systems: Many cities still rely on outdated traffic management systems, which can be difficult to integrate with modern, data-driven platforms.

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Real-Time Traffic Management Solutions Through Urban Data Platforms

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Real-time traffic management through urban data platforms optimizes traffic flow and enhances safety by leveraging live data, AI, and predictive analytics, creating smarter, more efficient, and sustainable urban mobility systems.

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For those looking for the quickest route to their destination, especially in a large and congested city, one may use a real time traffic routing app such as Google Maps or Waze. However, the shortest time displayed by the application's algorithm isn't necessarily the fastest route. At times, I have noticed that these apps tend to choose the same few routes over and over again, leading many other drivers down the same single lane roads, that include school zones and other delaying factors. Since these apps don't take into account the peculiarities of the neighborhood, it may lead to generating more congestion on certain routes that tend to be continuously "recommended" by the app. While newer generations of drivers begin to get on the road, many begin to rely heavily on their smart phones to get to their destination, without building as much spacial awareness of their town or city that drivers before the age of smart phones, needed to build in order to efficiently navigate. This means newer drivers are more likely to take the suggested routes vs using a combination of technology, cognitive maps and problem solving to get to their destination. There is also the question of exactly what data these applications collect when using your navigation data and what can be done with that data in the future that may not be in users best interest.

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The jalanow.com is a website where anybody can look at footage taken across the country Malaysia, mainly in the capital city Kuala Lumpur, at real-time. The pros I can think of for such a website include convenience and ease of planning when it comes to trying to come up with a route and schedule when we're going out. The cons I can think of include public surveillance and misuse of footage by threat actors for malicious targets such as social order disruption and local locational intelligence for such suspects.

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This is one that is a benefit to the drivers and maybe overall movement but is irritating to residents which is traffic rerouted through residential neighborhoods. To some extent this is valuable but when it is based on ETA optimization of minutes, it can lead to congestion where there usually isn't. Cars crossing arterials in unusual places.

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Bangalore is infamous for its traffic tangles. Bangalore is place where there is lot of money, lot of rich people, lot of industries, offices... but terribly incapable infrastructure to handle all of that. This news came as a hope for citizens, on using AI to identify traffic snarls and route traffic.

Bangalore has a lot of alleys along residential neighbourhoods, and result is such peaceful neighbourhoods are then clogged as a result.

Its mostly failure of governance. I believe, govt so easily delegating their job of installing better infra to private companies. Only ensuring some stakeholders get richer in the process and city overall remains a loser.

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Can the new Google Maps solve Bengaluru traffic?

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Bengaluru is the first city Google will be collaborating with to create models that better manage signal timings and other traffic woes. Plus, there’s new Street View imagery for 11 cities

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Who decides what are socially desirable routes and how soon does this turn into routes desired by law enforcement, governments, people with influence for their own good and businesses

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The complex relationship between Real-Time Traffic Information and Socially Desirable Routes

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The article discusses the NAPCORE project and EU member states' efforts to implement the 2022 revision of the Real-Time Traffic Information Delegated Regulation. It emphasizes the importance of socially desirable routes, considering societal impacts, and highlights collaboration between road authorities and service providers.

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Issues with Live Traffic Data in Routing for Delivery Businesses

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Issues with Live Traffic Data in Routing for Delivery Businesses

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This article discusses Track-POD's approach to route planning and why they don't use live traffic data for their multi-stop routing system[1].

The main points are:

1. Live traffic data is useful for simple A to B routes but not compatible with multi-stop routes[1].

2. Using live traffic data for multi-stop routes can lead to:

* Longer working times for drivers

* Difficulty meeting customer time slots

* Potential missed dock schedules for B2B deliveries[1]

3. Instead of live traffic data, Track-POD uses:

* Statistical traffic data built into their route optimization algorithm

* Customizable speed ratios for each vehicle in the fleet

* Seasonal adjustments to improve routing precision[1]

4. Track-POD plans to improve their algorithm in 2023 by making it weather-sensitive, automatically adjusting for seasonal changes and weather forecasts[1].

5. The company argues that their approach provides more reliable multi-stop routing while still accounting for traffic patterns and seasonal variations[1].

Citations:

[1] https://www.track-pod.com/blog/live-traffic-routing/

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Updated on October 17, 2022 by Yulia Miashkova

Does Track-POD offer live traffic updates?
This is one of the most frequently asked questions we get. We thought we'd take the time to answer it in detail and explain why Track-POD route planner doesn't offer live traffic updates and what can be done instead.

What is live traffic routing?

Let's start with the definition.

Live traffic data aka live traffic updates or real-time traffic updates is the data used in fleet routing in order to determine routes with the least amount of traffic.

Heavy traffic can significantly impact delivery times. In order to consider traffic when routing commercial vehicles, logistics operations can use real-time traffic data.

Live traffic routing is possible by accessing third-party traffic systems. In addition to the courier being able to use GPS apps like Waze to avoid heavy traffic, dispatchers can also use real-time traffic data to navigate drivers away from traffic jams.

The problem with live traffic

If live traffic data are so helpful in avoiding delays, why doesn't Track-POD route planner use it?

Live traffic data is great for simple routes from A to B but incompatible with multi-stop routes.

The reality of multi-stop routing is such that your couriers need to meet many time slots throughout the day. This is what happens when you combine multi-stop routing and live traffic data.

Couriers' working time

When a route planner builds a multi-stop delivery route, it does so considering the courier's working hours. A route optimization algorithm like Track-POD's will take into account the service time and determine how many stops a courier can fulfill in a day.

Using live traffic data, drivers will deviate from their pre-calculated optimized routes, which can result in longer working times. Longer working hours, in turn, entail higher operational costs as you need to compensate your staff for overtime.

Customers' time slots

Time slots are customers' preferred time windows for delivery or collection. They are often specified at the checkout to be taken into account during routing. With multi-stop route planning, many time slots are arranged in a sequence for which a route is built.

Live traffic data will often mean deviation from the route. When couriers deviate from their pre-defined routes, meeting customers' preferred time slots becomes a challenge.

The failure to deliver within the agreed-upon time windows increases the risk of delivery failure and return trips.

Dock scheduling

Time slots are not necessarily specified by individual customers who will be expecting their packages at home. In B2B delivery, time slots are connected with dock schedules.

Businesses that need to be on a dock schedule will lose time if unable to meet their slot for unloading. Using live traffic data, drivers are at a higher risk of missing their time slots and creating a queue of trucks for docking.

Live traffic alternative

If real-time traffic updates are incompatible with multi-stop routing, what can be done instead? Let's look at how we approach this in Track-POD route planner.

Statistical data

We built Track-POD route planner for logistics operations that need to build multi-drop routes for diverse fleets. Therefore, real-time traffic data was never an option for our customer profile.

Instead of using third-party live traffic data, Track-POD works with statistical traffic data that is built into our proprietary route optimization algorithm.

Statistical traffic data allows delivery operations to make use of average traffic patterns while building routes and calculating estimated time of arrival (ETA).

Speed ratio

In addition to statistical data that will always be applied during route planning and optimization, you can further personalize calculations based on the knowledge of your team and your service area.

Track-POD allows you to set a speed ratio for each of the vehicles in your fleet. You can do so based on the driving patterns of your courier staff members and change it every season.

Adjusting the speed ratio every season will help you get more precise routing and meet delivery times every time.

Roadmap for 2023

Nothing impacts traffic patterns more than the weather. To make Track-POD route optimization more precise, we're focusing on the weather as the main cause of traffic changes.

In 2023, we plan to further improve Track-POD's route optimization algorithm by making it weather-sensitive.

Season changes will be reflected in the statistical traffic data so that you don't have to adjust your speed ratio manually based on the season alone. By pulling the weather forecast from a third-party system, we plan to make these adjustments automatically.

Recap

1. Traffic is, without a doubt, an important variable when planning a personal trip or a simple route from A to B. When building multi-stop delivery routes, however, live traffic data can do more harm than good.

2. To get the best setup for building precise routes and meeting customers' time slots, Track-POD route planner uses statistical traffic data. What is more, it lets you set a speed ratio for each of your fleet vehicles, making it easy to consider the driving patterns of your courier staff members.

3. In 2023, we plan to make Track-POD route optimization weather-sensitive. If you're interested to test our multi-stop route planner, start your free trial now and build your first route today.

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Live Traffic Data in Routing: More Harm Than Good? " Track-POD

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Wondering how to supercharge your multi-stop route planning? Here's when you should use live traffic data in routing - and when it does more harm than good.

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The article describes the very real issue of Waze re-routing traffic through neighborhoods that aren't meant to handle the influx of traffic. This issue is close at heart to me, I bought a house on a lovely street in a lovely neighborhood and because of Waze I have to watch car after car speed down my street using it as a cut through. Speed bumps have been installed and most cars don't even slow down going over them. In the morning from 7am-9am there are no turn ins allowed onto the street, but Waze ignores that and advises people to make the turn (something I tested myself). If we're going to continue down the path of using real time traffic, then we need to update the ideology around Urban Planning to take this into account.

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I found it fascinating to read that RTTI has begun not only finding the quickest routes, but starting to consider nearby local school's in order to not only increase efficiency, but to take account of ESG considerations, such as reducing vehicle emissions for children. The death of Ella Kissi-Debrah magnifies the importance of this, indicating future environmental and social benefits of the technology.

This would, however, evidently disrupt long-established traffic routes that have the infrastructure to handle excess vehicles. Houses once peacefully isolated on small country roads could be exposed to nuisance, disrupting the very social benefit that the technology seems to possess.

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The complex relationship between Real-Time Traffic Information and Socially Desirable Routes

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The article discusses the NAPCORE project and EU member states' efforts to implement the 2022 revision of the Real-Time Traffic Information Delegated Regulation. It emphasizes the importance of socially desirable routes, considering societal impacts, and highlights collaboration between road authorities and service providers.

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Because Of A Stalker, Tim Cook's House Is Now Missing From Google Maps And Apple Maps

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Because Of A Stalker, Tim Cook's House Is Now Missing From Google Maps And Apple Maps

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Not all people has the access to control what's appearing in maps. Unfortunately many people is being stalked and harassed using technology like online routing.

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Because Of A Stalker, Tim Cook’s House Is Now Missing From Google Maps And Apple Maps

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The home of Apple CEO, Tim Cook, has now disappeared from Google Maps and Apple Maps. This follows a restraining order against a stalker who is alleged to have been following him all along. This stalker is now also unable to visit any Apple store

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When Over-Reliance on Real-Time Monitoring Backfires

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When Over-Reliance on Real-Time Monitoring Backfires

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I love this example of how a German artist caused major traffic issues in Berlin and thousands to reroute to highlight the power of companies like Google and our over-reliance on them

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A Berlin-based artist managed to create a traffic jam on one of the main bridges across the Spree with nothing but a handcart and 99 second-hand phones. But one other thing was unusual about the jam: it only existed on Google Maps.

Simon Weckert's artwork Google Maps Hacks involved the artist pulling a small red cart at walking pace down some of the main thoroughfares of Berlin. The 99 phones in the cart, all reporting their locations and movement back to Google's servers, gave the search company the impression of a huge cluster of slow-moving traffic, which was duly reported on the company's maps.

"Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red, which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic," Weckert wrote.

In his statement, Weckert cited a journal article by the German anthropologist Moritz Ahlert: "Google's map service has fundamentally changed our understanding of what a map is, how we interact with maps, their technological limitations, and how they look aesthetically.

"What is the relationship between the art of enabling and techniques of supervision, control and regulation in Google's maps? Do these maps function as dispositive nets that determine the behaviour, opinions and images of living beings, exercising power and controlling knowledge? Maps, which themselves are the product of a combination of states of knowledge and states of power, have an inscribed power dispositive."

One of Weckert's virtual traffic jams ran directly past Google's Berlin offices, as the artist's video footage showed barely any cars on the street - though there were a number of bikes and electric scooters.

A Google spokesperson said: "Whether via car or cart or camel, we love seeing creative uses of Google Maps as it helps us make maps work better over time."

The work, revealed just a few days before the 15th anniversary of Google Maps' founding, is just the latest example of a prankster taking advantage of the "crowdsourced" nature of much of Google's data collection. In 2015, the company had to shut off one feature, Map Maker, after a series of embarrassing vandalism incidents culminated in the creation of a virtual park, the shape of which appeared to resemble the company's Android logo urinating on Apple's trademark.

The company was sued the same year for allegedly lifting parts of its database from a rival app, PhantomAlert, which had included digital "trap streets" in its database. Those points of interest, which did not exist in the real world, showed up in Waze, a mapping app Google bought in 2013, PhantomAlert claimed.

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Berlin artist uses 99 phones to trick Google into traffic jam alert

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Google Maps diverts road users after mistaking cartload of phones for huge traffic cluster

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The Benefits of Using a GPS Mobile Navigation App Designed for People with Visual Impairments

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The Benefits of Using a GPS Mobile Navigation App Designed for People with Visual Impairments

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All three of the GPS navigation apps described in our < previous post> above offer or link to a full suite of the basic navigation features, including the ability to determine your current location, browse and search nearby POIs, set a favorite place, create a travel route to your destination, and find your way using turn-by-turn directions. They also provide enhanced functionality that can improve your orientation and mobility significantly.

The menu structure and controls may differ, but many if not most of the same blindness-aware features are available in all three apps.
Continuous and Automatic Current Location, Cross Street, and POI Announcements
They say the three main rules of real estate are "Location, location, location." This can also be said of traveling with a cane or guide dog. You cannot find where you want to go unless you know where you are, and this isn't information you only wish to know before you start your walk or bus trip-it's information you need throughout your journey.

Apple Maps, Google Maps, and other standard GPS navigation apps will tell you where you are and what's nearby anytime you wish, but getting this information means stopping and tapping icons, which can slow you down significantly. Blindness-aware navigation apps will announce this information at regular intervals as you move, or, if you prefer, whenever you shake your mobile phone.

You can instruct a blindness-aware navigation app to keep you updated on the compass direction in which you are heading. This can be extremely handy in orienting yourself in a busy downtown area, or when crossing a wide parking lot back to the street.

Standard turn-by-turn directions will alert you when it's time to make a turn, but what about all those streets you need to cross between here and there? A blindness-aware navigation app will announce the distance to and the name of each cross street as you approach it. It will also announce nearby addresses from time to time so you know about how far down each block you have traveled, and whether your destination is on the left or right side of the street.

Sighted travelers can see all of the stores, office buildings, and other points of interest they pass along their journey. A blindness aware navigation app can offer you the same information. You can have all nearby POIs announced as you approach them, along with their distance and direction. You can also limit these announcements to various categories, such as banks and restaurants, or to places you have marked as favorites.
Looking Around to Get the Lay of the Land
Satellite maps and Google Street View offer sighted users a virtual tour of an area so they can get the lay of the land, either where they are or where they are going to be. Blindness-aware navigation apps offer the same functionality in accessible versions.

Each of the apps mentioned above includes a "Look Around" feature, which prompts your phone to speak the names, distances, and compass directions of all POIs within a range you set (yards to miles). Each of these apps also offers a "wand" mode. Enable this feature, and you can point the top of your phone in any compass direction and hear only the POIs located in that direction.

Nearby Explorer and the Seeing Eye GPS app also allow you to trace roadways with your finger using haptic feedback. Your phone will buzz and vibrate as you follow a road, announcing each new road and intersection, then stop when your finger veers off course.

These features are available for any location: current and future locations, along with any other location wish to explore from your phone. In this mode, your phone will act as though it is at the remote location, a mile away, or halfway across the country. You can use all of the look around, wand, and map exploration features the same as you can at home. Going to the doctor's office? Use this handy feature to see if there is a coffee shop you can visit after your appointment. Traveling to New York for a business meeting? Locate your hotel and see the sights as you take a virtual walk around the neighborhood.

This article was written and published by the American Foundation for the Blind. <Click Here> to read the article in its entirety and access other helpful articles from AFB.
We Are Here To Bring Hope
If you or a loved one have been diagnosed with Macular Degeneration, we have prepared a 12-part eBook < Click here to download a PDF of the entire report.>

To learn more about how we can Bring Hope to people who are blind or with low vision, contact a Technology Specialist at New England Low Vision and Blindness to learn more. You can also call our toll free number 888-211-6933 or email us at info@nelowvision.com.

Our two(2) state-of-the-art technology showrooms are a wonderful resource, showcasing a variety of leading electronic low vision magnifiers and blindness products. You can schedule an appointment with one of our Technology Specialist who can help you find the right technology, training and care solution.

If you cannot come to us, our staff can even drive out and bring our Vision Store to you, for a no-obligation product demonstration. We offer a comprehensive line of products including electronic magnification low vision aids, blindness products, and leading low vision products for people with glaucoma, macular degeneration and other forms of vision loss.

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The Benefits of Using a GPS Mobile Navigation App Designed for People with Visual Impairments - New England Low Vision

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They say the three main rules of real estate are "Location, location, location." This can also be said of traveling with a cane or guide dog. You cannot find where you want to go unless you know where you are, and this isn't information you only wish to know before you start your walk or bus trip-it's information you need throughout your journey.

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The article presents a view from LA where traffic planners, motorists and traffic systems could work together to alleviate some of the worst traffic in the US. However it is the inherent selfishness of motorists using apps to plot routes that creates induced demand and compounds the problems.

"Road traffic is a great example (of the Nash equilibrium): absent other incentives, I’m always going to choose the fastest route home that is available to me, even though taking a longer, more circuitous route would help spread out traffic and ease congestion for other drivers across my city".

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The True Price of Transportation Anarchy

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In an excerpt from the new book The Future of Transportation, CityLab’s Laura Bliss adds up the “price of anarchy” when it comes to traffic navigation apps.

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Its interesting to think about a socially desirable route and how humans can establish or identify a route that may be more optimal for them outside the real time traffic routing platform,

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The complex relationship between Real-Time Traffic Information and Socially Desirable Routes

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The article discusses the NAPCORE project and EU member states' efforts to implement the 2022 revision of the Real-Time Traffic Information Delegated Regulation. It emphasizes the importance of socially desirable routes, considering societal impacts, and highlights collaboration between road authorities and service providers.

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Your Navigation App Is Making Traffic Unmanageable

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Your Navigation App Is Making Traffic Unmanageable

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"But now online navigation apps are in charge, and they’re causing more problems than they solve. The apps are typically optimized to keep an individual driver’s travel time as short as possible; they don’t care whether the residential streets can absorb the traffic or whether motorists who show up in unexpected places may compromise safety."

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This article originally appeared at IEEE Spectrum
By Jane Macfarlane
Illustration: Chris Philpot
Miguel Street is a winding, narrow route through the Glen Park neighborhood of San Francisco. Until a few years ago, only those living along the road traveled it, and they understood its challenges well. Now it's packed with cars that use it as a shortcut from congested Mission Street to heavily traveled Market Street. Residents must struggle to get to their homes, and accidents are a daily occurrence.

The problem began when smartphone apps like Waze, Apple Maps, and Google Maps came into widespread use, offering drivers real-time routing around traffic tie-ups. An estimated 1 billion drivers worldwide use such apps.

Today, traffic jams are popping up unexpectedly in previously quiet neighborhoods around the country and the world. Along Adams Street, in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, residents complain of speeding vehicles at rush hour, many with drivers who stare down at their phones to determine their next maneuver. London shortcuts, once a secret of black-cab drivers, are now overrun with app users. Israel was one of the first to feel the pain because Waze was founded there; it quickly caused such havoc that a resident of the Herzliya Bet neighborhood sued the company.

The problem is getting worse. City planners around the world have predicted traffic on the basis of residential density, anticipating that a certain amount of real-time changes will be necessary in particular circumstances. To handle those changes, they have installed tools like stoplights and metering lights, embedded loop sensors, variable message signs, radio transmissions, and dial-in messaging systems. For particularly tricky situations-an obstruction, event, or emergency-city managers sometimes dispatch a human being to direct traffic.

But now online navigation apps are in charge, and they're causing more problems than they solve. The apps are typically optimized to keep an individual driver's travel time as short as possible; they don't care whether the residential streets can absorb the traffic or whether motorists who show up in unexpected places may compromise safety. Figuring out just what these apps are doing and how to make them better coordinate with more traditional traffic-management systems is a big part of my research at the University of California, Berkeley, where I am director of the Smart Cities Research Center.

Here's how the apps evolved. Typically, the base road maps used by the apps represent roads as five functional classes, from multilane freeways down to small residential streets. Each class is designed to accommodate a different number of vehicles moving through per hour at speeds that are adjusted for local conditions. The navigation systems-originally available as dedicated gadgets or built into car dashboards and now in most smartphones-have long used this information in their routing algorithms to calculate likely travel time and to select the best route.

Initially, the navigation apps used these maps to search through all the possible routes to a destination. Although that worked well when users were sitting in their driveways, getting ready to set out on a trip, those searches were too computationally intensive to be useful for drivers already on the road. So software developers created algorithms that identify just a few routes, estimate the travel times of each, and select the best one. This approach might miss the fastest route, but it generally worked pretty well. Users could tune these algorithms to prefer certain types of roads over others-for example, to prefer highways or to avoid them.

The digital mapping industry is a small one. Navteq (now Here Technologies) and TomTom, two of the earliest digital-map makers, got started about 30 years ago. They focused mainly on building the data sets, typically releasing updated maps quarterly. In between these releases, the maps and the routes suggested by the navigation apps didn't change.

When navigation capabilities moved to apps on smartphones, the navigation system providers began collecting travel speeds and locations from all the users who were willing to let the app share their information. Originally, the system providers used these GPS traces as historical data in algorithms designed to estimate realistic speeds on the roads at different times of day. They integrated these estimates with the maps, identifying red, yellow, and green routes-where red meant likely congestion and green meant unrestricted flow.

As the historical records of these GPS traces grew and the coverage and bandwidth of the cellular networks improved, developers started providing traffic information to users in nearly real time. Estimates were quite accurate for the more popular apps, which had the most drivers in a particular region.

And then, around 2013, Here Technologies, TomTom, Waze, and Google went beyond just flagging traffic jams ahead. They began offering real-time rerouting suggestions, considering current traffic on top of the characteristics of the road network. That gave their users opportunities to get around traffic slowdowns, and that's how the chaos began.

What The Traffic Apps Don't Know
Illustration: Chris Philpot
A sporting event at a nearby stadium [A] causes a traffic backup on the highway that bypasses the center of this imaginary urban area. That's a problem for our hypothetical driver trying to get home from work, so she turns to a navigation app for help. The shortest-and, according to the app, the fastest-alternate route [blue line] winds through a residential neighborhood with blind turns, a steep hill [B], and a drawbridge [C], which can create unexpected delays for those unfamiliar with its scheduled openings. The red route cuts through the city center [D] and in front of an elementary school [E]; the app doesn't know school just let out for the day. Fortunately, our driver knows the area, so she selects the purple route, even though the app indicates that it isn't the fastest option. Drivers unfamiliar with the area and looking for a shortcut to the stadium could find themselves in chaotic-even hazardous-situations.

On its face, real-time rerouting isn't a problem. Cities do it all the time by changing the signal, phase, and timing of traffic lights or flashing detour alerts on signs. The real problem is that the traffic management apps are not working with existing urban infrastructures to move the most traffic in the most efficient way.

First, the apps don't account for the peculiarities of a given neighborhood. Remember the five classes of roads along with their estimated free-flow speeds I mentioned? That's virtually all the apps know about the roads themselves. For example, Baxter Street in Los Angeles-also a scene of increased accidents due to app-induced shortcutting-is an extremely steep road that follows what originally was a network of goat paths. But to the apps, this road looks like any other residential road with a low speed limit. They assume it has parking on both sides and room for two-way traffic in between. It doesn't take into account that it has a 32 percent grade and that when you're at the top you can't see the road ahead or oncoming cars. This blind spot has caused drivers to stop unexpectedly, causing accidents on this once-quiet neighborhood street.

The algorithms also may not consider other characteristics of the path they choose. For example, does it include roads on which there are a lot of pedestrians? Does it pass by an elementary school? Does it include intersections that are difficult to cross, such as a small street crossing a major thoroughfare with no signal light assistance?

I recently experienced what such cluelessness can cause. I was in congested traffic on a multilane road when an app offered to get me out of the traffic by sending me into a residential neighborhood. It routed me right past an elementary school at 8:15 a.m. There were crossing guards, minivans double parked, kids jumping out of cars, and drivers facing the bright morning sun having a hard time seeing in the glare. I only added to the chaos.

On top of all these problems, these rerouting apps are all out for themselves. They take a selfish view in which each vehicle is competing for the fastest route to its destination. This can lead to the router creating new traffic congestion in unexpected places.

Consider cars crossing a thoroughfare without the benefit of a signal light. Perhaps the car on the smaller road has a stop sign. Likely, it was designed as a two-way stop because traffic on the larger road was typically light enough that the wait to cross was comfortably short. Add cars to that larger road, however, and breaks in the traffic become few, causing the line of cars waiting at the stop sign to flow onto neighboring streets. If you're in the car on the larger road, you may be zipping along to your destination. But if you're on the smaller road, you may have to wait a very long time to cross. And if the apps direct more and more cars to these neighborhood roads, as may happen when a nearby highway is experiencing abnormal delays, the backups build and the likelihood of accidents increases.

To compound the "selfish routing" problem, each navigation application provider-Google, Apple, Waze (now owned by Google)-operates independently. Each provider receives data streamed to its servers only from the devices of its users, which means that the penetration of its app colors the system's understanding of reality. If the app's penetration is low, the system may fall back on historical traffic speeds for the area instead of getting a good representation of existing congestion. So we have multiple players working independently with imperfect information and expecting that the entire road network is available to absorb their users in real time.

Meanwhile, city transportation engineers are busy managing traffic with the tools they have at their disposal, like those on-ramp metering lights, messaging signs, and radio broadcasts suggesting real-time routing adjustments that I mentioned previously. Their goal is to control the congestion, maintain a safe and effective travel network, and react appropriately to such things as accidents, sporting events, and, in emergency situations, evacuations.

The city engineers are also working in isolation, with incomplete information, because they have no idea what the apps are going to do at any moment. The city now loses its understanding of the amount of traffic demanding access to its roads. That's a safety issue in the short term and a planning issue in the long term: It blinds the city to information it could use to develop better traffic-mitigation strategies-for example, urging businesses to consider different work shifts or fleet operators to consider different routes.

So you may have recently benefitted from one of these shortcuts, but it's doubtful that you're winning the long game. To do that takes thinking about the system as a whole and perhaps even considering aggregate fuel consumption and emissions. Only then can we use these rerouting algorithms for the benefit of all citizens and our environment.

In the meantime, neighborhoods and citizens are fighting back against the strangers using their streets as throughways. In the early days of the problem, around 2014, residents would try to fool the applications into believing there were accidents tying up traffic in their neighborhood by logging fake incidents into the app. Then some neighborhoods convinced their towns to install speed bumps, slowing down the traffic and giving a route a longer base travel time.
Photo: Richard Vogel/AP
Goats Only? The steep and narrow Baxter Street in Los Angeles, originally a network of goat paths, looked like any other residential road to the traffic apps, which rerouted drivers along it and caused chaos.

A town in New Jersey, Leonia, simply closed many of its streets to through traffic during commute hours, levying heavy fines for nonresident drivers. Neighboring towns followed suit. And all faced the unintended consequence of their local businesses now losing customers who couldn't get through the town at those hours.

The city of Los Angeles recently responded to the issues on Baxter Street by recasting the street as one-way: downhill only. It's still not ideal; it means longer trips for residents coming and going from their homes, but it reduced the chaos.

Last year, an unfortunate situation in Los Angeles during the 2017 wildfires clearly demonstrated the lack of congruence among the rerouting apps and traditional traffic management: The apps directed drivers onto streets that were being closed by the city, right into the heart of the fire. This is not the fault of the algorithms; it is simply extremely difficult to maintain an up-to-date understanding of the roads during fast-moving events. But it does illustrate why city officials need a way to connect with or even override these apps. Luckily, the city had a police officer in the area, who was able to physically turn traffic away onto a safer route.

These are mere stopgap measures; they serve to reduce, not improve, overall mobility. What we really want is a socially optimum state in which the average travel time is minimized everywhere. Traffic engineers call this state system optimum equilibrium, one of the two Wardrop principles of equilibrium. How do we merge the app-following crowds with an engineered flow of traffic that at least moves toward a socially optimized system, using the control mechanisms we have on hand? We can begin by pooling everyone's view of the real-time state of the road network. But getting everybody in the data pool won't be easy. It is a David and Goliath story-some players like Google and Apple have massive back-office digital infrastructures to run these operations, while many cities have minimal funding for advanced technology development. Without the ability to invest in new technology, cities can't catch up with these big technology providers and instead fall back on regulation. For example, Portland, Ore., Seattle, and many other cities have lowered the speed limits on residential streets to 20 miles per hour.

There are better ways. We must convince the app makers that if they share information with one another and with city governments, the rerouting algorithms could consider a far bigger picture, including information from the physical infrastructure, such as the timing schedule for traffic lights and meters and vehicle counts from static sensors, including cameras and inductive loops. This data sharing would make their apps better while simultaneously giving city traffic planners a helping hand.

As a first step, we should form public-private partnerships among the navigation app providers, city traffic engineering organizations, and even transportation companies like Uber and Lyft. Sharing all this information would help us figure out how to best reduce congestion and manage our mobility.

We have a number of other hurdles to overcome before all the apps and infrastructure tools can work together well enough to optimize traffic flow for everyone.

The real challenge with traffic control is the enormous scale of the problem. Using the flood of data from app users along with the data from city sensors will require a new layer of data analytics that takes the key information and combines it, anonymizes it, and puts it in a form that can be more easily digested by government-operated traffic management systems.

We also need to develop simulation software that can use all this data to model the dynamics of our mobility on an urban scale. Developing this software is a key topic of current research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Efficient Mobility Systems program and involving Here Technologies and three national laboratories: Lawrence Berkeley, Argonne, and Pacific Northwest. I am involved with this research program through the Berkeley lab, where I am a guest scientist in the Sustainable Transportation Initiative. To date, a team supported by this program, led by me and staffed by researchers from the three laboratories, has developed simulations for a number of large cities that can run in just minutes on DOE supercomputers. In the past, such simulations took days or weeks. I expect that new approaches to manage congestion that account for the many complexities of the problem will emerge from these simulations.

In one of our projects, we took 22 million origin-and-destination pairs-or trip legs, as defined by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority-and created a simulation for the San Francisco Bay Area that defines the shortest travel time route for each leg as well as the congestion patterns on each route for a full day. We added an algorithm that reroutes vehicles when the simulation anticipates significant congestion. We discovered that approximately 40,000 vehicles are typically rerouted per hour at the peak congestion times in the morning and 120,000 vehicles are rerouted per hour in the evening congestion period; an incident on a highway, of course, would cause these numbers to jump.

This simulation demonstrates how much traffic planners can do to rebalance traffic flow, and it provides numbers that, right now, are not directly available. The next question is how much of the road network you want to use, trading off highway congestion for some additional traffic on neighborhood roads.

Our next step will be to modify our algorithm to consider neighborhood constraints. We know, for example, that we don't want to reroute traffic into school zones during drop-off and pickup times, and that we should modify navigation algorithms appropriately.

We hope to soon put these tools in the hands of government transportation agencies.

That's what we're trying to do with technology to address the problem. But there are nontechnical hurdles as well. For example, location data can contain personal information that cannot be shared indiscriminately. And current business models may make for-profit companies reluctant to give away data that has value.

Solving both the technical and nontechnical issues will require research and public-private partnerships before we can assemble this cooperative ecosystem. But as we learn more about what drives the dynamics of our roads, we will be able to develop effective routing and traffic controls that take into account neighborhood concerns, the business objectives of fleet owners, and people's health and convenience.

I am confident that most people, when well informed, would be open to a little inconvenience in the furtherance of the common good. Wouldn't you be willing to drive a few extra minutes to spare a neighborhood and improve the environment?
A correction to this article was made on 20 September 2019. This article appears in the October 2019 print issue as "When Apps Rule the Road."
About the Author

Jane Macfarlane is director of the Smart Cities Research Center at the University of California Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies, where she works on data analytics for emerging transportation issues.

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Your Navigation App Is Making Traffic Unmanageable

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This article originally appeared at IEEE Spectrum By Jane Macfarlane Illustration: Chris Philpot Miguel Street is a winding, narrow route through the Glen Park neighborhood of San Francisco. Until a few years ago, only those living along the road traveled it, and they understood its challenges well.

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Drawbacks of Realtime Traffic Monitoring. 

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Drawbacks of Realtime Traffic Monitoring. 

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Realtime traffic monitoring through application based platforms such as Google Maps has lead to an increase in traffic routed through neighborhood streets.

What was once a labyrinth of urban sprawl is now easily navigable with advances in GPS technology. Programs such as Google Maps routinely rout rush hour traffic through neighborhoods not designed for through traffic. These are areas where people live and children play. The road infrastructure is not designed to handle dangerous levels of through traffic.

The Google maps help page is habitually flooded with requests to stop traffic from routing through neighborhoods; often citing injuries or even deaths as a result.

https://support.google.com/maps/thread/178219193/is-there-a-way-to-stop-google-maps-from-routing-traffic-through-my-residential-street?hl=en

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Is there a way to stop Google Maps from routing traffic through my residential street? - Google Maps Community