> Posting signs would also mean dedicating police resources to enforcement
How would it /necessarily/ require dedication of additional police resources? Are you implying that there is some actual or legal requirement for the city to do so?
If not, I don't see how posting a few more NTT signs is significantly different from the status quo, namely that there are already not enough police to enforce all traffic laws in all locations at all times.
The police would not be required to add resources to enforce these laws. But without enforcement the signs would make very little difference to LA drivers.
The whole premise of the article is that it only needs to coerce Waze’ routing. If the glut of traffic is just following the blue line, the minority that route themselves shouldn’t be enough to cause problems - or at least, they apparently weren’t pre-waze.
If drivers are not routed into residential areas by Waze as there are no thru routes for Waze to use, then they will be on their own to seek out and find ways to avoid highways and risk police citing them for taking residential zone shortcuts in the process. It won’t stop every driver, but it will curb the majority of them from ever finding or using residential zones as a bypass.
my humble guess is that the genie is out of the bottle: the vast majority of these LA drivers are daily commuters. now that these drivers are used to taking these routes, most of these residential neighborhoods will remain saturated permanently. removing the routes from Waze won't relieve much traffic pressure.
The article mentions a gentleman that somehow 'disabled' his street in the waze map editor, and described the effect as a tap being turned off. I think that's the goal here. Not "no traffic", but not "drinking from the hosepipe" either - that's what arterials are designed for.
Ultimately, if it can't be tamed by more tactful means, the proper solution will be to close one end of these routes so the go from being posted as NTT, to actually being NTT. Ruin it for everyone, and see if anyone ever catches on that their selfishness has consequences.
I believe the LADOT's goal here is "no thru traffic", wherein cars only enter a given "residential zone" when they have reason to be present in it, and that's why my idea centers around most clearly stating that.
If you try to take actions that are not "no thru traffic", the area would need to have precisely one ingress-egress point, at the same point, in order to ensure that there are no one-way ingresses/egresses for thru traffic routing algorithms to take advantage. This single in-out location would prevent Waze from considering the neighborhood for thru traffic, at the expense of increasing drive times for residents of the neighborhood for all egress points removed. The political fights over this would be an absolute nightmare, as there would be a perceived risk of negative impact to home values for all homes near former egress points due to increased trip times.
Simply making it a traffic violation to "thru" a residential zone does no harm to residents and businesses, as they retain their free right of ingress/egress to/from their zones, and allows residents to request enforcement if an unusually high level of thru traffic impacts their zone for any reason (Waze or otherwise). That's why I propose it rather than more drastic alternatives.
How would it /necessarily/ require dedication of additional police resources? Are you implying that there is some actual or legal requirement for the city to do so?
If not, I don't see how posting a few more NTT signs is significantly different from the status quo, namely that there are already not enough police to enforce all traffic laws in all locations at all times.