Los Angeles Neighborhoods' Waze Problem

Given my frustrating hour-long commute from Glendale to Century City, I rely on the Waze app to at least attempt to cut my drive time.

Like many of you, I have a love/hate relationship with Waze. I'm frustrated by the left turns on to busy intersections without a light (when Waze is clearly trying to kill me), and often I'll throw in my own shortcut and see that helps cut Waze's estimated arrival time–which makes me wonder, why didn't Waze suggest that?

Most of the time, Waze throws me on the 10 freeway, which also feels like it defeats the purpose–I never, never used the freeway to commute before Waze came along.

But Waze also sometimes takes me over the hill through residential streets. That's the subject of Joe Flint's recent piece in the Wall Street Journal: how L.A. residents, fed up with Waze-induced traffic jams down their streets, are fighting back:

The music can start blaring at the crack of dawn. That is often followed by loud cellphone conversation, and before too long Melissa Menard, clad in a bathrobe and holding a cup of coffee, confronts the offenders: the caravan of morning commuters driving by her house.

“Everybody loves Beyoncé, but not at 7 a.m.,” she said.

Ms. Menard’s suburban Los Angeles street of ranch houses, Cody Road, has turned into a thoroughfare with enough gridlock to make Times Square at rush hour feel tranquil. On early mornings when headlights are still needed, it resembles one long funeral procession.

The culprit: Waze, the popular app owned by Alphabet Inc. ’s Google that provides alternate routes to busy boulevards and packed freeways. Launched in 2007, Waze has 50 million users world-wide and about two million in Los Angeles, its biggest U.S. market.

Waze sometimes sends drivers through little-used side streets such as Cody Road. The mile-long hilly street in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood runs parallel to the 405 freeway and leads to Mulholland Drive, through which commuters can make their way from the San Fernando Valley to Beverly Hills, Hollywood and West Los Angeles.

It isn’t the only short cut. In L.A.’s ritzy Hancock Park neighborhood, resident Marnie Owens blames Waze for traffic’s doubling on her street.

Waze said it isn’t the problem.

I'm pretty sure I've driven through Cody Road thanks to Waze. I've also seen neighborhoods and parts of town thanks to Waze that I might have otherwise never seen. I'm not sure what the answer is, but let's face it, I'm not sure you could suddenly ban motorists from driving down public streets.

Breaking: Plane Crash on the 405

While news of the Asiana 777 crash in San Francisco dominates the news, a small plane has just crashed off the 405 snarling traffic. Pic via Maria's sister Kat. According to CHP, the location of small plane crash just off the 405 freeway at Orange Ave. KNX 1070 writes: "NB405 Orange Ave. offramp to remain closed. All other on/off-ramps & main portion of 405 open. Plane crash NOT on fwy."

Retro Friday: Street Safety in 1930s Los Angeles (Filmstrip)

Don't Be foolish! Obey the Law! Cross Streets Carefully! Think Of Your Parents!

Los Angeles streets in the 1930s look like the Wild West in this safety filmstrip -- but I suppose the whole concept of street culture was relatively new back then. No seat belts, no speed limit, no safety measures to prevent tragedies. This film (no sound, sorry) gives us a glimpse into busy 1930s L.A. surface streets, including the heyday of the Red and Yellow Cars. Watch above.

Bette Davis' "Take Fountain" Mural

Spotted as I drove to work this morning: A mural turning Bette Davis' famous advice to "Take Fountain" into a cartoon -- located on Fountain, naturally.

Meanwhile, check out this wild clip of Bette Davis being interviewed by Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show":

"Brothers & Sisters" Has a Geography Problem

The Daily Beast's Kate Aurthur has a big bone to pick with ABC's Sunday night drama "Brothers & Sisters."

The show is set in both Los Angeles and Santa Barbara -- and Kate is bothered by the ease the characters travel between both cities, as if they're down the block from each other. She writes:

Increasingly, to anyone who lives in Southern California, or has, like, heard of Southern California, it has also become a bizarre geographic mystery requiring a suspension of disbelief that would torment even Dan Brown fans.

The majority of the Walker family, led by matriarch Nora (Sally Field), lives in Pasadena and Los Angeles, which are very near each other, if not essentially considered to be the same city. So fine, great, they all see each other all the time—that makes sense.

Then there is the married couple, Kitty (Calista Flockhart) and Robert (Rob Lowe)—she an author, he a senator who is running for governor of California—who explicitly and clearly live in Santa Barbara. Yet Brothers & Sisters acts as if the two regions are mere seconds away from each other. Robert’s senatorial office is in downtown Los Angeles; Kitty is constantly stopping by her mother’s house. It is maddening.

In one recent episode, Aurthur notes that the characters traveled back and forth between Pasadena and Santa Barbara several times in one night.

Google Maps clocks the trip between Pasadena and Santa Barbara at 103 miles -- or one hour and 41 minutes.

So what's the deal? Kate got the unsatisfying answer from ABC: “They exist in a world without traffic… and Robert has a helicopter at his disposal.”

Traffic: Always Had It, Always Will

Let me be the latest to post about the cool photo archives now found at the Life website. Type in "Los Angeles," and check out some cool shots (and some not so interesting ones, BTW) of L.A. in mid-century.

Above, a reminder that our traffic woes are nothing new...

Signal Sync Arrives on Wilshire

The blue "signal sync" signs have started popping up on Wilshire (or at least I've finally noticed them), part of the LADOT's $5.5 million plan to synchronize 256 traffic signals in Mid-City (specifically, between Wilshire and Hollywood, as well as La Cienega and Western).

Signs like the one above will be posted at more than 200 intersections around the city. LAist covered Mayor Villaraigosa's press conference announcing the program in February:

Apparently, vehicles traveling on Wilshire Boulevard at a speed within 2 mph of the 35 mph speed limit will be greeted with green lights throughout the corridor. The downside of the bias in favor of Wilshire Blvd. vehicular traffic is that this plan will then have a negative impact on north/south vehicular traffic on streets such as Vermont, Western, La Brea, Fairfax, La Cienega, and Sepulveda.

Another detail that didn’t come up was the impact of a capacity increase, which critics claim will attract more single occupant vehicles resulting in the same gridlock that this plan purports to address...

Not only will motorists be treated to a ~35 mph ride down Wilshire but they will be also reminded of the wisdom of their route selection by the new “Signal Sync” signage!

Has my daily drive down Wilshire been smoother? Tough to tell; I usually leave the office after 7:30 p.m. (plus I head east, away from westside gridlock), so the boulevard is already clearer by then.

CHP to You: Drop Your Phone!

If you hit the freeways this weekend (despite that $4.40/gallon gas), you probably encountered this message from the CHP. Guess they can't say they didn't warn us.

Culver City, Heart of Red Light Ticketland

(Flickr pic by The Damn Mushroom.)

According to the L.A. Times, the City of Los Angeles is still losing money on its red light traffic cameras. What's more, according to the story, tiny Culver City generated nearly $2 million in revenue from its red light cameras over the past eight months, more than Los Angeles ($1.6 million)!

The lesson here, other than the obvious L.A. incompetency angle: Do not drive in Culver City. Just don't do it. I don't care if you find Tito's Tacos delicious. Chances are you'll be slapped with a red light ticket. Don't say I didn't warn you.

What's Your Burning L.A. Question?

You know, the one that probably doesn't have an answer?

I'll start it off: Whenever I'm stuck in truly horrible, bumper-to-bumper gridlock on a Los Angeles freeway, I'll flip to KFWB and KNX to check out what's impacting my commute. Yet almost always, the freeway I happen to be on won't be mentioned in those traffic reports. How can that be? Is it simply that ALL traffic is bad in Los Angeles, and I happen to just always be stuck in gridlock that wasn't caused by any specific incident or SigAlert?

Your turn!

The Battle of the Buses Is On

BusRace2008


Bus Race! Bus Race! Will Campbell writes in Blogging.la that today's the day he faces off with The Bus Bench's Bus Tard to see who makes it to Downtown first.

Will explains:

I’ll be on the MTA’s No. 439 catching up on my reading of Mercedes Lambert’s “Dogtown” and he’ll be bribing the driver of Big Blue’s No. 10 to skip stops as we travel from our respective points of embarkation deep in the westside sometime shortly after the 5 o’clock hour then call crawl our separate ways across town to see who gets to Clifton’s at 7th and Broadway first. With fingers crossed that we both get there before the place closes at 7:30 p.m., we will then retire inside for loser-buys dinner with perhaps whiskeys at Seven Grand afterward, or just we’ll pass around The Bus Bench Publisher Browne’s bottle of Everclear.

Will will be posting his progress via Twitter.

Freeway, or THE Freeway?

LAist's San Francisco sibling, SFist, last week took up the Northern vs. Southern California debate over whether to add the article "the" to freeway names. 405, or The 405?

In Los Angeles, of course, we have a habit of referring to "The 5," or "The 101." And that apparently drives them batty up north. One SFist comment read:

I know there are lots, tons, bunches of transplants here in the City, and we're better off for it, I think. But once the transplants arrive, I too have those moments where I hear something that sounds like proverbial fingernails on a blackboard.

Since when is SFO shorthand for San Francisco? Dudes, that's the airport, homies.

I hate SOMA. I'll never say NOPA.

And whyohwhy are there soooo many dodger fans at Giants games? Whyohwhy aren't said dodger fans being spit on?

But yes, the #1 indicator of a transplant is the "the" before the freeway number. Who does that??? It's just so effing weird.

Poor, poor supersensitive San Francisco. Yep, that's how Los Angeles will conquer San Francisco: First, it starts with how we refer to freeways... pretty soon, your mayor will be caught in a sex scandal... oh, wait!

Meanwhile, Blogging.la mentioned the "The" debate while asking a burning question of their own: Why do the Caltrans LED boards refer to interstates as "Routes"? They write:

I've only lived here for 22 years but I've never said "route". It is always THE 10 or THE 405 or The Santa Monica Freeway. Is the person programming the sign from somewhere else? Have they outsourced it? If it is a matter of saving letters, RTE is the same as THE or FWY.

Thankfully, NO ONE -- except for traffic reporters -- refer to the freeway by their full-fledged monikers. (After all, the 10 boasts at least four -- Santa Monica, San Bernardino, Rosa Parks, Christopher Columbus Transcontinental.)

What Do You Do With Your 72 Annual Hours in Rush Hour Traffic?

(Flickr pic by Cara.)

News item: Los Angeles metropolitan area led the nation in traffic jams in 2005, with rush-hour drivers spending an extra 72 hours a year on average stuck in traffic, according to a study released on Tuesday. (Reuters)

That's 72 hours less that Angelenos get to spend in their overpriced L.A. homes. What do you do in all that time on the road? I usually spend it making calls or listening to morning drive radio. And you?