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One thing I regularly encounter is a typical "Tragedy of the Commons" problem with Google Maps. When they do route me, they often tend to route me through resid

One thing I regularly encounter is a typical "Tragedy of the Commons" problem with Google Maps. When they do route me, they often tend to route me through residential areas (in Germany these are often traffic reduced areas with respective speed limits). I imagine it is, because these routes tend to be very slightly shorter and often also at least a few seconds shorter in average duration. I tend to use these "Schleichwege" (short cuts only locals know) as a local - but find me using them more and more when I use Google Maps in areas that i am just not familiar with. In bigger cities I (anecdotally) see Google routing lots of traffic through these areas that were before mostly quite with only a few locals using them as short cuts. Now many more people are being routed through to combat the typical road congestion and for google to be able to mostly avoid traffic jams for the users. When considering, that residential streets are not build to encounter this much traffic, they tend to degrade quicker - making the situation even worse for people living there. I do not have a solution - or even made my mind up what to finally think about this. But this is one "data" point more for me to consider when thinking about costs and benefits to society from such a solution like Google Maps.

lucumo 5y ago
In The Netherlands these shortcuts are usually removed or made less attractive. For example, closing a street halfway, so people can still reach both ends, but can't pass through. Or they build a retractable bollard that will delay traffic during high traffic hours. The delay is just long enough that using the shortcut takes longer than just using the main road.
- sdoering 5y ago
  I would actually love solutions like these. But sadly oftentimes they are not put into place even when the residents fight for it. Additionally the costs of such measures are afterwards invoiced to the residents in most municipalities as they are allowed to have the residents pay for work on the infrastructure. I remember my father and our whole street fighting (including a court case) against the city because they wanted to rebuild the street at the bottleneck (there was a mud path connecting our street to another one leading to the highway. The neighbors feared a massive traffic increase (and rightly so). They lost. The city connected the residential area with the other street. And to add insult to injury afterwards all residents had to cover the costs of this measure.

lucumo 5y ago

In The Netherlands these shortcuts are usually removed or made less attractive. For example, closing a street halfway, so people can still reach both ends, but can't pass through. Or they build a retractable bollard that will delay traffic during high traffic hours. The delay is just long enough that using the shortcut takes longer than just using the main road.

sdoering 5y ago
I would actually love solutions like these. But sadly oftentimes they are not put into place even when the residents fight for it. Additionally the costs of such measures are afterwards invoiced to the residents in most municipalities as they are allowed to have the residents pay for work on the infrastructure. I remember my father and our whole street fighting (including a court case) against the city because they wanted to rebuild the street at the bottleneck (there was a mud path connecting our street to another one leading to the highway. The neighbors feared a massive traffic increase (and rightly so). They lost. The city connected the residential area with the other street. And to add insult to injury afterwards all residents had to cover the costs of this measure.