People living in neighborhoods around the 405 Freeway are incensed that their quiet, suburbany streets are filling up with people looking to trim a few minutes off of their drive to or from work. Many homeowners blame the traffic app Waze, which has turned people on to the tiny, local streets that can help them get where they need to go a tiny bit faster. "The streets on the west side are no longer a secret for locals, and people are angry," one Westsider tells the AP (And over the hill too: "The traffic is unbearable now. You can't even walk your dog," says one resident in Sherman Oaks). Anyone who's lived and driven in LA has their own mental list of shortcuts; people taking public side-streets to circumvent traffic is certainly nothing new.
There are so many apps and online resources available to commuters now that it seems even more strange to blame it on one particular app, but traffic makes people do nutty things. There were rumors that some locals were so peeved that they were trying to sabotage the Waze app by reporting fake accidents—something that both Waze and Gizmodo say is pretty much impossible to do successfully.
It seems that the real problem here is the same one as ever: traffic. The 405 carries an estimated 379,000 cars a day. Los Angeles County has 7.6 million registered vehicles—more than some states, the AP points out. So while speed bumps, four-way stops, and road diets might bring back some calm on these once-quiet streets, the bigger issue is that there's bad traffic everywhere and the streets belong to everyone, not just the homeowners who live along them.
· People finding their 'waze' to jamming once-hidden streets [SCPR]
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