NJ Town Wants Residential Streets Removed From Navigational Apps (Legal Move)

CBS New York ^ | Dave Carlin

[cba123]

LEONIA, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — Leonia's drastic traffic experiment will take place later this month.

As CBS2's Dave Carlin reported, the sleepy, little New Jersey town, a quarter-mile from the George Washington Bridge, is declaring 60 residential streets off-limits to drivers who use them as cut-throughs.

Residents say they are sick of traffic tie-ups caused by commuters short-cutting.

"They should stay on the highway," said Carlos Gomez, of Leonia. "Why bother us?"

The ordinance establishes a $200 fine for short-cutters. But Leonia Mayor Judah Zeigler said it's really all about those apps.

"The main reason and driver behind this legislation is to get the navigational apps like Waze, Google Maps and others to remove our side streets from their algorithms and not offer them as recommendations," he said.

"They will do that once this legislation takes effect."

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Full article at the link:

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2018/01/05/leonia-streets-off-navigational-apps/

[cynwoody]

In my experience, Google respects traffic laws. E.g., it won't direct you the wrong way down a one-way street.

All this one-horse town needs to do is pass appropriate ordinances respecting the problematic streets.

[Wuli]

Having been a driver who used the GW Bridge nearly daily some years ago, I can attest to the fact that the modern mapping apps have NOTHING to do with the local congestion from commuters going through Leonia.

Commuters have been trying Leonia streets for a very long time when backups occur on I-95 & NJ Rt 4 into the GW Bridge - LONG BEFORE THERE WERE “APPS”. Enough daily commuters witnessing tie ups (can see near stand-stills sometimes on I-95) will always investigate local routes in an attempt to gain some time advantage. Whether they do or not is a different question.

[Albion Wilde]

Fair enough, if locals stay off the freeway.

Seems a fair trade. Living here in the NY–Philly–Baltmore–DC megacrawl, we go out of our minds with traffic. Once the individual map devices revealed the side roads, the states responded by building more toll roads. But it's still murder.

The eastern states were settled first, and built on old concepts of space. Now that the population has multiplied exponentially, it's all jam, all the time.

[TexasGator]

Dude, you totally did it to leave out the part that debunked your post.