Traffic Networks and the Game Navigation apps play
Navigation apps have been popularized due to the widespread of smartphones and the increasing accessibility or need for driving. Waze, a navigation app purchased by Google in 2013, creates a social network of ‘Wazers’ to help provide real-time information and data to other users about traffic. Wazers can report road incidents and conditions, such as the location of police or closed roads. Like other navigation apps, Waze constantly updates users with faster directions and what the system views as the most optimal route to their destination. While trying to find the ‘best’ route for users, Waze started leading drivers into small neighborhoods and hilly roads. The user has the option of following the navigation or going through the route that they are already familiar with or comfortable with. Waze holds a great responsibility in finding the best route for each user, considering all their users and well as non-users. If too many people take the same route, then this will cause great congestion for those users. Thus, they must be distributed to various routes. By leading some driver into small neighborhoods and hilly roads, it has satisfied the needs of Wazers but disrupted locals who live in the neighborhoods.
A town in New Jersey, Leonia, has taken efforts to limit Wazers from going through their neighborhoods, by creating new laws and indicating their locals with yellow tags on their cars. This constrains users from taking these local roads and forces Waze to navigate people with fewer route options. This is an example reminds me of the traffic networks example from in-class except instead of building a new hyperloop route, it has been removed. These efforts by various small neighborhoods are keeping people out and decreasing the payoff of Wazers, because more people may have to take the same route.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/nyregion/leonia-gps-navigation-apps.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/nyregion/traffic-apps-gps-neighborhoods.html