I am the Village Administrator for the Village of Ballston Spa, NY. We have several roads in our Village that are not designed for big rig or commercial trucking. We have posted signs saying that Commercial Trucks are not allowed on these roads, but truckers are still using them. If the little voice in their dash tells them to use that shortcut, they take the roads regardless of the bridge that is too low for them to pass under or the residential neighborhoods that they may tear up.
Can you please make:
Malta Avenue
East High Street
Hyde Blvd.
Ralph Street
Division Street
South Street
North Street
West Street
Ballston Avenue
Saratoga Avenue
Residential or delivery use Only ?
Thank you Jennifer Moskowitz Village Administrator The Village of Ballston Spa 66 Front Street Ballston Spa, NY 12020 518-885-5711
Thanks for reaching out. Waze is targeted towards passenger vehicles and does not support use by commercial vehicles. Waze don’t have options for commercial vehicles in the app, and when drivers with commercial vehicles report issues, we let them know that Waze is intended only for personal passenger vehicles and not commercial vehicles or trucks. Thanks!
Hi Jennifer! I will caveat the last post with the fact that we will follow local laws if streets are marked for local traffic only. I know it’s not possible for several of those roads, but if you were to post any as “no thru traffic” with enforceable signs, we could make it so that waze would only route residents to those streets. However, this can have negative affects on routing to the rest of the neighborhoods (and possibly funding depending on the road’s functional classification). For example, making Division no thru traffic would force residents on Middle St or Maple Ave to either come in from Northline or send more traffic in/out of Salem, Jefferson, etc. through all of the streets in that neighborhood. You solve one issue only to cause more.
You may be interested in the Waze for Cities program. This two-way data sharing program allows you to analyze waze data while also being able to enter your own information in the app. You may be able to monitor some of this data to better understand user behavior in the area; however, it won’t be able to let you know what type of vehicle the users have or anything like that. You could maybe monitor for pothole reports by users or something like that to determine where the heavy traffic is ripping up the roads. https://www.waze.com/wazeforcities/
Perhaps some enforcement by the police department could help? In other towns, police asked truckers which GPS app they were using when providing a warning and it was often a mix of several apps. So while we may solve it here, incorrect commercial use by drivers on other non-commercial apps could still cause this issue.