NEIGHBORHOODS

Commissioner Gina Fiandaca said the city has made changes to various roads around town in response to complaints like those.

“We have certainly seen an uptick in requests for traffic-calming measures,” Fiandaca said.

Fiandaca said these apps appear to be adding to the traffic on side streets, with the amount of construction and the general increase in traffic everywhere in the area adding to the mess.

“A lot of these smaller streets were not designed for this volume,” Fiandaca said.

The changes made within the past year by City Hall to thwart the app-driven traffic include reversing the direction of the one-way Allston Street in Charlestown and making it so people on Porter Street in East Boston can’t turn left onto London Street. On Washington Street in Jamaica Plain, there’s now a no left turn to Forest Hills Street. On Addison Street in East Boston, the city added a rush-hour ban on turns from McClellan Highway.

Eric Bourassa, the transportation director for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, said the advent of ride-hailing apps means more people on the road are using navigation apps throughout the region.

“The folks who use these apps the most are Uber and Lyft,” Bourassa said, adding the council has received traffic complaints from cities and towns surrounding Boston. An upside, he said, is that major routes are relieved of some congestion.

“From a regional perspective, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Bourassa said. But he said, “It makes sense that there are situations where the local level cities and towns would want to react to that.”

An Uber spokeswoman told the Herald the company is looking at measures to cut down on detours through residential neighborhoods, but she declined to comment on what those might be.

Both Uber and Lyft said they let their drivers navigate however they want, and many people behind the wheel for both prefer Google Maps and Waze.

A Waze representative could not be reached for comment. Google said its navigation app provides a service, but it is not the company’s responsibility to police drivers or address municipal traffic concerns.

“Google Maps strives to accurately model and reflect the real world,” said spokeswoman Genevieve Park. “Municipalities and agencies responsible for managing roads and reducing traffic are free to take measures according to their individual needs.”