LOS GATOS — Google’s popular apps apparently are causing traffic gridlock in downtown Los Gatos.

Highway 17 is the only direct route to Santa Cruz beaches. But beach-goers often cut through downtown Los Gatos, thinking they’ll save time. That actually isn’t the case — if you stay on Highway 17, you’ll get there faster, Los Gatos officials say.

Last Sunday was especially bad with gridlock traffic in downtown Los Gatos and surrounding neighborhoods as vehicles attempted to take a short cut. The town blames the problem on smartphone traffic apps.

Google owns two of the most popular apps, Google Maps and Waze.

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At 1 p.m. Sunday, a Waze map of the Los Gatos area showed traffic on Highway 17 south moving at 13 mph, with a short stretch dropping to 4 mph. Then it picked up again to 14 mph.

The same Waze map showed traffic in and around downtown Los Gatos was between 2 mph and 5 mph.

“Through years of tracking traffic through the town, it has become clear that the traffic applications are doing a disservice to their users,” said Los Gatos Parks and Public Works Director Matt Morley. “This is because the applications have begun to conflict with each other, where they send all these vehicles to perceived shortcuts. The apps are not able to respond fast enough to the overload they have created on the roadways.”

Asked why its traffic apps continue to send drivers into neighborhoods, a Google spokesperson said via email that “Google Maps strives to accurately model and reflect the real world. Municipalities and agencies responsible for managing roads and reducing traffic are free to take measures according to their individual needs e.g. speed humps, changing speed limits, adding traffic lights. Our automated routing optimization algorithm will inherently take those parameters into account in every route created in Google Maps.”

But the end result of that routing, Morley said, is that “all of this builds into a frustrating drive for families looking for a nice day at the beach. Staying on the freeways is the best route to Santa Cruz.”

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Caltrans is now posting “Santa Cruz Traffic Use Hwy 17” on at least one southbound freeway message sign.

In past summers, Los Gatos police have closed some streets impacted by cut-through traffic when they think public safety is imperiled and Morley said that policy continues this summer.