The science of traffic jams

Good and informative article from 'The Economist' http://www.economist.com/... "Hyejin Youn and Hawoong Jeong, of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and Michael Gastner, of the Santa Fe Institute, analysed the effects of drivers taking different routes on journeys in Boston, New York and London. Their study, to be published in a forthcoming edition of Physical Review Letters, found that when individual drivers each try to choose the quickest route it can cause delays for others and even increase hold-ups in the entire road network. [...] Modifying the road network could reduce delays. And contrary to popular belief, a simple way to do that might be to close certain roads. This is known as Braess’s paradox, after another mathematician, Dietrich Braess, who found that adding extra capacity to a network can sometimes reduce its overall efficiency."