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Close Thy Roads and Traffic Paradise Shall Open Its Gates

Although traffic jam issues have long been part of so far dead-end debates, it appears that blokes may have come with a viable but paradoxical solution to relieving road congestion. The city of London can just go on and fire its traffic monitors, close some roads and watch, as according to three scientists, limiting the drivers' options could actually reduce the collective travel time.

Counterintuitive as literally fighting fire with fire, "The Price of Anarchy in Transportation Networks: Efficiency and Optimality Control," by Hyejin Youn and Hawoong Jeong of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Michael Gastner of the Santa Fe Institute, takes the idea that multiple routes ease traffic and performs multiple logical joint twists, fully incapacitating it.

The study arguably says that by forcing drivers to work as a team through road closings, selfish driving behavior may be eliminated, thus leading to an overall reduction in traffic jams. The principle at the study's core is called the Breass' Paradox and says that adding capacity to a network where everyone seeks the most efficient route can actually reduce the network's efficiency.

Think of the circulatory system and blood flow: veins and arteries have their own way of collecting blood and directing it throughout the body in a precariously balanced loop pattern. Mess with it and the body will respond accordingly.

The global road network shares the same anatomical feature but it's still far from having perfected it to organic evolution-driven standards. To better understand the process, think of a way ants move around in a terrarium: these small insects have a penchant for efficiency and order that make their existence much easier than if they would have acted differently.

The Nash equilibrium offers a mathematical explanation through the following example: take a wide main high-way route and a secondary narrow path. With everybody taking the highway, some drivers are likely to go for the other way in order to cut travel time. More and more drivers take the secondary road until it clogs. In the meantime, highway traffic reaches sought after levels and drivers who took the alternative way return to where they left from in the first place. This type of behavior repeats itself until each route ends up taking the same amount of time.

However, the issue with the Nash equilibrium is that average travel time takes up longer than if drivers had evenly split the two routes. After implementing these theorems in their argument, the researchers than compared the Nash equilibrium time to optimal travel time, coming down to a ratio dubbed “the price of anarchy”. Surprisingly, the “price of anarchy” points at a journey that is 30% longer.

So basically, cut a driver's evading options and  collective travel time shall be reduced. This works opposite to another theory that claims and partly demonstrates that offering drivers more control can have the same effect. Some European cities have already discarded some of the traffic lights forcing drivers to become more responsible and ultimately reducing car accidents.

Lastly, going fast and taking shortcuts are less likely to take you to destination on time counter to a slow and steady approach. After all, the tortoise did beat the hare.
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