On Sep 5, 2:52 pm, "John Rowland"
wrote:
Tom Anderson wrote:
Science:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...riving-causes-...

I look forward to reading the paper, and to following development of
these ideas in the future.

Obviously if every side road off your commute between your home and your
office was closed, this would speed up your journey. Unless you're Kim
Jong-il, I don't see that as useful info.

But that's not what's being claimed. What is being claimed is that by
closing certain links, journey time for everybody can be improved.

This isn't particularly new. However, I'm not sure anybody has
actually tried to predict which roads should be closed to improve
congestion. The wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27_paradox
gives a couple of examples where a new road increased congestion and
closing it relieved the congestion again. It also gives the example of
the closing of 42nd street in NYC reducing congestion - however I
don't know if that was luck or planning.

Note that this is different from the claim that new roads cause extra
traffic. This is the case when, everything else staying equal, opening
a new, fast, road can cause all the existing people to see increased
journey times without adding any new journeys.

Tim.