Detour

i laid a faster road with my own finger and everyone got slower.

lay the obvious shortcut across the middle and watch the average commute get worse

Two routes home. Each has one wide road that always takes 45 minutes and one narrow lane whose time depends on how many cars are on it. Left alone, drivers split evenly and everyone gets home in 65 minutes. Lay a free link between the two middles and the narrow-narrow route becomes the cheapest option for every individual driver — so every driver takes it, both lanes carry the whole city, and the commute settles at 80. Nobody did anything irrational and everybody lost fifteen minutes. That is the Braess paradox, and it is why Seoul and New York have demolished working roads and watched traffic get faster.

Concepts: networks, paradox.

An interactive you play with one thumb, on Wundr.