Editing Braess's paradox (section)

{{Short description|Paradox related to increasing roadway capacity}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2016}}
{{Use British English|date=September 2016}}
'''Braess's paradox''' is the observation that adding one or more roads to a road network can slow down overall [[road traffic|traffic]] flow through it. The paradox was first discovered by [[Arthur Cecil Pigou|Arthur Pigou]] in 1920,<ref>{{Citation |last=Pigou |first=Arthur Cecil |title=Welfare and Economic Welfare |date=2017-10-24 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781351304368-1 |work=The Economics of Welfare |pages=3–22 |access-date=2023-03-24 |publisher=Routledge |doi=10.4324/9781351304368-1 |isbn=978-1-351-30436-8|url-access=subscription }}</ref> and [[Stigler's law of eponymy|later named after]] the German mathematician [[Dietrich Braess]] in 1968.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Braess |first=D. |date=December 1968 |title=Über ein Paradoxon aus der Verkehrsplanung |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf01918335 |journal=Unternehmensforschung Operations Research - Recherche Opérationnelle |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=258–268 |doi=10.1007/bf01918335 |s2cid=39202189 |issn=0340-9422|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The paradox may have analogies in [[electrical power grid]]s and biological systems. It has been suggested that, in theory, the improvement of a malfunctioning network could be accomplished by removing certain parts of it. The paradox has been used to explain instances of improved [[traffic flow]] when existing major roads are closed.