
When Paris Closed a Major Road to Cars, Half Its Traffic Just Disappeared - state_machine
https://www.fastcoexist.com/3064157/when-paris-closed-a-major-road-to-cars-half-its-traffic-just-disappeared
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Tiktaalik
People always fret about any sort of reduction in the space for cars and
wonder, "where will the cars go?" This fails to recognize that transportation
systems are about moving _people_ , not cars.

If you reduce the incentive to travel by car, and provide transportation
alternatives, people will make use of those alternatives. This is why cars so
easily vanish.

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visarga
When this happened in Bucharest, even though it only meant a 3 minute detour
for drivers, many condemned it. I can't figure these people out. It was great
- ping pong, badminton, basketball, bicycles - hundreds of people were
enjoying, yet many drivers saw nothing but absurdity in it.

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toomuchtodo
Driver's privledge.

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throwwit
Based upon the well established Braess' paradox theory,
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess'_paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess'_paradox)

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eridius
I don't think so. Braess' paradox is about how a Nash equilibrium may not be
the optimal solution, and so closing a road might result in a more optimal
Nash equilibrium. But this article is talking about how closing a road is
causing there to be literally fewer cars overall on the road than before. The
traffic is still higher on the surrounding roads (which suggests that the
individual commute times for those roads are in fact getting worse, because
higher density usually means slower speeds).

Edit: I suppose if you add alternative forms of transportation to the
"network" that you're analyzing, it's _possible_ that this could be viewed as
a form of Braess' paradox, but only if the overall average commute time has in
fact decreased. There's nothing in the article to suggest that the overall
average commute time, covering both cars and non-car travel, has decreased.

