Description
Feel like Google Maps, Apple Maps, Waze, etc are giving you crazier and crazier routes? There's a reason.
It's not just that they're directing drivers down nonsensical, unrealistic shortcuts to save two minutes. What's actually happening is an example of Braess's Paradox, a mathematical model showing that any free-flowing system gets less efficient when you add more route options.
A recent academic study published in Data Science for Transportation discovered that dynamic routing, where the app adjusts your route to account for traffic, works best when between 30-60% of drivers in a given area are using it. Once we cross 60%, congestion starts to fan out unpredictably. And once we cross 90%, we get gridlock.
Guess where we are right now?