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There is also another mechanism.

You can model traffic as something resembling a network flow problem. You have many individual drivers choosing routes, often using a greedy algorithm without full awareness of traffic conditions. If you add more capacity somewhere, some drivers will start making different choices. That could make existing bottlenecks worse, reducing overall throughput.

On the other hand, if you have a good central traffic planner that gives everyone a route, adding more capacity will never reduce throughput. Some drivers may just get routes that are suboptimal from their perspective.

This is the expected outcome of any system where people make individual choices.




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