Interesting. This is similar to a common optimization in the genre of city builders with walkers, like Caesar or Pharaoh. In these games, buildings like a market or a temple spawn walkers, which walk on roads and distribute services and goods to tents and houses they walk past.

An important optimization in these games is to avoid crossroads and junctions, because walkers tend to randomly choose a direction at junctions. This would make it a coin flip which of the two roads would get food or religious services, possibly causing all kinds of chaos. One of the best layouts as far as I recall was just a big block with a circular road going around it, because this forced the walkers to walk past all buildings in the block reliably.