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Comment by foulmouthboy | Hacker News Reader

I think your example is a little too limiting for this paradox to take effect. The paradox is based on people guessing what others are going to do given a set of options, where your example basically sends them through in the most efficient manner possible by suggesting that one person is going to be willing to wait 80 minutes when that person knows that others are able to do the trip in less than 10 seconds.

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One of the more interesting highway behaviors I have seen was a huge backup on a 2 lane highway where truckers would block both lanes and prevent people from passing them. It's a slight cost the each trucker on the left but it significantly increased throughput.

In the blogs example one person 1 goes Start to A, then while person 1 goes B to end Person 2 goes start to A. etc. Worst case travel time is now faster after adding the new road and 2 agents can help this happen by limiting how fast people enter A.

Edit: with 2 people limiting traffic they can reduce their travel time by 25% (3x 1/2 vs 2 x 1) even if they are in the second group. 1/2 the cars do the first leg, then the other half do the first leg while the first set does the second leg.

PS: This is why we make traffic lights.

Exactly, not everyone will willingly comply. You (ars) have found an optimal solution, but it is not a nash equilibrium - cars will cut out of the line to make it through faster.

The constants in the example are arbitrary and were probably chosen for simplicity, a (thankfully) common thing to do in these sorts of examples.

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