Braess' phenomenon in the management of networks and dissociation of equilibrium concepts

Hedayat Z. Aashtiani and Hossain Poorzahedy *

Transportation Planning and Technology, 2004, vol. 27, issue 6, 469-482

Abstract: Braess' phenomenon, also known as Braess' paradox, is a phenomenon that has received considerable attention in transportation engineering and planning, as well as in other fields. It has an important implication in the area of investment in transportation networks, namely that adding a new link in a network may increase the cost to the users of that network. In this paper we show this phenomenon in a new environment. Unlike traditional examples, which involve the physical addition of a link to a network (a 0/1 integer decision variable), an example is presented where the decision variable is continuous in nature. Moreover, this example conveys two new messages. First, it is shown that some logical criterion of assigning common resources among users of a network proportional to the number of users competing for common resources may not serve the purpose of efficiency in the sense of minimizing total user travel cost (time). Second, it is demonstrated that the very interdependence of variables and decisions may lead to multi-equilibrium solutions to the equilibrium flow problem, some of which may not satisfy the once taken for granted characteristic that if the flow pattern satisfies equilibrium conditions, then no user may be better off by unilaterally changing paths.

Date: 2004
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0308106042000316367 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:transp:v:27:y:2004:i:6:p:469-482

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GTPT20

DOI: 10.1080/0308106042000316367

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Planning and Technology is currently edited by Dr. David Gillingwater

More articles in Transportation Planning and Technology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().