Braess's Paradox Implies Reduced Demand

David Levinson
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David Levinson: TransportLab, School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney

Working Papers from University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group

Abstract: Induced demand is usually interpreted as additional capacity reducing generalized cost and producing more travel. When a network exhibits Braess's paradox, an added link raises user-equilibrium cost, and we would thus expect demand to fall. I show this in Braess's original four-node numerical network with linear link costs and inverse demand. In the default case, the added link raises elastic equilibrium cost from 70.14 to 80.00 and reduces demand from 3.66 to 3.33. The reported 143-point sweep maps the Braess region in inverse-demand space; no sign-inconsistent cells appear. The accompanying browser implementation reproduces the reported comparison and sweep.

Keywords: Braess Paradox; induced demand; elastic demand; latent demand; user equilibrium; network design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Published in Findings

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.32866/001c.162821 Published version landing page, 2026 (text/html)
https://github.com/dlevinson/braess-js Data and code package, 2026 (text/html)
https://transportlab.sydney.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/braess/documentation.html Browser application documentation, 2026 (text/html)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nex:wpaper:paper-2026-17

DOI: 10.32866/001c.162821

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