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by gt565k 1913 days ago
This happened with the bridge collapse on I-85 in Atlanta [1]

I used to take the access road parallel to the bridge and avoid a lot of traffic that was south bound. When the bridge collapsed and I-85 was blocked off, everyone learned about the parallel access road, and it now became a cluster of a traffic hot zone too.

Prior to that, a lot of people were not aware of the alternate route.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_85_bridge_collapse

2 comments

I’ve seen this happen to a lot of my favorite shortcuts in the east bay since the introduction of waze.
The discovery of the alternate route by "everyone else" means that the roads are now in more usage.

Unless the bridge collapse resulted in increased traffic levels afterwards, the same traffic that used to go over I85 is now distributed over 2 routes.

While there's a net negative to you, it's likely that a lot of people ended up saving time on their routes.

> it's likely that a lot of people ended up saving time on their routes.

It's theoretically possible this describes a Braess paradox, whereby everybody loses: https://image.slideserve.com/280060/braess-s-paradox-l.jpg