[Xorlev]

> Wouldn't it mean that google maps is influencing and even creating the traffic patterns ?

I'm pretty sure I've observed this in the wild. Occasionally there's a major accident on a freeway in Denver that totally stops traffic. People that know the area well enough hop off the first exit they can and find the most straightforward way over to a major arterial road running in the same direction. Maps sometimes comes up with the theoretically-fastest route that requires lots of turns through neighborhoods, so you'll see a whole conga line of cars piling through suburban streets and congesting the whole area.

[ceejayoz]

It'll be interesting to see if Google starts to proactively load balance these sorts of situations - send people on several different routes at once to keep traffic flowing.

[grundleborg]

This problem is an active area of academic research in the transport operations/planning field. It's generally known as "concentration and overreaction".

A classic example would be if a road is severely congested, and satnavs started advising drivers to take an alternative, smaller road, if too many people get the same advice that road will then end up even more congested and delay the people who followed the advice to change routes even more.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/42747332?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con... is a good starting point if you are interested in reading more about this area.

[NeutronBoy]

It's similar to the 'flip-flopping' problem (I'm sure there's a technical term for it) - actions based on feedback from a sensor changing the sensor reading, triggering a different reaction.

A common example I've seen used is: Automatic headlights on a car turning on in the dark. When the headlights turn on when you're in a garage or tunnel, they can create enough ambient light to trick the sensor into thinking it's light, and turning the headlights off. The solution here is to add a delay into the reaction.

I'm wondering what a solution is to a problem with mapping - is it add a delay to re-routing traffic? Or rerouting traffic randomly? Or spread traffic out over a number of routes? It's made harder by the fact that Google in this case won't be routing all traffic - just a subset.

[juliangregorian]

Waze does this, and Google owns Waze.