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>> Studies of road building usually find that the equilibrium commute time reached is equal to or higher than the old equilibrium.

This is braess paradox, right ? the reason for it is non-optimal selection of routes by users, because of lack of information. But Google maps doesn't suspossed to have that problem because it has more(real time, per road) information.

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The problem isn't that people choose routes that are strictly non-optimal, it's that they choose routes that are optimal for them - essentially using a greedy algorithm to choose routes. This is why closing roads can actually improve traffic in certain scenarios. Google Maps won't solve this, unless it starts suggesting routes that are optimal for the network instead of the individual, which is unlikely as they cater to individual drivers. Truly optimal traffic would require central route planning of some sort.

That's true. But don't you think Google take into account predictions of heavy load in otherwise optimal routes, guiding users elsewhere, and so avoiding the problem or at least decreasing it?

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