| Melih Eşiyok, Okan Uluturk, Berke Bekar, Israfil Isakhli, Efendi Nasiboglu Detection of the Braess Paradox in Signalized Road Networks via Traffic Flow Simulation |
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| Abstract. Braess's paradox is an observation stating that adding one or more roads to a road network can slow down the overall flow of traffic. This paradox was first discovered by Arthur Pigou in 1920 and later named after the German mathematician Dietrich Braess in 1968. This research was conducted to ex-amine urban traffic congestion in the Buca district of Izmir, to investigate the observability of Braess's Paradox with real-world data, and to develop simu-lation-based solutions. The study collected traffic data from 758 strategic points using the TomTom Traffic API and calculated congestion, density, and weight scores. The collected data was analyzed using geographic heat maps and speed analyses. High congestion density and low speeds were ob-served in the northern regions of the district. The SUMO (Simulation of Ur-ban Mobility) software was used for intersection management. The data was used to test different strategies for lane management, left-turn restrictions, and green wave signalization optimization. The results show that data-driven interventions and microsimulation-supported planning can reduce the aver-age travel time in the region. |
| Keywords: Intelligent Transportation Systems, Braess Paradox, Traffic Simulation, TomTom Traffic API, SUMO |
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| DOI: https://doi.org/10.54381/itta2026.1.05 |