Traffic signals grant intersections one movement at a time, often making vehicles stop and restart. Rhythmic control proposes a different organizing rule for automated traffic: reserve moving slots that pass through the grid in a coordinated pattern, so vehicles can join a slot and keep progressing.
The first act displays the motion of virtual containers across a six-by-six one-way network before real vehicles appear. The next act shows cars entering those containers, changing slots when needed, and passing through two magnified junctions. A final illustrative comparison places rhythmic control beside signal operation as demand grows, tracking completed trips and vehicles waiting outside the grid. The core insight is that intersection capacity can be treated as a coordinated space-time reservation problem, rather than only as a sequence of red and green phases. The comparison depends on its stated car-following and signal assumptions; it shows a mechanism, not a universal performance ranking.
Many commuters want to arrive at a similar time, but a bottleneck can admit only a limited number of vehicles per minute. If everyone departs near the preferred time, a long queue forms. If departures are spread out, the queue shrinks, but some people arrive early or late instead.
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Building an extra road sounds like an unambiguous improvement. Braess's paradox shows why that intuition can fail when drivers independently choose the route that seems fastest to them. A new link changes everyone's incentives, and the resulting route changes can overload roads that previously worked well.
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Drivers consider the time they personally spend on a road, but each additional driver may slow down many others. That difference between private and collective cost can make the route pattern chosen by individuals less efficient than the pattern that minimizes total travel time.
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