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It's an example of taxicab geometry! That's a type of simple metric space considered by Hermann Minkowski that's intriguing from a purely mathematical perspective.Sure, all the paths through the Manhattan street grid --a model for "taxicab geometry"-- are the same in principle, but in a real "taxicab" world, it all comes down to the time spent at stop lights. A key take-away in either the pure mathematical case or a model closer to real world with stops and traffic is that a path clos to the usual Euclidean straight shortest path offers no actual advantage.

Frank Reed