Traffic
189 posts
From The Economist, this chart shows the (mostly) decrease in foot traffic in major cities with coronavirus outbreaks. It’s based on data scraped from that section in Google Maps that shows how busy a location is, which I’m kind of surprised the Google limits allowed for. See James Fransham’s thread for more details on their process. Tags: coronavirus, Economist, Google, traffic
Google Maps incorporates data from smartphones to estimate traffic in any given location. Artist Simon Weckert used this tidbit to throw the statistical models off the scent. With a wagon of 99 smartphones, he turned roads red on Google Maps just by walking around. Nice. Tags: Google Maps, physical, Simon Weckert, traffic
The Stanford Open Policing Project just released a dataset for police traffic stops across the country: Currently, a comprehensive, national repository detailing interactions between police and the public doesn’t exist. That’s why the Stanford Open Policing Project is collecting and standardizing data on vehicle and pedestrian stops from law enforcement departments across the country — and we’re making that information freely available. We’ve already gathered over 200 million records from...
Craig Taylor from Ito World used a coral metaphor to visualize road networks in major cities around the world: For the past six months I have been fascinated by the concept of making city networks look like living corals. The varying patterns of urban forms are inherently dictated by their road network; a complex, seemingly organic connection of links moving people across their city. Like branches of coral they have...
A car moving at 70 miles per hour has to stop suddenly. Another car going 100 miles per hour also has to stop suddenly. Your intuition might say that the former requires 30% less energy to stop, but the energy required is actually proportional to the square of the velocity. Ben Sparks for Numberphile explains: Okay. Now what are the energy gains and losses for the guy trying to speed...
These are the traffic accidents that resulted in deaths in 2015, categorized by month, time of day, and factors involved. Read More
Each year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration releases data for traffic accidents that resulted in deaths. I briefly looked at the data a while back. Others did too. For years, there have been fewer deaths than the year before, but the 2015 data shows a 7.2 percent increase. So, the NHTSA released the data earlier this year and, along with the White House, formally reached out to the data...
Waiting in line stinks. I purposely go to the grocery store during off-times with my son, so I don't have to deal with the long lines. Google, I think currently only on Android phones, now provides information on when people go to the businesses around you, using a similar logic to auto traffic on Google Maps. Nice. Tags: Google, location, traffic
I hate all things commute- and traffic-related, and it's probably why I like to learn about what makes commutes painful. Maybe if I know more about what's happening, I won't get so frustrated when I have to drive. Transportation engineering PhD candidate Lewis Lehe has a look at bottlenecks and gridlock, creating simulations of both. The former is when too many cars want to do the same thing at once,...