Tracking Traffic using Google

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I hate traffic so almost every night I would check traffic to home on Google Map before leaving work. It has saved me several times from stuck in traffic jam but  occasionally I forgot to do so and then found myself driving 20 mph in the highway.

So one day I thought about this and decided to write a small AJAX script to update the traffic status in the front page of my Web browser every minute. Then by saving the data (from Google Map) and incorporate into Google Chart (thanks!), I got a daily traffic chart going on to monitor traffic both ways between home and work.

 
Now I have about 4 weeks' of data and here are some observations:

  • Base time: ~ 20 mins between Home and Work when there is no/light traffic
  • Rush hours: 
    • Morning rush hour ( when traffic >30 mins ) is always around 7:20 to 10AM in weekdays
    • Afternoon rush hours, however, starts about 20 mins earlier everyday from Monday to Friday, so it appears people have more work on Monday
      • Monday         16:00 to 19:15
      • Tuesday         15:40 to 19:15
      • Wednesday   15:20 to 19:15
      • Thursday        15:00 to 19:15
      • Friday             14:35 to 19:15
  • Friday is light:
    • From Monday to Thursday, 
      •  Morning rush hours peak traffic time from home to work ~45 mins
      •  Afternoon rush hours peak traffic time from work to home ~60 mins
    •  on Friday there is less traffic
      • Morning rush hours peak traffic time from home to work ~35 mins
      • Afternoon rush hours peak traffic time from work to home ~50 mins
 There are always more traffic in the afternoon than in the morning due to more cars in road. It is hard to locate the root cause at first, but this Reddit link should help to understand.

And although Google charts sure work well,  I have found apex charts (Thanks!) appears to be more modern with more features. Here is the same chart on the same day (Nov 9 Friday):

 
And here is the chart on  Monday Nov 5 for comparison.