Slashdot Mirror
Google Maps Crunches Data, Tells You When To Drive On Thanksgiving
Nerval's Lobster writes Whatever your plans for Thanksgiving, Google can offer some advice: try to avoid driving anywhere the day before. Analysts from the search-engine giant's Google Maps division crunched traffic data from 21 U.S. cities over the past two years and found that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is by far the worst traffic day that week, with some notable exceptions. (In Honolulu, Providence, and San Francisco, the worst traffic is always on Saturday; in Boston, it's Tuesday.) Unfortunately, Wednesday is often the only available travel day for many Americans—but Google thinks they can beat the worst of the traffic if they leave before 2 P.M. or after 7 P.M. on that day. Traffic on Thanksgiving itself is also light, according to the data. When it comes to driving back home, Sunday beats Saturday from a traffic perspective. According to Google Maps' aggregated trends, Americans also seek out "ham shop," "pie shop," and "liquor store" on the day before Thanksgiving, as they rush to secure last-minute items.
It's great that we have Big Data to pull these non-obvious patterns out of complex phenomena.
Most people drive the day before Thanksgiving because it's the first day of their vacation. They can't really leave on Tuesday unless they drive at night, because most people will be working that day.
Unfortunately, Wednesday is often the only available travel day for many Americans—but Google thinks they can beat the worst of the traffic if they leave before 2 P.M. or after 7 P.M. on that day.
Wow, thanks. Never would have guessed that without this data analysis.
Traffic on Thanksgiving itself is also light, according to the data.
Another important revelation!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I took the train up to Sacramento to visit my parents and we drove back on Thanksgiving Day to visit my brother's family in Silicon Valley. We had zero visibility fog that morning. With little traffic on the freeway, my father drove at 40MPH in the slow lane. Some idiot in the next lane over drove past at 100MPH. We didn't see him in the fog, we felt him as his passage rocked our car. A few years prior to that, Sacramento had a 100+ car pileup because someone drove that fast in the fog.
Why include a pointless link to dice.com? It is just a snippet of the actual posting from google (here is a direct link that will get you to the post even after the blog is updated...
I say microwave some potatoes and Skype it up from home if traffic is bad. Then at least the dinner can't turn into a fist fight, lol.
I don't have a drivers license. I take the bus, subway, plane or the train. Unfortunately, the buses that I take gets stuck in traffic on Wednesday. Don't get me started with the intercity buses that travel on the interstate highways.
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a busy travel day?!? How did that ever escape our attention? I mean, aside from every DJ on every radio station, and every traffic reporter on every TV station, telling us that every year, how could we possibly find such things out if Google didn't do the heavy lifting?
"Ham Shop"?
"Ham Shop"???
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
How would you tell?
The traffic Wednesday before Thanksgiving in central and eastern Massechusettes is a bit, how you say, maddening! Interstates 95, 90 and 495 are packed sardines halfway through the state in every direction, except North. Go figure... What would normally take 30-45 minutes to drive west out of Boston, takes at minimum, 2 hours! This is in the afternoon, and into evening! Of course, Boston itself, is just fine.
I'll be taking backroads to get to souther NH from Portland, and avoiding Massechusettes altogether. Lesson learned!
Aggregate historical data is better than nothing; but I'd just fire up Waze.
Google hasn't killed Waze off... yet.
#DeleteChrome
NEWS FLASH!!!!!! There is heavy traffic the day before thanksgiving, thanksgiving day, and the day after!!!! Also expect long lines at airports,bus stations,train stations. only been that way the last 47 years of my life.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Up next on Slashdot: Google's map-reduce algorithms running on a 10-million node cluster have determined that Mother's Day is one of the busiest days of the year for phone traffic.
...because that's when everyone wants to travel. Telling me to travel when I don't want to travel ain't a solution.
Hey buddy! Just ruin your holiday and you'll easily avoid the traffic!
Why don't I just not celebrate it at all.
Is this what we can expect from big data? Spend another day with your annoying family consuming the entire weekend, work more hours, or take half the work day off?
Here's a better way. Stab yourself in the neck, then you can take an ambulance right through any traffic that stands in your way. Your family will meet you at the hospital with a slice of turkey.
Here's another idea. Just celebrate thanksgiving two weeks later. You can avoid everything.
Thanks for the help, oh great and wise swammy-g.
"How to dispose of the corpse of an annoying relative who I just murdered"
I like a data-driven blog post as much as the next guy -- probably more, actually -- but where's the data? I already know that leaving Boston on Tuesday is a bad idea. Give me a graph of hourly traffic volumes on the Mass Pike, and this post would be actually useful.
I used to drive "home" for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Had some hair-raising, painful, and very uncomfortable experiences and only realize now that I and my immediate family are lucky to be alive.
Since the mid-nineties, I've refused to travel on the holidays. We have Thanksgiving and Christmas at our house. This makes sense, because "Home" is not where your parents live (or used to live), it's where you have set roots and raised your own family.
Once a year I take a trip to see relatives, (and to have some time to myself) but it's not near any holiday.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Driving ON the holiday is much, much easier than driving the day before.
It's cheaper and there's less airport chaos if you fly on Thanksgiving or Christmas.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Whoever said this, never drove the Massachusetts Turnpike (I-90) westbound on Thanksgiving day. A 90 minute drive to Hartford can take up to four hours.
...it can't even give efficient driving directions for light traffic in the suburbs. In the city with real traffic it almost always gives "bad" (worse than you'd get from knowing the streets) directions.