Unintended road experiments — how kids cause traffic
On Tuesday evening around 6pm, the Governor of Alabama declared a state of emergency for the following day. The declaration was based on anticipated weather moving through the state which could cause tornadoes. Shortly after, the following was cancelled in the Birmingham region:
- schools systems
- church events
- sports practices
Thankfully, we never had to take shelter in Birmingham and the day passed with thunderstorms in the morning and windy / dry afternoon.
Running a business has taught me that there is important data when irregularities are created. Yesterdays declared state of emergency created an experiment that we could not run otherwise: everything for kids was cancelled.
Comparing traffic data
The image below on the left is the 5:25pm realtime view of traffic from Google maps. The image below on the right is the typical Wednesday at 5:25 pm.
More about the closures
Schools were closed abruptly on late Tuesday evening. Parents who could work from home with their kids chose that path — thus fewer people in local offices. Most of the parents I spoke with worked from home.
Kids sports practices, which usually start at 6pm were also cancelled. Then, churches cancelled service.
People without kids were largely unaffected. Most of the folks I know without kids went to work as they would any other day. I had coffee at Octane, which was half full and mostly quiet.
Hypothesis: Kids cause traffic
The driving patterns required to support the typical patterns of kids cause traffic. Nearly all schools start at 8am. This acts as a forcing function pushing parents to leave their houses at similar times. Nearly all after school care programs end at 5pm, which acts as a forcing function pushing parents to get the most done at work, yet get to the school as quickly as possible. Kids sporting events starting at 6pm behaves likewise.
Two faceted forcing function
The two important bits of the forcing function are groups of people have:
- similar times
- similar locations
Roads can generally handle random traffic and random volumes. Where roads create traffic is when there is too many cars in a singular location at a singular time.
Think of traffic around Alabama or Auburn football games. The patterns created by kids cause drivers to create miniature traffic jams at the time and and location of the kids events.
