Can Analyzing Traffic Data tell a story about the Impact of Coronavirus?
The Coronavirus pandemic was a very dark time for modern society. For many, this was the first epidemic that they had ever experienced, an epidemic that was only thought to exist in dystopian movies and books. In the past, we have seen news coverage on other viruses that were considered to be societal threats, such as Ebola and the Swine Flu. But with the success of containment in regards to the previously mentioned viruses, it was not irrational to think that Coronavirus would also end up being contained.
As we now know, this could not have been farther from the truth. What started out as an outbreak in Wuhan China later became an outbreak in Japan, which would eventually lead to the first documented case of Coronavirus in the United States by the end of January 2020. What started out as two known Coronavirus Cases in the United states would soon skyrocket to 500,000 cases by the end of April 2020. However, in an effort to contain the spread of the virus and minimize the number of new cases, the United States government, like many other countries, introduced a solution in the form of a nation wide quarantine and lockdown. Although the main intentions of the lockdown were to help the American citizens stay safe and healthy, there were many unintended consequences.
The 2020 Coronavirus lockdowns shook the entire world and had a major effect on nearly every aspect of life in the United States. Many Americans of all ages had to miss out on once in a lifetime experiences such as graduation, prom, weddings, planned vacations and etc; for some, these were experiences that they would never be able to replicate for the rest of their existence. After the first weeks of quarantine, Americans started to show some resistance and disapproval of their new solitary lifestyle. Many Americans began to show signs of the united consequences of isolation such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.
These stories and experiences are ones that we have either lived out ourselves or gathered have seen through the wide range of media coverage. But, are there any other aspects of our life that can tell a story about the impacts of the Coronavirus Pandemic? What about the data that tracks the amount of traffic for any given day; could that be enough to give us an accurate story of impact that Coronavirus has had on the United States? I believe that this is very much possible. In fact, for the purpose of this post, I have taken the liberty of analyzing the traffic data in Colorado to map out an accurate timeline of the impacts of Coronavirus.
The data set that I chose to analyze was ‘cdot_traffic.csv’, which tracks the total number of drivers at a specific location and time for each day. This data goes all the way back to 2019 and ends on the last day of 2021. When analyzing the data, my main goal was to evaluate the fluctuation of traffic to determine the amount of people that were staying home and off the road during the pandemic. And here is the story that traffic data was able to give me:
In the beginning of March 2020, the total number of traffic by day began to sharply increase, which was then followed by a sharp decrease. This was for many reasons, some of them were the amount of passengers who were traveling home for the lockdown and the passengers who had to prepare for the lock down by going grocery shopping and buying loads of toilet paper.
By the end of April 2020 and early in the month of May 2020, the average total drivers on the road decreased by 50%. From here, the visualization that I constructed showed tiny fluctuations in the traffic count because of essential workers who were allowed to go back to work. However, the amount of people on the road was still low because the majority of citizens were home for the lockdowns. I should note that this time frame was the lowest number of average drivers on the road.
By the end of May 2020 and early June 2020, the traffic count began to increase again, especially around the Denver area. The main reason that I could find for this happening was mainly because of the death of George Floyd, which sparked protests near the capital of Colorado. This event was enough for a lot of Coloradians to leave their homes and travel to Denver to join the protest, as seen in the sudden spike in traffic count while performing my data analysis.
From June 2020 to July 2020, the traffic count number has a slightly higher average when compared to the number of March 2020 and April 2020, but it is still relatively lower than the number prior to the shutdown implementation. However, I started to see another spike in the traffic count in August 2020, which was when a lot of schools started to open back up. According to the CDC, this was also when the amount of Coronavirus Cases started to spike.
In the grand scheme of my analysis, I was able to observe that as time went on, the traffic count began to rise to its original number. I assume that this was because people began to feel the “covid fatigue”, which states that people were becoming too used to covid and feared it less as time went on. By the end of 2020, the traffic count was back to normal and remained that way throughout the year 2021.
But back to my earlier question, what story could traffic data tell us about the impact that Coronavirus has had on the United States? I believe that traffic data can provide an accurate timeline of the Coronavirus pandemic and other events that were occurring during that time frame. I also think that the timeline provided by traffic data can in fact show the amount of movement of the United States population across any specific area, thus it is right to infer that places with the most movement resulted in a higher rate of Coronavirus contractions.
