This week’s Transportation Tuesday compares congestion (travel speed) for the past two Fridays: January 15 (the Friday of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend) and January 22 (inclement weather with winter conditions). The video below from INRIX shows travel speeds on the interstates in the 10-county metro Atlanta area for January 15 (left side) and January 22 (right side). Green indicates faster speeds and red indicates slower speeds.
Although it was the beginning of a long holiday weekend, the video shows that January 15 had typical workday morning/evening rush hour patterns. Looking at the congestion patterns for January 22, it appears that we have learned our lesson from “Snowpocalypse” 2014. Heeding weather warnings, more people may have stayed at home, as speeds were faster than normal during the morning rush hour. Employers may have encouraged employees to leave work early, as speeds were the slowest from 2-4 PM and returned to near free-flow conditions around 5 PM. The line chart (Figure 1) compares travel speeds by the hour for January 15 and 22.
