If you’re one of the 54 million people in the U.S. planning to travel during the Thanksgiving weekend, you’ll want to bookmark this project from Google Maps, Google News Labs, and the visual journalists at Polygraph.
It’s a suite of data-driven trip-planning tools that serve as a cheat sheet for anyone attempting to travel this week. To make it, the group looked at historical aggregated data collected from the total number of cars on the road at all times, which was determined by the speed and location of Android phones with location services enabled (all that traffic information, according to the researchers, is anonymous).
The resulting visualizations show you how to avoid traffic jams in 25 cities. Simply select your city from a pull-down menu and the viz tells you the best time to leave before Thanksgiving and, equally crucially, when to return after Thanksgiving.
In addition to traffic data, Google also dug into Search trends by state, resulting in a few other hilarious visualizations. Could it be mere coincidence that the number three most popular search for the Friday after Thanksgiving in Ohio is “tattoo shop,” and the fourth is “liquor store?” Or that in Maryland, the top search for that Friday is “pub?” I don’t think so.
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