Traffic data used in recovery forecasts By: Sarah Lawrynuik Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Apr. 29, 2020 Last Modified: 8:06 PM CDT Wednesday, Apr. 29, 2020 Updates

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/04/2020 (1738 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeggers who have had to continue making their way to work during the pandemic will have noticed that their commute times have much improved in the past few weeks, but city data shows that traffic is beginning to pick up again.

During the week beginning March 14, the City of Winnipeg watched traffic levels fall to 64 per cent of normal traffic flows. Last week that number rose to 72 per cent.

Traffic has fallen more on weekends than weekdays and varies only slightly across different parts of Winnipeg.

An easier commute might be cause for minor celebrations in a sea of bad news, but similar data sets are being used to help understand global population behaviour, and they may even hold some insight into what economic recovery could look like.

TomTom, an international location technology company, has been collecting anonymous traffic data sets for more than a decade, providing real-time traffic information to various companies from 81 different countries.

It was the beginning of February when the company began seeing drastic declines in traffic across 22 cities in China. Then analysts were able to track the changes in behaviour as health protocols spread across the globe.

TomTom senior traffic and data expert Nick Cohn looked at data collected across Canada with the Free Press and was able to accurately surmise where some of the country’s most significant outbreaks were based using traffic data. Montreal, Quebec City and Toronto were among the cities seeing the largest declines in congestion.

And while Winnipeg and Edmonton have both experienced declines in congestion, they have seen the lowest amount of traffic-pattern changes among the cities the company monitors in the country.

“It looks like (Winnipeg) still has a lot of people staying at home, but not everyone, Cohn said in an interview from Amsterdam. "It’s not like nothing is happening there.”

Short of extreme weather events that clear roads in localized areas, Cohn said he’s never seen a change in traffic patterns such as the ones brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Winnipeg traffic volume, January 24 and April 3

wfpremovefromapp:

Move the slider back and forth to compare traffic volume before and during the pandemic. Decrease in weight of red lines represents decrease in time needed to travel route due to drop in traffic congestion.

:wfpremovefromapp

TomTom worked with local authorities in Italy’s northern Lombardy region to help officials understand whether and how well enforcement actions were working and where heavy traffic patterns remained.

“We gave them some data for free where they were asking for trip patterns for big employment centres, where they were worried about if they needed to do extra enforcement,” Cohn said. “And we measured that there was something like 75 per cent fewer trips to some of these big employment centres, which were high-risk areas for the virus.”

Now, as China begins to emerge from its isolation state, Cohn can track as traffic picks up again. More people are going to work but still traffic remains muted on the weekend, he said.

“It seems like people started going back to work, but aren’t doing anything else aside from essential travel,” he said. “So now, as things are changing, we’re trying to pay attention to where it’s changing.”

Traffic data is able to provide unique insight into how behaviour is changing as recovery attempts are being made in some parts of the world, and that information is being sought after by banks, the auto industry, energy companies and other sectors.

Companies are looking to glean all they can from what little information is available about how recovery will occur. Cohn said the data is being used to forecast future demand for petroleum products, new cars and other related goods.

sarah.lawrynuik@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @SarahLawrynuik