Rush hour Rush hour traffic is visible, in the morning and afternoon of weekdays, for all the barriers, as indicated by the red zones in the heatmaps (Figure S2). This effect is more evident on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays probably because people commute from their homes, which are closer to their workplaces as opposed to Mondays and Fridays, which, being closer to the weekend, allow people to travel to/from different places and/or at different times (e.g. beach/ country house).
The heatmap data also shows that rush hour traffic tends to change from morning to afternoon at the same location, but in the opposite direction. For example, for B1.1 North the red heatmap cells are in the afternoon whereas for South they are observed in the morning. From these results, the specific rush hour traffic observed was calculated by taking the median number of vehicles per hour for both the morning (7 am to 9 am) and afternoon (4 pm to 7 pm) periods (Figure 2-Figure 4).
AFTERNOON
MORNING
Figure 2. Comparison between morning and afternoon traffic during rush hours for location L1. Barrier names and median traffic counting per hour for each direction are depicted in the pictures.
As mentioned, L1 is a large road with a lot of traffic with significant differences between morning and afternoon (Figure 2). In the morning, most of the vehicles in both barriers are heading south. This tendency is partially reversed in the afternoon.
For B1.2 there are more vehicles going north, whereas for B1.1, this is not observed, but there is a decrease in the vehicles going south and an increase in the other direction. These observations confirm that we have captured the rush hour effect and that this is an area with high traffic volumes that are maintained beyond 7 pm.
MORNING
AFTERNOON
10
Figure 3. Comparison between morning and afternoon traffic during rush hours for location L2. Barrier names and median traffic counting per hour for each direction are depicted in the pictures.
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