Geospatial experiment · Historical traffic
Los Angeles, measured in minutes
In Los Angeles, distance is measured as much in minutes as in miles: a ten-mile trip can take ten minutes or an hour, depending on the time of day. This freeway-mediated cartogram shows how the city expands and contracts through a typical weekday. Choose an origin, move through the five-minute timeline, and compare geography with travel-time geometry.
Historical weekday medians, not live traffic. Each five-minute clock time is the median across 85 weekdays in Mar–Jun 2012. Freeway routes use a directed OpenStreetMap graph; local access is estimated at 15 mph with circuity and a terminal penalty. The 3:00 AM outline and minute scale remain fixed as time changes. Hatching marks sparse sensor coverage.
Sources: Caltrans PeMS / METR-LA / DCRNN · © OpenStreetMap contributors