Traffic Data Analysis: Turning Data into Insights

By abhishek.verma75000 · August 24, 2026

I recently analyzed traffic data to understand congestion, rush-hour impact, weather effects, traffic signals, and accident risk. The analysis shows how…

Downtown Core is the most congested city zone, with an average congestion score of 52.5. To explore patterns further, a heatmap was created showing average congestion scores across all city zones and hours, along with a bar chart ranking zones by congestion and a line chart showing how congestion varies throughout the day.

During rush hours, average wait time jumps to 20.28 minutes compared to just 10.0 minutes in non-rush hours — a 102.8% increase. Similarly, queue length grows from 99.9 meters to 202.94 meters, a 103.1% increase. This shows that congestion roughly doubles during rush hour periods.

Green light duration shows a strong positive relationship with both traffic flow rate and queue length. As green light duration increases, traffic flow rate rises sharply (correlation of 0.937), and queue length also tends to increase (correlation of 0.651). The longest green light duration observed (84 seconds) coincided with both the highest average flow rate (about 1,878 vehicles) and the highest average queue length (about 371 vehicles). This suggests that longer green lights are typically used at intersections already experiencing heavier traffic, rather than the longer duration causing more congestion.

Severe congestion and Highway roads are the biggest contributors to emissions and fuel waste. Arterial roads have the highest total emissions overall (24.8 million), but Highways have the highest average emission per record (354.3). When you combine road type and congestion, Highway roads under Severe congestion are by far the worst offenders, averaging 838.8 emission units and 243.0 fuel waste units per record - much higher than other combinations. Severe congestion alone accounts for the highest total emissions (43.7 million) and fuel waste (12.9 million) of any congestion level.

Rainfall and low visibility both negatively affect traffic conditions. Under heavy rain, average speed drops to 32.37 km/h (from 42.8 km/h with no rain) while congestion rises from 49.63 to 57.05. Similarly, when visibility is very low (0-2km), speeds fall to 33.96 km/h and congestion climbs to 53.58, compared to 42.61 km/h and 49.77 congestion in very high visibility (8-10km) conditions. While the overall correlations are relatively mild, the categorized comparisons clearly show that worsening weather conditions consistently slow down traffic and increase congestion.

The analysis explored which conditions correlate with higher accident rates across roads and intersections, with an overall baseline accident rate of 1.98%. Visualizations were generated showing how numeric factors (like traffic density, speed, and weather metrics) correlate with accidents, alongside a breakdown of accident rates by weather conditions, road conditions, congestion levels, and situational factors like rush hour, weekends, holidays, construction, and proximity to schools. An additional chart tracks how accident rates fluctuate by hour of day, helping to pinpoint peak-risk periods.

The analysis breaks down average congestion scores and wait times based on whether locations are near a school, hospital, or market. Data tables were generated showing these comparisons for each facility type, split by presence versus absence, allowing you to see how proximity to these facilities relates to traffic congestion patterns.

Box plots showing the distribution of vehicle count and traffic flow rate across different road types were generated, letting you visually spot outliers for each category. These charts highlight the spread, median, and extreme values within each road type group, making it easy to see which categories have more variability or unusual data points.

The analysis ranked city zones by their average parking occupancy and average queue length, and produced a comparison bar chart highlighting the zones that place in the top 5 for both metrics side by side. This lets you quickly see which areas experience both high parking demand and long queues at the same time.

The analysis shows clear weekly patterns in traffic behavior. Friday has the lowest average speed at 40.0, suggesting heavier congestion as the work week ends, while Thursday shows the highest traffic density at 101.6. Two line charts were created comparing weekday versus weekend trends across all seven days, making it easy to see how speed and density shift throughout the week and differ between weekdays and weekends.