Web Applications Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for power users of web applications. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I am using Google Maps to determine my route to work. It is about an hour currently, but I know that when I factor in traffic it will be longer. I want to know just how much longer it will be.
I was wondering if there is a way to use the past traffic delays to calculate what my travel time might be given a specific travel time for that day?
If you hover over the directions box (top-left) on the map, you will see that it tells you the estimated time for leaving now.
If you click on the "Leave Now" part, you can change the departure or arrival time. When you do, you will see the estimated time update to take into account known traffic flows for that date/time.
That's as good as it gets since those kinds of calculations are highly complex and based on all sorts of factors including road works and average traffic flows.
I had the same thought when I started my new job and I used R-Studio to pull traffic and route data from Google's Directions API from 6 am to 10 am every 15 minute increments to see when the commute time peaks and what times it would be best to leave the house (according to Google's best estimates).
You can get an estimate of commute times including traffic with Google Maps.
If you go to https://www.google.com/maps, type in the destination address, and click "directions", you will see an options tab which defaults to "Leave now". Change that to "arrive by" or "depart by", depending on your circumstances, and choose a time and a date. I use "arrive by 8am" the next morning and it tells me I have to leave my house by 5:50am to get to work by 8am with traffic.
Very useful tool.
In the Waze mobile app (at least on iOS), if you go to Planned Drives section, you can see an exact time estimate (instead of a wide range that Google maps gives you) for a future commute.
