QEW451

Visualizing AADT on the QEW

For another project about data visualization, I chose a topic that I am highly interested in: automotive infrastructure. I wanted to make a visualization of traffic volumes on Ontario's 400-series freeways and show how it changes depending on geography.

The first few ideas were weak, and at the same time, overly complex, so I decided to stick to one road and show the change in its annual average daily traffic (AADT) throughout its length.

I went on MTO's website that offers Ontario highway traffic volumes on demand and selected the QEW. It's a medium-length road that I hypothesized would show some interesting variance in its AADT. The sections give were tiny, so I combined them into larger ones to get a total of 12 sections. From here I created data stacks and then used a flow-map to show how traffic changes from Toronto through Oakville and Hamilton, all the way to US-Canada border at Buffalo.

When drawing the layers on the segment flow lines, I had to exaggerate the width so that it would be more clearly visible. I added some callouts that tell the reader some context regarding the AADT in a particular section of the road and for what possible reason.

As someone who drives to the United States via the QEW fairly often during the year, but crosses via ON-405 at Lewiston, I was rather surprised to see the colossal drop in traffic after ON-406/St. Catherines (presumably because of access to the Welland Canal). I know that shipping requires lots of freight trucks, but I didn't think it was this much.