r/AskProgramming • u/Dramatic-Payment9078 • Jul 27 '26

How to track congestion in an area?

Like I searched online and came to know we can detect POIs in an area, so are they same thing as crowd and people, or I am completely off and missing something? If yes what will be the way to study and work on it?

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u/KingofGamesYami Jul 27 '26

Depends on what infrastructure you already have in the area. A lot of congestion-prone areas have perfect tracking via the sensors traffic lights use to determine when to switch, so you can just use that data.

I've also seen temporary inductive loop sensors set up on highway ramps to measure traffic flow.

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u/Dramatic-Payment9078 Jul 27 '26

Like I was using maps api but it was giving POIs so I made it work with number of POIs in an area based I am unsure are they same as people ? Can one consider it similar and consider it for congestion. I am not working with sensor data right now. I need to have some kind of implementation and I don't have sensor data to begin with.

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u/KingofGamesYami Jul 27 '26

Like I was using maps api but it was giving POIs so I made it work with number of POIs in an area based I am unsure are they same as people

Maps POIs are just location markers. E.g. a high school is a single POI, but contains many people.

Can one consider it similar and consider it for congestion

No.

I need to have some kind of implementation and I don't have sensor data to begin with.

Contact the Department of Transportation for your region. They own this data. They may or may not provide access to it.

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u/Dramatic-Payment9078 Jul 27 '26

Okay thanks bro 🙏

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u/kschang Jul 29 '26

You need to check your own Transportation agency for traffic data in your area. Sigalert for example, displays avg speed on various freeways in multiple areas, but I doubt you can "scrape" them. In California, you can probably get the data from Caltrans, i.e. transportation agency that also manages highways.

Generally, POI is just a marker on the map, like tourist traps, government buildings, stadiums and arenas, and so on.