The Blocked Arteries of America's Roads

Metrocosm has created an interesting animated map of 24 hours worth of traffic on the U.S. Interstate Highway System. The US Highway Map visualizes an average day's traffic on the highways by hour of the day.

The simple visual metaphor used in this map is that the U.S. Interstate Highway System resembles the human circulatory system. As the map plays through an average day's traffic you can observe how the arteries become blocked at times of high road usage.

The data for the map is from the Department of Transportation. The map itself was custom made in WebGL with a little help from Three.js and D3.js. The map is actually in 3d so, if you want, you can rotate the map by left clicking on the map and dragging it around. You can also use your mouse's scroll wheel to zoom in & out on the map.