Animating Commuter Journeys

flowmap.blue is a great tool for creating interactive flow-maps. To create a flow-map with flowmap.blue you just need to save your date in a Google Spreadsheet. flowmap.blue will then automatically create a flow-map from your data.

Commuter Flows Between Swiss Municipalities 2014 is a great example of flowmap.blue in action. This interactive flow-map visualizes where commuters travel from home to work in Swiss towns and cities.The map uses different sized flow lines to show the number of people who commute into different municipalities from outlying areas.

You can hover over any location on the map to see the number of people who commute into the location every day and the number of outgoing commuters from the selected location. If you select the 'Animate flows' option on the map you can see these commuting flows animated on the map, with the animated flow lines showing the direction of commuting traffic in and out of the different municipalities.

Another example of commuting flows that was created with flowmap.blue is Commuters in the Netherlands. This map uses data from 2016 to show the commuting patterns of Dutch towns and cities. Commuters in the Netherlands includes the same option to see these commuting flows actually animated on the map.


Mark Evans has created animated maps of commuting flows in the USA and in the UK. Mark's hypnotic animated maps show workers traveling to and from towns and cities in both countries.

The Commute Map is an animated map showing where people commute from home to work in the United States. The maps don't show the actual journeys that commuters make but give a great sense of how town and city centers suck in commuters from surrounding suburbs. As the animations play out on the map you can see the movement of workers into the cities in the morning and the movement home again in the early evening.

Mark's Commute Map of England & Wales shows where people commute from home to work in the UK. With both the US and UK map you just need to use the two drop-down menus to first select a region and then an individual city or town.