We compared data for the Friday-Monday before the Sydney Taylor Swift concert and the Friday-Monday that the shows took place to see how the pop star impacted traffic in Sydney Olympic Park.
If you're a Compass account holder, you can download the .ciot file here and reupload it into the platform to look at these outputs on your computer.
Impact on Surrounding Roads
We looked at chainage graphs to help understand the impact of Taylor Swift on surrounding roads in Sydney Olympic Park. We compared two time periods:
- Friday 16th - Monday 19th February (the weekend before the concert)
- Friday 23rd - Monday 26th February (the weekend of the concert)
The chainage graph below shows average speeds for the weekend before and the weekend of the Taylor Swift concert. The weekend that the Taylor Swift concert happened, average speeds across the length of the selected road (i.e., Bennelong Parkway) shows that drivers were driving slower.
The graphs also show that there were bigger variations in speed along Bennelong Parkway the weekend of the concert (the dark orange line) compared to the weekend before (the lighter orange line). This can be seen visually in the form of larger peaks and troughs in the darker orange line, whereas the lighter orange line has a much smoother appearance.
The graph below shows median speeds over distance in one direction on Australia Avenue, comparing the weekend before and of the concert.
Similar to the graph above, the darker line on the bottom of the graph corresponds to the week of the Taylor Swift concert, showing lower speeds along the length of Australia Avenue during the 4 days.
We also looked at how braking and acceleration changed along Bennelong Parkway. The graph below shows median braking along the length of the parkway for the weekend prior and the weekend of the Concert.
Median braking showed harsher braking on the week of the Taylor Swift concert, but no braking events that exceeded safe G-force thresholds of -0.47
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Braking and Accelerating distribution graphs for the weekend of the concert along Bennelong Parkway.
Road Closures
Besides increased traffic volumes for those travelling to see Taylor, road closures also impacted traffic in the Sydney Olympic Park Precinct. The image below shows how connected vehicle data can be just as interesting in showing where vehicles DIDN'T go.
Road Closures on Olympic Blvd, indicated by no data events during the 4 days of shows
Two other case studies that highlight how missing data can be just as important as the data you can see: