Arterial: Traffic Sandbox

Close a street and watch traffic find another way.

Arterial turns any city into a traffic sandbox. Load the real road network for the area on your screen, add trips between any two points, and see which streets fill up and which stay clear. Then change the network — remove a road, add a new one — and run it again.

WHAT YOU CAN DO - Search any place in the world and load its real roads and rail lines from OpenStreetMap - Find the shortest route between two intersections - Add new roads or remove existing ones by tapping the map - Add trips between origins and destinations, choose how many vehicles per hour travel between them, and run a simulation - See every road colored from free-flowing green to congested red

HOW THE SIMULATION WORKS Arterial uses static traffic assignment with the method of successive averages, a standard model in transport planning. Traffic is spread across the network until no driver could arrive sooner by switching routes. The simulation runs entirely on your iPhone, with no account required. Loading map data requires an internet connection.

Results show what-if scenarios based on the traffic you enter, not live traffic conditions.

WHO IT'S FOR Students of urban planning, civil engineering, and transport, and anyone who has sat in traffic and wondered what would happen if one road were closed.

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Signaux de découverte