I was curious what impact the visitors coming to the Vermont region would have on traffic. When would it start? How bad would it get? How long would the traffic be bad? I'm a serial tech tinkerer with almost 20 years in the mapping industry, so with the help of AI, I set out to develop a toolset to visualize traffic on a map over time.
The inspiration behind this hobby project was to be able to see beyond "current" traffic maps during the eclipse. I thought it would be of interest to both travelers and locals.
Despite my years of experience, I have never set up such an intricate toolchain. It starts with TomTom's Traffic Flow API, which provides up-to-the-minute data about traffic. The workhorse in the pipeline is GitHub Actions, which is a paid feature allowing you to run arbitrary code automatically in the cloud. I store the scraped data in Amazon S3, and finally, display it on a simple Leaflet map.
This project is a testament to the power of AI-assisted development. Utilizing ChatGPT and GitHub CoPilot, I was able to figure out complex systems and find solutions much faster than by Googling. Since I don't code every day, this made everythng faster and more fun. Despite the power of AI, I still reviewed all provided code solutions, and would regularly have to intervene and adjust the output to suit my needs.
Got a question or suggestion? I'd love to hear from you! email me if you've got anything to say.
The resources used to develop this project were not overly expensive, but they aren't free! If you're seeing this, its possible that The Internet Masses have descended and are using my cloud resources to view my stored data. If you would like to chip in to cover my expenses, you can Venmo me here.