Search in your favourite search engine for the term 'Commute Stress' and you will find hits like:
10 Things Your Commute Does to Your Body
It's official: Commuting to work makes you miserable
Your Commute Is Killing You
Your Commute is Slowly Killing You
Commuting makes you 'unhappy and anxious', says ONS
10 Stressbusting Strategies for Your Daily Commute
Yes, your everyday commute is SLOWLY KILLING YOU!!!
I am based out of Bangalore, India and my everyday problem/pain is the TRAFFIC. With heterogeneous vehicles on the road (bikes, various sizes of cars, buses, mini buses, trucks, tempo travellers, autorickshaw, tractors, cycle) the traffic is insane here especially in the 'peak hours' (read it as 8 am - 10:30 am).
My office is around 14-15 km from my home and I take an average of 50 min to reach every day. Sometime I hardly take 35 min and there were some days when i have spent close to 2 hours behind the wheels to commute 14 km !!!
Over a period of one year, I have collected the data for my commute, tried to cosume it in SAP Operational Process Intelligence (SAP OPInt) which is a HANA-based application and i have some startling findings:
1. For me, June is the worst month (avg of 55 min) and March is the best (avg of 40 min) to commute
2. I can reach office Fridays and Mondays ealier while it takes hell a lot of struggle in Tuesdays and Thursdays.
3. I reach office earlier 1st and 30th day of a month while take a lot of time on 23rd and 14th day
4. Schools and colleges has an effect on my commuting time to office!
For 1st day of a month
For 14th day of a month
The following is a snapshot of OPInt dashboard showing the data for January 2015
I have then consumed the various calculation views generated by SAP OPInt and then created some charts in Lumira
The following box plot explains the day of month (1-31) analyzed over day of week (Mon-Fri) and how it affects the commute time
This scatter plot chart tells how the starting time (the time I start from my home) affects the commute time
The following Funnel chart shows commute time by month. June (6th month) is the worstwhile March (3rd month) is the best. Maybe the schools & colleges in Bangalore reopens after summer holidays on June and March is usually the month when the year-end exams happen for schools and college.
The following chart shows how the commute time has been over 2014 & 2015 (so far) and its dependecies over the weekday (mon-fri)
With all these inferences,
1. What if there is an application which is intelligent enough to identify trends based on historical records, collate them with live traffic and predict what could happen in the next 30-40 minutes?
2. What if application could tell me what is the best time to start today?
3. What if the application could integrate with my outlook (to know the earliest meeting in my calendar) and my alarm app to set an alarm automatically so that i reach office with less stress and more zeal to perform well?
If we can develop such an application then we can not only save office commuters from increasin their stress level but also control the effect on the environment due to the carbon monoxide emitted by the ehaust of numerous vehicles on the road.
I would need fellow SCNers to give in thier ideas on how this magic application can be built.
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