The recent solar eclipse on April 8th gave us a rare but expected glimpse at unusual traffic disparities in Pennsylvania. To visualize this, I used PennDOT's Traffic Information Repository (TIRe) to map and graph the hourly directional traffic volume for April 8th. Below is a map of the locations of traffic counters for this post. I picked a sampling of counters in a variety of locations on highways going roughly north and south. For reference, the solar eclipse occurred from 2:02 PM to 4:30 PM in Erie, PA. Totality occurred from 3:16 to 3:20.
Locations of Traffic Counters Mentioned in this Post
This first counter in Crawford county just south of Erie shows an expected increase in northbound traffic in the morning and then a huge surge of southbound traffic after totality.
My family travelled through the Route 15 counter shown below around 6 pm. Tioga county is pretty rural and this road is usually empty, and so it was rare to see so many cars going in one direction. Traffic was about 600% of normal. Notice the peak time of southbound traffic is about two hours after totality, reflecting the time required to drive from the totality path area to the counter.
This counter on I-81 near Scranton is further south. The disparity of southbound traffic here spans multiple hours into the evening. This position would likely pick up a large portion of travellers going back to the NYC area.
The chart for this I-83 counter is several hours south of the totality path. It does not look as dramatic, but you notice a large disparity late in the evening starting at 10 p.m with traffic around 300% of normal.
Aside from major accidents our road closures, The traffic disparities on April 8 were significant. A good follow-up project could be to compare the elipse to other events like big sporting events or holidays. If you have any events in mind to rival April 8th, send them my way.