The Friday Phenomenon

listermint

So i was thinking this over the last month and its most definitely not a once off. Friday always has the least amount of traffic on the roads anywhere that i travel too. The commute is quicker and shorter. The M50 for example even appears to have half the traffic that it would have on a Thursday or any other day of the week.

Having looked for a similar thread it brought me back to this thread from 12 years ago.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=51246755

Where the same question was posed.

It seems this is not a new thing and was present within the Celtic years too.


So has any real study been carried out by the NRA on this phenomenon Why does it occur? What can we do to encourage more of it ?

magicbastarder

not that i commute by car, but i have only been in the office once on a friday in over three years.
you'll probably find many people also do this, or when people take days off work, they're heavily biased towards mondays and fridays.

listermint

magicbastarder wrote: »

not that i commute by car, but i have only been in the office once on a friday in over three years.
you'll probably find many people also do this, or when people take days off work, they're heavily biased towards mondays and fridays.

But Monday never ever displays this phenomenon at all. Terrible commuting day.

Was wondering why there has been no real evidence based studies because its quite obviously not an accident.

magicbastarder

i recall reading that tuesday mornings and thursday evenings are the worst times for traffic - that was from a few years ago, not sure if there's been a possible change.
but traffic is susceptible to minor inputs. if you go from 95% of a road's carrying capacity to 105%, you'll get a result out of proportion with the roughly 10% change in initial conditions.

seamus

Monday and Friday are the quietest commuting days in my experience. Friday moreso, but Mondays are pretty good. Tuesdays are generally the worst, with Wednesday and Thursday coming in next.

I remember this came up before, and the general consensus seemed to be that it came down to part-time workers.

If you consider people doing four-day weeks, chances are most of them do Monday-Thursday. Or if not, Tuesday-Friday.

On 3-day weeks, people will probably opt for Mon-Wed for a long weekend, or Tues-Thurs for a "straddling" weekend. Nobody is going to want to work Wed-Fri. What a downer.

So it seems likely that taking all configurations of working into account, Tuesday is probably the day with the most people at work, and Friday the day with the fewest.

All of the above being speculation of course

Amirani

Agreed with the above. Would also add - people are probably more likely to work from home on Friday than other days. Also, people are more likely to go for drinks after work on a Friday and hence would use public transport instead of driving.

As said above. A 5-10% reduction in numbers driving can reduce journey times/traffic by much more than 5-10%.

sharper

While everyone complains about schools I find that colleges have a greater impact on traffic for whatever reason.

I can't speak to every college timetable out there but Friday usually tends to be a lighter day and probably a later start for most.

L1011

This is why I do my work from home days on Thursdays - it's often the worst from what I've seen

You will find that a lot of places (manufacturing) will only work a 4 day week or will work longer shifts Mon to Thurs and finish early on the Friday

listermint

Would love some real statistics on it.

There could be scope there for joint up centralised thinking in terms of low times for certain industries


Outside the box

Zebra3

Not sure if there’s any difference on a Friday morning but definitely there is in the Friday afternoon/evening rush hour.

Some people work 40 hour weeks, others 38, 39. All leads to the same traffic being staggered over longer hours.

monkeybutter

Zebra3 wrote: »

Not sure if there’s any difference on a Friday morning but definitely there is in the Friday afternoon/evening rush hour.

Some people work 40 hour weeks, others 38, 39. All leads to the same traffic being staggered over longer hours.

Try to get out of Dublin on a Friday evening and you'll see where all the traffic is, you leave at 3 or you leave at 7. I find rush hour shifts 1 hour earlier on a Friday. Even worse on a long weekend

Lots of people go to Galway Limerick, Cork etc on Friday and come in earlier and leave earlier. Long delays to M9 and all that.

Other than that, I find its random how bad traffic is outside bad weather having an affect. The capacity is there in general untill some eejit decides to rearend someone at 5pm on a Friday.

The City center is a write off every day