Easter Jam

Posted on by Widodo D. Putro 4 mins read

Jakarta April 21, 2011; 09.58 p.m

Hi there, tomorrow is Easter Day and although I’m not celebrating it, I can feel the cheerful atmosphere here at Jakarta. My friends dress fabulous to go to church. Everyone smiles.

Trust me; with maximum level of innocence face, I have to say that this night should be a happy ending.

It turns out to be wrong!

Simple, add three straight holidays at the weekend with the secret recipe: hundreds, probably thousands, of impatience motor and car drivers trying to rush every time the policeman look at the other side of the street; and what do you get? One hour for two kilometers drive. At that moment, I gave up and head back to my dorm. After pouring myself down the shower, calming my anger to don’t-know-who, I began to think about making numbers out of the freaking traffic. Why? Because I love numbers. They can tell you many stories about almost everything.

Getting started, and Uh Oh, finding traffic numbers is easy (kudos for Google), but making it meaningful is the big job. So, instead of analyzing bunch of scattering data I try quite different thing, I use Twitter! Yeah right, I figure that why don’t I count tweets from all people with ‘macet’ (=traffic jam) in it on a timely basis?! I blindly assume that someone tweeting ‘macet’ gets the negative impact, directly of indirectly.

Equipped with TweetDeck I search the tweets in real time and here’s the result:

  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-left:none;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 2.25pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <p style="text-align:center;">
      <strong>Tweets Counted (per minute)</strong>
    </p>
  </td>
</tr>

<tr style="background:#dfd8e8;">
  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <strong>I</strong>
  </td>

  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <p style="text-align:center;">
      46
    </p>
  </td>
</tr>

<tr>
  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <strong>II</strong>
  </td>

  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <p style="text-align:center;">
      64
    </p>
  </td>
</tr>

<tr style="background:#dfd8e8;">
  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <strong>III</strong>
  </td>

  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <p style="text-align:center;">
      43
    </p>
  </td>
</tr>

<tr>
  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <strong>IV</strong>
  </td>

  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <p style="text-align:center;">
      51
    </p>
  </td>
</tr>

<tr style="background:#dfd8e8;">
  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <strong>V</strong>
  </td>

  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <p style="text-align:center;">
      49
    </p>
  </td>
</tr>

<tr>
  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <strong>VI</strong>
  </td>

  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <p style="text-align:center;">
      47
    </p>
  </td>
</tr>

<tr style="background:#dfd8e8;">
  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <strong>VII</strong>
  </td>

  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <p style="text-align:center;">
      48
    </p>
  </td>
</tr>

<tr>
  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <strong>VIII</strong>
  </td>

  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <p style="text-align:center;">
      42
    </p>
  </td>
</tr>

<tr style="background:#dfd8e8;">
  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <strong>IX</strong>
  </td>

  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <p style="text-align:center;">
      27
    </p>
  </td>
</tr>

<tr>
  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <strong>X</strong>
  </td>

  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <p style="text-align:center;">
      37
    </p>
  </td>
</tr>

<tr style="background:#dfd8e8;">
  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <span style="font-size:18pt;"><strong>AVERAGE</strong></span>
  </td>

  <td style="padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;border-top:none;border-left:none;border-bottom:solid #8064a2 1pt;border-right:solid #8064a2 1pt;">
    <p style="text-align:center;">
      <span style="font-size:18pt;"><strong>45</strong></span>
    </p>
  </td>
</tr>
Minutes

That’s 1 tweets per 1.34 seconds! Don’t forget that when I do this, the traffic is better compared to 3 hours earlier.

Let’s say that 1 tweets account for 1 person, there are 45 persons having problem with ‘macet’ per minute. Suppose we add variable that people regularly tweet in 5 seconds, then it means there are 9 persons having problem with ‘macet’ per minute. Keep it going than you get 540 persons having problem per hour. And goes on, and goes on…

If this ‘macet’ is a human, I’m pretty sure he is already dead and his corpse will never be found by now hah!

Anyway, I know these data is far away from valid. But who cares about validity, I’m just blogging dude! This is just to show you that traffic jam is everybody’s problem and that we should do something about it. No wonder Jakarta citizen is having a high level stress and criminality!

Traffic is an interesting issue; so I’ll save the topic for another post.

Just hope that I can find a better way to solve the issue rather than using twitter 🙂