Should I stay or should I go?
Whether you hate crowds or love being pressed from all sides by a seething mass of humanity, Google Maps has the tool for you. Called “Area Busyness,” this feature will tell you exactly where those amorphous blobs of people are so you can avoid them or run straight to them.
Appearing as a pulsating orange circle with a bar graph inside it, Area Busyness is an extension of the details Maps already provides when you investigate public transit options or tap on certain stores while inside the mobile app. And just like those other data displays, this feature does more than simply inform you of how many people you can expect to encounter when you go out.The busyness icon shows up when you zoom close enough into an area that the map scale reads around 2,000 feet or 1 kilometer. When it comes into view, theicon will pulse, and if you zoom closer, you’ll see the area bordered by a dotted line and shaded orange.
Tap the icon and you’ll see information about the area, including a bar graph showing how busy it is at the current time and a note about how the current number of people compares to the average day and hour. You can also scroll through each day of the week to see the typical crowd levels and plan in advance for a trip that matches your preferred level of human interaction.This informational screen also offers directions for how to get to the area in question.
With this knowledge in mind, hopefully you won’t end up trapped in the midst of a mortal maelstrom that seems to move everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Unless you’re into that, in which case go where the tide takes you, friend.John Kennedy is PopSci's DIY editor. He previously covered legal news for Law360 and, before that, local news at the Journal Inquirer in Connecticut. He has also built and remodeled houses, worked as a fencing coach, and shelved books at a library.
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