Why the morning rush in CPH Drive is real
The traffic in CPH Drive follows Copenhagen’s own counts, hour by hour and street by street. Here is how a weekday at 08:00 differs from 03:00.
Drive onto H.C. Andersens Boulevard at eight on a weekday morning and you will queue. Do the same at three in the morning and you will barely meet a soul. Nobody scripted that: it comes from the city’s traffic counts.
Counted, not guessed
Københavns Kommune counts traffic at 212 stations across the city, hour by hour through the working day from 07:00 to 19:00. The game reads those counts, and the municipality’s own expansion factors for nights and weekends, to decide how much traffic there is around you at any hour.
At the weekday rush that is about 180 cars, buses and cyclists in the streets around the player. At three in the morning it is about ten.
Busy streets stay busy
The counts also say where the traffic is. New cars appear in proportion to each street’s counted daily traffic, so the big arteries fill while the side streets and courtyards stay quiet. The buses run the real lines and the weekday timetable from Rejseplanen.
And the bikes
This is Copenhagen, so the cyclists matter. They follow the city’s hourly cycle counts, ride on the raised cycle tracks, and, as anyone who lives here knows, fewer of them go out when it rains.
Sharing the road
Traffic sees your car by its real size and heading. It queues behind you when it has to, steps around you when there is room and nobody is coming the other way, and never drives into you.
Try it: open the game on a weekday morning and head for Rådhuspladsen.