data-sci-project/traffic-volume-by-municipality

Traffic Volume by Municipality, 2025

This dataset contains average daily traffic volumes on Finnish state highways, grouped by municipality and road class. The data come from Statistics Finland’s Finnish Road Statistics.

The dataset contains 1,872 rows across 312 areas and six road classes:

• Total
• Class I main road
• Class II main road
• Regional road
• Connecting road
• Ferry route

Key findings

Traffic volume varies greatly by road class. Class I main roads have the highest typical traffic volume, with a median of 4,828 vehicles per day. Connecting roads have a median of 244 vehicles per day, while ferry routes have zero recorded average daily traffic in this dataset.

Road class	Median average daily traffic	Mean average daily traffic
Class I main road	4,828	7,650
Class II main road	1,867	4,259
Regional road	994	1,754
Total	912	1,813
Connecting road	244	395
Ferry route	0	0

The highest recorded value is 57,253 vehicles per day, for a Class II main road in Vantaa. Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen, and Pirkkala have several of the highest traffic-volume observations.

Interpreting Total

average_daily_traffic is an average, so the Total row for an area does not equal the sum of its road-class rows. Each road class has its own average, and the total represents the overall traffic average across the roads in that area.

Fun realisation

Traffic volume reflects more than a municipality’s own population. Municipalities located on major routes between population centres can have high traffic because many vehicles are simply passing through. For example, Vantaa’s traffic is influenced by routes connecting Helsinki, the airport, surrounding municipalities, and national highways.