Your Rush-Hour Commute as an Animated Cartoon

If you commute during peak rush hour on a bus in just about any city, you've likely experienced the intimate joy of a stranger's backpack wedged against your belly, or felt the cough of a nearby passenger as if it were rattling in your own lungs. Better yet, you're probably familiar with that particular force of physics that occurs only on public transit during rush hour: Pack enough standing people tightly together on a moving bus or subway car, and no one has to hold on.

Few rush-hour commutes are fun. But we have at least found an amazing animation of the experience that restores some of the humor to the No. 9 bus in Zurich at 7 a.m. on a Monday morning. Meet Dots on a Bus, an animated data visualization from Amelia and Adam Greenhall and Jared McFarland, which turns one week's worth of actual bus data from San Francisco, Zurich, and Geneva into a kind of addicting cartoon.