How can I create neuron or traffic like behaviour

[Visualante]

Hello,

I'm making a short abstract animation, one thing I've left to the end is to create animated traffic on the ground of my city. I want to draw a comparison to real traffic behaviour and brain activity perhaps something like the amorphous movement seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUhYmdcMVWI would represent how traffic james are formed and free up naturally.

I'm scared to use the word simulation, because that typically involves very complex solutions. I'm more after something that is simple to implement as this is my first Houdini project. Hopefully it will allow me some control over the speed/intensity of the movement. I'm very open to any type of visualisation, there aren't any particular limitations right now such as making it fit to a city road network or anything like that. I just want the sensation of this movement to be in the background of my piece, so it could be as simple as animated lines with glow or some sort of modified shader with an animated parameter.

One idea I had was like to draw a path network by hand, then sort of cycle a few modified frames. Then apply a glow with a procedural noise mask or something to give the ebb and flow to the traffic/connections. At least that's how I'd approach it in another software package I think.

[edward]

Here's a pathetic attempt. Maybe it'll be useful, maybe not.

suckyneurons.hip