CitiBike Live Tracker
2024
This program looks at live data from CitiBike’s available data stream, seeking to discover divisions between neighborhoods, and purposes for travel. Generally, it tracks bikes docked, bikes taken, the frequency of use of stations as well as their locations. I’m not entirely sure what to do with this data in terms of a practical, transportation-based analysis, but at present it serves as an excellent way of demonstrating ‘living’ areas in the city from ‘going out’ areas.
Feel free to explore your area. Zoom in, and make your own deductions.
In terms of understanding the data, usually red and green would be used in an instance like this. However, those are two colors my eyes cannot distinguish very well from one another at low opacities, so in this map: blue circles represent stations where there are a majority of bikes being taken out, and orange ones are a majority of bikes being returned. The size of the circle represents how busy it is—larger is more busy, smaller is less. There is only one control, and that’s sensitivity, which is essentially a threshold. Raise it and less busy stations disappear for clarity.
It updates every few minutes, and tracks the past 24 hours as an average. No more, no less. Programmed with Javascript.