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Data Visualization: Key Routes and Communities In London's Bike Rental Network

Posted by timothy on from the ebbs-and-flows dept.

An anonymous reader writes to this article about a series of visualizations built from London bike rental data. "My favourite is the second map, it shows the main routes that exist between rental areas, coloured according to the local communities that exist in the network. So you can see the major flows of bike traffic within the city, which are mostly between major railway stations and work destinations. You can also see how the different local networks relate to each other — Hyde Park is its own little world, for example, while the networks around Kings Cross, Waterloo, and Liverpool Street are far more interconnected." (Several more just-as-interesting maps here, too. Wish every city had an interface to this kind of data, would make interesting reading for visitors as well as for locals.)

9 comments

  1. Strava heat map by hawguy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's something similar that covers more areas... a heat map of Strava rides:

    http://raceshape.com/heatmap/

    1. Re:Strava heat map by advocate_one · · Score: 1

      that Strava heat map is leaking personal data because the riders are not starting their segments away from their homes. There's been several thefts now from locked garages of expensive bikes and the strava heat trail led directly to the house...

      --
      Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    2. Re:Strava heat map by Alioth · · Score: 1

      That's quite surprising. The UK is absolutely plastered with rides, but France not so much. I thought it would be the other way around, I've always thought of the French being much more cycle friendly (the UK seems very cycle hostile most of the time).

      --
      Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
    3. Re:Strava heat map by Mikkeles · · Score: 1

      Maybe they are not so commonly stupid (or self-absorbed) as to post their bike trips on the inter-webs.

      --
      Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
  2. The point is? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People will concentrate where more people already are. The location of bike facilities and support infrastructure like bike paths will dominate the "flow". It's not really all that insightful or interesting for that matter.

    1. Re:The point is? by hawguy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      People will concentrate where more people already are. The location of bike facilities and support infrastructure like bike paths will dominate the "flow". It's not really all that insightful or interesting for that matter.

      People don't innately know where other cyclists are, or where the most popular bike routes are, so maps that show where other people ride can be useful to find the best route to where they're going. "Official" bike routes aren't always the best route.

    2. Re:The point is? by BasilBrush · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I tend to think it's the other way around. People are going to cycle to the destination they are going. They are mostly not going to simply follow cycle routes where-ever they happen to go. Cycle routes should be built to cover the most popular journeys. That is the use of research like this.

    3. Re:The point is? by Vitriol+Angst · · Score: 1

      Ants lay down scent trails and have an intrinsic amount of deviation from a path. Over the course of ants going too and from a location, they will reinforce "better" paths -- not the most ideal because they cannot see the path or get a birds-eye view, but the combination of re-enforcing scent trails and adding deviations to the route build in a mechanism for improvement.

      So collecting this kind of data will be useful for the biker to get better paths, and to find new interesting locations. And it will help planners to see where they can build locations.

      --
      >>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
  3. Montreal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I biked around Montreal for a while with the Bixi bike share system. It was a great way to get around, especially as Montreal has both lots of Bixi stations and good support for cyclists (good bike lanes and reasonably respectful motorists).

    I'd love to see the data and a selection of maps - there's a small map at http://http://mobilitylab.org/2013/03/07/heavy-use-of-montreal-bixi-bikesharing-system-displayed-with-new-open-data-map/ but it would be nice to see maps by day, by hour of the day, by favorite routes and the like - it might also help them improve the system (there were bike stations that were so popular that parking a bike there was difficult).

    (Hmmm, captcha = "motorist" a nice bit of irony).