New York City’s subway has more riders than any other city transit system in the U.S., averaging more than 5.5 million riders per weekday over its 660 miles of track. (It’s possible to ride the whole system in a day, if you have 22-plus hours to spare.) It’s easy to imagine what a single train looks like at rush hour, but how about the whole system? An intrepid Columbia University student decided to find out, as CityLab reports.
Using data from the Metropolitan Transit Authority and Google Maps, Will Geary created a moving map of New York City subway data from a single day. Geary has previously done the same with the city’s bike share service, breaking down Citi Bike activity by gender over the course of October 2015.
Each train line is represented by the color it’s assigned by transit maps. The visualization spans 24 hours, and has been sped up around 400 times its real-time length. It’s set to some classical music, making it a much calmer experience than actually riding a subway train.
[h/t CityLab]
December 15, 2016 – 2:30pm