9 ms·

An interactive exploration of Boston's subway system

311 points by mbtaviz 12y ago

Eduardo3rd 12y ago
I just moved to Boston in May and this data almost perfectly matches up with my experience riding the T to and from the office each day. I really enjoyed the way this information was presented as well - great job!
chrisBob 12y ago
One of the most significant issues in the Boston Subway system will not show up on a chart like this one. Right now, one of the busiest stations in the T system is shutdown with a planned closure of over two years. Do you commute from the north part of the city to the west part of the city? Plan an extra hour per day for the next 30 months or so.
- bernardom 12y ago
  Wow, I didn't realize how badly the Government Center station shutdown was affecting people. I presume you're talking about coming in on the Blue line and trying to get to the green. What's the best strategy- get out at State and walk to Park street? Or take the Orange to Downtown Crossing and walk the tunnel to Park? Boston's really into transit-disrupting projects. Big Dig aside, the Longfellow is (mostly) out of commission for... three...years...
  - danielweber 12y ago
    the Longfellow is (mostly) out of commission for... three...years... As a former resident, yipes. Sometimes it feels like they're trying to measure just how hard people want to live here.
    - bernardom 12y ago
      Yeah, it's quite disruptive, especially to people commuting to Kendall from the North Shore. Thankfully, the red line is still going, bike/pedestrian access is still allowed, and one car lane is open Boston-bound.
- didgeoridoo 12y ago
  To clarify: it used to be possible to transfer from the Blue Line (serving the airport and parts of the north shore) to the Green Line (serving much of the inner metro west) at a single stop — Government Center, which is now closed for renovations. For the next couple of years, getting from the airport or north shore to metro west is a Blue > Orange > Green transfer, which is definitely much more of a hassle. It would have been nice for them to leave a corridor open between the Green & Blue trains at Gov't Center, but then you'd have the liability of people walking around inside a construction zone. I've never been happier that I work in Watertown. Edit: the blue line does not serve Charlestown. Brain fart.
  - omegaworks 12y ago
    It's one of the really nice things about the Chicago Loop system - lines running to the city's inner core don't intersect at single points of failure in this way. I wish that Boston's RGBOSi system did this. it would make life so much easier getting from one line to another.
- ghc 12y ago
  Get a subway pass so you can do free tranfers on the surface. The transfer between State and Park takes 5 minutes on foot.
  - andrewem 12y ago
    I used to commute from the Red line to the Blue line. In the mornings when I was in a hurry I would take the Green from Park to the now-closed Government Center and then pick up the Blue, but in the afternoons I would get out at State and walk to either Park or Downtown Crossing. As you say, it's only a few minutes' walk, and very pleasant to be in the heart of the city. Every so often in the morning the Green line was even delayed enough that it would have been faster to walk instead.
tibbon 12y ago
I wish the MBTA was more transparent with this type of data and visualization. If they themselves charted things like this for the public, and then made commitments to improve (or at least not get worse) based on metrics that the community agrees are important, then I think that would be a significant move forward. The GM of the MBTA right now just doesn't seem to really care about addressing these issues in a clear and accountable way (ie. fire the people who cause systemic issues). There are some absurdly obvious ways to improve the T. One study was done in NYC which showed that making the busses free would actually save them money, as the gas/time spent idling (and delayed) actually cost them more than fares. I wouldn't go this far, but I'd say that if there are 50 people in line to get on a bus, that they shouldn't charge a fare to just get things on-time. As-is, I see bus drivers hold up things all the time for one person counting their nickles to get on the bus; that is simply inefficient. - http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/06/fares http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/06/fares Other places like Park St could be massively improved. Have one side of the platform (outer side), be the side that people get on the trains from, and the center area be the place that people get off the train. This would streamline foot traffic in the station. Make some stairways one-way to additionally streamline foot traffic. For some reason, Boston never planned for bypass capability, for trains to be able to get around stations, run express or in parallel. NYC did it, and it helps a great deal with construction, disabled trains, express trains, etc... Not all the the T is 100+ years old, and for newer lines/stations such certainly could have been done. I could probably sit here all day and think of basic improvements to help with things like this, but it takes the T forever to implement anything. How many years did it take to get the signs on the Red/Green lines operational for tracking train positions (a trivial problem in my mind, from an electrical and implementation side. These days, I'd just use iBeacons...) And, you might have missed at the bottom of the page... here's a realtime version: https://mbta.meteor.com/ https://mbta.meteor.com/
- bane 12y ago
  > For some reason, Boston never planned for bypass capability, for trains to be able to get around stations, run express or in parallel. NYC did it, and it helps a great deal with construction, disabled trains, express trains, etc... Not all the the T is 100+ years old, and for newer lines/stations such certainly could have been done. I used/use the D.C. metro system since I was a kid and this has always been an issue with the system. As it gets older, the system gets more unreliable (and constant budget issues from having to span 3 territories continue to defer basic maintenance) it's getting worse and worse. During the summer you're lucky to get 5 continuous days of trouble-free service. Even worse, issues on unrelated lines spill over onto working lines and the entire system grinds to a halt. Even worse, the ride is pretty bad, it's as bumpy as the NYC system, which you wouldn't expect with it being half a century newer. But it's the maintenance that's at fault for all that. But NYC is unusual in that it has such redundancy built into it, I don't think even other large systems of similar vintage (London, Paris) have such a robust system. Doing so these days is likely so expensive it'll just never happen elsewhere. Even the newest line being built for the D.C. system is single tracked. That being said, NYC still has issues, probably stemming from it being basically ancient (so does London and Paris). It's a noisy, uncomfortable ride, with stations seemingly randomly closed and a service schedule that's pretty opaque once until you've used it for a long time. Recently, I was in London, and almost everyday there was some kind of outage on the Tube. It's fortunate that stations are close enough, and the bus system so good, that you can work your way around it without too much fuss (and the TfL did a remarkably good job getting employees out and about to redirect people). It's just part of being an old system, the maintenance becomes pretty heavy. I worry about the gleaming newer systems in Asia. Huge, complex, mostly built within the last 30-40 years...mostly single tracked like everywhere else. What's going to happen when these systems are more than 100 years old like the MTA or the Tube?
nichochar 12y ago
Beautiful data visualization, very well done, thanks for making it
- danielweber 12y ago
  I thought it was just a nice graph (nice enough for me to upvote, which I rarely ever do), but mousing over it makes it even more awesome. EDIT OP, where did you get the data?
  - mbtaviz 12y ago
    Most of the data is collected from the MBTA's real time data feeds that list the current positions of all of the trains. The capacity data (who's entering and exiting the stations) is collected at the turnstiles and is not part of the MBTA's public API, we were able to get this from the MBTA through their developer relations program http://www.mbta.com/rider_tools/developers/ http://www.mbta.com/rider_tools/developers/.
danso 12y ago
I just have to ask the OP...since one of the inspirations for this interactive's elegant design is Edward Tufte, did you take inspiration from his version of Harper's annotated hospital bill? Because that was the first thing I thought of when seeing the beautifully-done annotations alongside the dense subway arrival time data. The chart I'm talking about is in Tufte's Envisioning Information, and is one of my favorite examples in all of his books: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpxpK-1CIAAl2yH.png:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpxpK-1CIAAl2yH.png:large
- mbtaviz 12y ago
  There are lots of influences from Tufte, the image you link was one of them for sure. We tried to incorporate other ideas like fully integrated text, numbers, and graphics and showing comparisons and causality. Bret Victor's work was also a big influence. If you are interested in what the design and implementation looks like and are in the Boston area there's a meet up this Thursday where we talk about building this: http://www.meetup.com/Data-Visualization-in-MetroWest-Boston/events/183029372/ http://www.meetup.com/Data-Visualization-in-MetroWest-Boston...
  - burial 12y ago
    Any chance you can record it and upload it for us who can't get there? Thanks.
    - mbtaviz 12y ago
      We weren't able to record the talk, but there are handouts that walkthrough the design and implantation process available here: http://mbtaviz.github.io/handout.pdf http://mbtaviz.github.io/handout.pdf. If you have more questions feel free to contact https://twitter.com/msb5014 https://twitter.com/msb5014.
ErikRogneby 12y ago
This is an incredibly beautiful visualization and analysis. The details are well thought out and easily discoverable. Example: mousing over one of the lines and seeing the train position on the left map. An inspiration. Thank you!
crashandburn4 12y ago
I'm in the UK and the time on the chart seems to be displayed in UTC (which isn't even the timezone I'm in right now). The time shown starts at 10:15am when it should be starting at 5:15am according to the legend: >Service starts at 5AM on Mondaymorning. Each line represents thepath of one train. >Time continuesdownward, so steeper lines indicateslower trains. Has anyone else noticed this issue? (Arch Linux, Chrome: 35.0.1916.114)
- mbtaviz 12y ago
  Hi there, yeah that looks like a bug good catch. We'll take a look at this and see if it can be fixed.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  It does seem to be showing the times in Pacific time for me, too. Very confusing since the text says "5AM" and the timeline says 2AM.
tsunamifury 12y ago
UC Berkeley grad students did the same type of visualization 6 years ago with BART if anyone is interested. Older tech back then so be warned, its in Flash. http://barthood.news21.com/system/ http://barthood.news21.com/system/
- mbtaviz 12y ago
  Hadn't seen this before but it's interesting, their 'number of weekday riders' section is similar to the way we displayed station entrances over time. Thanks for the link!
spb 12y ago
Source code? https://github.com/mbtaviz https://github.com/mbtaviz only seems to have minified/built dists.
- mbtaviz 12y ago
  We are still in the process of deciding how/where to open source the project, stay tuned.
jcromartie 12y ago
Somebody's been reading Tufte.
el_tonno 12y ago
Or you could watch the system as a whole, on a real map: http://tracker.geops.de/?z=14&s=1&lat=42.3529&lon=-71.0458 http://tracker.geops.de/?z=14&s=1&lat=42.3529&lon=-71.0458
aashishkoirala 12y ago
Amazing.

311 points by mbtaviz 12y ago

I just moved to Boston in May and this data almost perfectly matches up with my experience riding the T to and from the office each day. I really enjoyed the way this information was presented as well - great job!

chrisBob 12y ago

One of the most significant issues in the Boston Subway system will not show up on a chart like this one. Right now, one of the busiest stations in the T system is shutdown with a planned closure of over two years. Do you commute from the north part of the city to the west part of the city? Plan an extra hour per day for the next 30 months or so.

bernardom 12y ago
Wow, I didn't realize how badly the Government Center station shutdown was affecting people. I presume you're talking about coming in on the Blue line and trying to get to the green. What's the best strategy- get out at State and walk to Park street? Or take the Orange to Downtown Crossing and walk the tunnel to Park? Boston's really into transit-disrupting projects. Big Dig aside, the Longfellow is (mostly) out of commission for... three...years...
- danielweber 12y ago
  the Longfellow is (mostly) out of commission for... three...years... As a former resident, yipes. Sometimes it feels like they're trying to measure just how hard people want to live here.
  - bernardom 12y ago
    Yeah, it's quite disruptive, especially to people commuting to Kendall from the North Shore. Thankfully, the red line is still going, bike/pedestrian access is still allowed, and one car lane is open Boston-bound.
didgeoridoo 12y ago
To clarify: it used to be possible to transfer from the Blue Line (serving the airport and parts of the north shore) to the Green Line (serving much of the inner metro west) at a single stop — Government Center, which is now closed for renovations. For the next couple of years, getting from the airport or north shore to metro west is a Blue > Orange > Green transfer, which is definitely much more of a hassle. It would have been nice for them to leave a corridor open between the Green & Blue trains at Gov't Center, but then you'd have the liability of people walking around inside a construction zone. I've never been happier that I work in Watertown. Edit: the blue line does not serve Charlestown. Brain fart.
- omegaworks 12y ago
  It's one of the really nice things about the Chicago Loop system - lines running to the city's inner core don't intersect at single points of failure in this way. I wish that Boston's RGBOSi system did this. it would make life so much easier getting from one line to another.
ghc 12y ago
Get a subway pass so you can do free tranfers on the surface. The transfer between State and Park takes 5 minutes on foot.
- andrewem 12y ago
  I used to commute from the Red line to the Blue line. In the mornings when I was in a hurry I would take the Green from Park to the now-closed Government Center and then pick up the Blue, but in the afternoons I would get out at State and walk to either Park or Downtown Crossing. As you say, it's only a few minutes' walk, and very pleasant to be in the heart of the city. Every so often in the morning the Green line was even delayed enough that it would have been faster to walk instead.

tibbon 12y ago

I wish the MBTA was more transparent with this type of data and visualization. If they themselves charted things like this for the public, and then made commitments to improve (or at least not get worse) based on metrics that the community agrees are important, then I think that would be a significant move forward. The GM of the MBTA right now just doesn't seem to really care about addressing these issues in a clear and accountable way (ie. fire the people who cause systemic issues). There are some absurdly obvious ways to improve the T. One study was done in NYC which showed that making the busses free would actually save them money, as the gas/time spent idling (and delayed) actually cost them more than fares. I wouldn't go this far, but I'd say that if there are 50 people in line to get on a bus, that they shouldn't charge a fare to just get things on-time. As-is, I see bus drivers hold up things all the time for one person counting their nickles to get on the bus; that is simply inefficient. - http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/06/fares http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/06/fares Other places like Park St could be massively improved. Have one side of the platform (outer side), be the side that people get on the trains from, and the center area be the place that people get off the train. This would streamline foot traffic in the station. Make some stairways one-way to additionally streamline foot traffic. For some reason, Boston never planned for bypass capability, for trains to be able to get around stations, run express or in parallel. NYC did it, and it helps a great deal with construction, disabled trains, express trains, etc... Not all the the T is 100+ years old, and for newer lines/stations such certainly could have been done. I could probably sit here all day and think of basic improvements to help with things like this, but it takes the T forever to implement anything. How many years did it take to get the signs on the Red/Green lines operational for tracking train positions (a trivial problem in my mind, from an electrical and implementation side. These days, I'd just use iBeacons...) And, you might have missed at the bottom of the page... here's a realtime version: https://mbta.meteor.com/ https://mbta.meteor.com/

bane 12y ago
> For some reason, Boston never planned for bypass capability, for trains to be able to get around stations, run express or in parallel. NYC did it, and it helps a great deal with construction, disabled trains, express trains, etc... Not all the the T is 100+ years old, and for newer lines/stations such certainly could have been done. I used/use the D.C. metro system since I was a kid and this has always been an issue with the system. As it gets older, the system gets more unreliable (and constant budget issues from having to span 3 territories continue to defer basic maintenance) it's getting worse and worse. During the summer you're lucky to get 5 continuous days of trouble-free service. Even worse, issues on unrelated lines spill over onto working lines and the entire system grinds to a halt. Even worse, the ride is pretty bad, it's as bumpy as the NYC system, which you wouldn't expect with it being half a century newer. But it's the maintenance that's at fault for all that. But NYC is unusual in that it has such redundancy built into it, I don't think even other large systems of similar vintage (London, Paris) have such a robust system. Doing so these days is likely so expensive it'll just never happen elsewhere. Even the newest line being built for the D.C. system is single tracked. That being said, NYC still has issues, probably stemming from it being basically ancient (so does London and Paris). It's a noisy, uncomfortable ride, with stations seemingly randomly closed and a service schedule that's pretty opaque once until you've used it for a long time. Recently, I was in London, and almost everyday there was some kind of outage on the Tube. It's fortunate that stations are close enough, and the bus system so good, that you can work your way around it without too much fuss (and the TfL did a remarkably good job getting employees out and about to redirect people). It's just part of being an old system, the maintenance becomes pretty heavy. I worry about the gleaming newer systems in Asia. Huge, complex, mostly built within the last 30-40 years...mostly single tracked like everywhere else. What's going to happen when these systems are more than 100 years old like the MTA or the Tube?

nichochar 12y ago

Beautiful data visualization, very well done, thanks for making it

danielweber 12y ago
I thought it was just a nice graph (nice enough for me to upvote, which I rarely ever do), but mousing over it makes it even more awesome. EDIT OP, where did you get the data?
- mbtaviz 12y ago
  Most of the data is collected from the MBTA's real time data feeds that list the current positions of all of the trains. The capacity data (who's entering and exiting the stations) is collected at the turnstiles and is not part of the MBTA's public API, we were able to get this from the MBTA through their developer relations program http://www.mbta.com/rider_tools/developers/ http://www.mbta.com/rider_tools/developers/.

danso 12y ago

I just have to ask the OP...since one of the inspirations for this interactive's elegant design is Edward Tufte, did you take inspiration from his version of Harper's annotated hospital bill? Because that was the first thing I thought of when seeing the beautifully-done annotations alongside the dense subway arrival time data. The chart I'm talking about is in Tufte's Envisioning Information, and is one of my favorite examples in all of his books: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpxpK-1CIAAl2yH.png:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpxpK-1CIAAl2yH.png:large

mbtaviz 12y ago
There are lots of influences from Tufte, the image you link was one of them for sure. We tried to incorporate other ideas like fully integrated text, numbers, and graphics and showing comparisons and causality. Bret Victor's work was also a big influence. If you are interested in what the design and implementation looks like and are in the Boston area there's a meet up this Thursday where we talk about building this: http://www.meetup.com/Data-Visualization-in-MetroWest-Boston/events/183029372/ http://www.meetup.com/Data-Visualization-in-MetroWest-Boston...
- burial 12y ago
  Any chance you can record it and upload it for us who can't get there? Thanks.
  - mbtaviz 12y ago
    We weren't able to record the talk, but there are handouts that walkthrough the design and implantation process available here: http://mbtaviz.github.io/handout.pdf http://mbtaviz.github.io/handout.pdf. If you have more questions feel free to contact https://twitter.com/msb5014 https://twitter.com/msb5014.

ErikRogneby 12y ago

This is an incredibly beautiful visualization and analysis. The details are well thought out and easily discoverable. Example: mousing over one of the lines and seeing the train position on the left map. An inspiration. Thank you!

crashandburn4 12y ago

I'm in the UK and the time on the chart seems to be displayed in UTC (which isn't even the timezone I'm in right now). The time shown starts at 10:15am when it should be starting at 5:15am according to the legend: >Service starts at 5AM on Mondaymorning. Each line represents thepath of one train. >Time continuesdownward, so steeper lines indicateslower trains. Has anyone else noticed this issue? (Arch Linux, Chrome: 35.0.1916.114)

mbtaviz 12y ago
Hi there, yeah that looks like a bug good catch. We'll take a look at this and see if it can be fixed.
thrownaway2424 12y ago
It does seem to be showing the times in Pacific time for me, too. Very confusing since the text says "5AM" and the timeline says 2AM.

tsunamifury 12y ago

UC Berkeley grad students did the same type of visualization 6 years ago with BART if anyone is interested. Older tech back then so be warned, its in Flash. http://barthood.news21.com/system/ http://barthood.news21.com/system/

mbtaviz 12y ago
Hadn't seen this before but it's interesting, their 'number of weekday riders' section is similar to the way we displayed station entrances over time. Thanks for the link!

spb 12y ago

Source code? https://github.com/mbtaviz https://github.com/mbtaviz only seems to have minified/built dists.

mbtaviz 12y ago
We are still in the process of deciding how/where to open source the project, stay tuned.

jcromartie 12y ago

Somebody's been reading Tufte.

el_tonno 12y ago

Or you could watch the system as a whole, on a real map: http://tracker.geops.de/?z=14&s=1&lat=42.3529&lon=-71.0458 http://tracker.geops.de/?z=14&s=1&lat=42.3529&lon=-71.0458

aashishkoirala 12y ago

Amazing.