15 ms·

NYC taxi visualization

259 points by lalwanivikas 12y ago

blaincate 12y ago
I was making a heatmap for taxi data : published for first 5 days for july http://akuchlous.github.io/NYC_CAB_ANALYTICS/ http://akuchlous.github.io/NYC_CAB_ANALYTICS/ maybe can help Uber / Taxi drivers figure out where to get most taxifare pickups are! hosting on github.io pushing to github.io is awesome. make maps, save and push!
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - antsar 12y ago
    Perhaps the link was edited since your comment, but the links "July 1" through "July 6" return taxi heatmaps, as promised.
bernardom 12y ago
That's super interesting. I wonder why my guy wandered really slowly up Riverside Ave for like 30 minutes instead of going inland to find a fare. Looks like it's really slow between 11am and 3pm, and constant driving otherwise.
- maxmcd 12y ago
  The route information between trips is just a guess. So he could have really just stopped for dinner or something.
  - basseq 12y ago
    I was wondering the same thing, but as they just average the location from the last dropoff to the next pickup, it's almost definite that the driver "went to lunch" in the interim. I saw this trend in the two taxis I looked at.
  - oh_sigh 12y ago
    Taxi drivers don't usually stop for dinner when on shift. The closest they will do is run into a bodega, or stop on the corner and have a streetfood vendor hand them something into the cab.
    - thrownaway2424 12y ago
      I've seen halal carts where the taxis line up down the block and a guy takes their order on the south end of the block and they pick it up at the north end, just like a drive-thru burger joint.
- warfangle 12y ago
  Only has data for begin/end points of the trips. They're just using google directions to move between the sampled data points - they don't have minute by minute gps location of the cab.
amwelles 12y ago
I was surprised by the amount of fares that just went a few blocks. Looks like it should have been pretty walkable in a lot of those cases.
- chrisseaton 12y ago
  Perhaps they're disabled.
  - forinti 12y ago
    Or have small children.
- blaincate 12y ago
  https://github.com/akuchlous/NYC_CAB_ANALYTICS/blob/gh-pages/NYC_TAXI_STATS/taxiRideMiles.png https://github.com/akuchlous/NYC_CAB_ANALYTICS/blob/gh-pages... data from chriswong : 22% rides are less 1 mile long
  - _delirium 12y ago
    It'd be interesting if comparable data could be gotten for different cities. Wonder what the curves would look like for e.g., Boston, SF, London, Athens, Frankfurt.
  - simplemind 12y ago
    Small nit, but guessing this is crow's flight distance which doesn't equal path distance. Regardless, this still isn't surprising. Short rides happen all the time.
    - blaincate 12y ago
      :-) this data is equal path as measured by odometer : I was lazy and did not use longitude/latitude for distance. The data itself has miles travelled. though a bit surprising : 45% of rides are single person rides. But then I wonder : what's surprising : is it low or is it high?
ryanmarsh 12y ago
I was surprised at how inefficient some of the drivers' behavior was. I thought after dropping off a fare they would all immediately head to an area they knew of that might have a high likelihood of generating fares. Instead many of them seem to just wander around aimlessly looking for the next fare. edit: spelling / grammar
- fasouto 12y ago
  From the page: Empty Taxis also follow the "best route" between a dropoff and the next pickup. Just as with the trips, this is just an effective way to move the marker around, but doesn't reflect the reality of where the taxi traveled.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  It's also the case that taxi drivers need to eat, use the toilet, do their shopping, see the sights, etc. They aren't robots, and they don't necessarily have to dash to the next customer in a mad scramble for survival. Imagine if somebody made a visualization of your workday and put it out in public. Would your manager say "he seems to just wander around aimlessly instead of efficiently moving from one piece of code to the next. I thought after compiling one project, they would all immediately head to the next one."
  - Mandelbug 12y ago
    The analogy is ok, but mostly fails because as a developer, we are not paid commission for each line of code written. Whereas taxi drivers have a very strong profit motive to act efficiently and quickly. I think your examples of why they would deviate from this believed behavior is pretty solid on its own.
maxmcd 12y ago
The taxi data just has startpoint and endpoint correct? So the route in between each trip is just a guess? Edit: Whoops, from the about page: > The raw data include only start and end locations for each trip. These points were run through Google's Directions API to create the routes shown in this visualization. Of course, these are Google's best choice, not necessarily the one the taxi took.
- peteretep 12y ago
  This explains some very slow drifts in the middle
kingnight 12y ago
I just followed a taxi that had a 12% tip rate. I thought with the new automated payment systems [1] they were supposedly getting 25% now... edit: I should have read about the * before I posted, but it's interesting to show then how much are cash/charge transactions by the discrepancy. [1] http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/05/14/how-3-simple-buttons-raised-tipping-by-144-million-in-nyc-cabs/ http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/05/14/how-3-simple-but...
- maxmcd 12y ago
  From a brief look at the data it looks like cash tips might be counted as 0%. So that 12% average might be originally closer to 25%, but brought down by the nulled out cash tips.
sethbannon 12y ago
Seems like this data could be used to build an app that suggests where a taxi driver should go at any given time to maximize their chances of getting a fare. Uber & Lyft already do this for their drivers, but I'm not aware of any app that does this for NYC yellow cabs.
- bjryan 12y ago
  Do they really? I just asked my Uber driver yesterday and he said that Uber does not provide him anything like that. I was quite surprised.
  - dcre 12y ago
    An UberX driver said the same to me and I was surprised as well, but after thinking about it, it started to make more sense. What could Uber really tell them beforehand that they wouldn't already know, or learn very quickly from driving around? The driver thought Uber didn't provide the information because they want to be able to charge surge pricing, but that cannot be right. Uber doesn't want to charge surge prices unless they absolutely have to because they reduce the number of rides people take. Considering how much money Uber invests in giving away free rides and temporarily reducing prices to increase ridership, they clearly see a lot of value per ride, especially for travelers who are more likely to be at an event, try Uber for the first time, and then bring that demand home to their own cities. Surge pricing only makes sense in situations where drivers need additional incentive to go out in the first place.
  - ameister14 12y ago
    They use the data for pricing I believe.
  - joshfraser 12y ago
    I thought they built it but scrapped it after discovering the predictions weren't very good.
- oh_sigh 12y ago
  Most taxi drivers already know the right time/areas to go to get hailed, and to get the kind of hails they want(IE not to JFK or LGA, the bronx, most of queens/BK). Even though it is just tribal knowledge, I'd be really surprised if it wasn't largely accurate.
scrumper 12y ago
What's happening when I see a green blob which then turns red a few seconds later? The cab hasn't moved, but the passenger count and fare tally have both gone up. The cab then moves at a normal pace from that location to the next fare, so I don't think it's missing GPS data. Edit: just saw another comment saying the points were calculated through a Google API, so maybe it's just gremlins in that.
andrewrice 12y ago
Hitting "next" on Chrome 35 (Win 8) doesn't do anything for me. Any ideas?
- mike 12y ago
  I was seeing the same a few minutes ago (also in Chrome) but it's working for me now so it's worth giving it another try.
marceldegraaf 12y ago
This doesn't seem to work on OS/X Mavericks, Chrome 36.0.1985.103 beta. When I click on "Begin", nothing happens (also no Javascript errors).
- dthakur 12y ago
  I'm getting a 503 after it finishes loading the initial assets.
- jackgolding 12y ago
  Doesn't work on Chrome Android (Nexus 7) too (latest, whatever that is)
freshyill 12y ago
Does not work in Safari. Come on people, if you're using some non-standard or cutting-edge feature, at least use Modernizr to detect it and tell users instead of just having a completely non-functional "begin" button.
yock 12y ago
I watched a few different cabs and they all seemed to generate around $600 in a 24 hour period. Am I the only person who thinks this is astonishingly low?
- seanmccann 12y ago
  That's about $50/hr (before medallion or car costs). I wouldn't call it astonishingly low.
  - yock 12y ago
    It's actually half of that, $25/hr.
    - seanmccann 12y ago
      They're not working 24hr straight. They can only work 12 hours.
- jliptzin 12y ago
  astonishingly low? I thought that was pretty high
  - joering2 12y ago
    yes, and then there is this. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9900E0D6153BF932A15753C1A9679D8B63 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9900E0D6153BF... The demand for taxis is so high that a driver bluntly told me to give him my cell phone and setup GPS route, otherwise hes not going. And that was a good 2-burrow trip for $40. Bottom line; they don't need you -- you need them.
  - pcurve 12y ago
    It's a decent change. but... - Most people do 12 hour shift. Not 24 hours. - Most drivers lease their cabs at $100/day - Fuel bill adds up to $15-$35 depending on car. - There are other fees. I think you're doing well if you net $200 in a shift on average. I think it's an optimistic figure.
xpan 12y ago
I see a taxi route on: Sunday, June 29th 1913...
- zymhan 12y ago
  Me too, both of the taxis I watched showed 1913. This is some weird Y2K stuff.
rorydh 12y ago
You shouldn't serve your assets (/js, /css) off of heroku. They aren't loading because of the request volume.
- ch4s3 12y ago
  I think Chris was exceeding his Mapbox limits, and that was causing problems.
zatkin 12y ago
Today I learned that Heroku is awful at keeping up with Hacker News + Reddit traffic.
- wclax04 12y ago
  Well it doesn't autoscale, if thats what you mean.
blaincate 12y ago
it hit bloomberg news http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-14/let-me-out-here-one-taxi-24-hours-of-data.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-14/let-me-out-here-one...
Vik1ng 12y ago
OpenStreetMap attribution...
- chippy 12y ago
  Removed at this commit. https://github.com/chriswhong/taxitracker/commit/8565b71ae74c17442354176441fc055df66dad1f https://github.com/chriswhong/taxitracker/commit/8565b71ae74... I'm sure the developer would appreciate an issue or a pull request.
CSDude 12y ago
To see some quick action: `for(var i = 0; i < 50; i++) $(".faster").trigger("click") ` it gets interesting to watch at that speed.
WoodenChair 12y ago
One interesting observation is that the mean fare is ~ $10. That's the same as 4 subway rides (each one with unlimited transfers and can take you from one end of the city to the other). You need to be pretty rich to be riding a taxi regularly nowadays. Taxi fares have gone up at a far greater rate than subway fares.
- sparkman55 12y ago
  Of course, you can also share a taxi... it may be an indulgence to hop on a taxi alone as part of your daily commute, but it becomes much more convenient, private, and cost-effective when in a pair or small group. These taxi data do not seem to capture taxi capacity factor / number of seats filled.
keypusher 12y ago
They certainly drive a lot faster when they have a fare.
mercurialshark 12y ago
Wow, I totally understand Uber's valuation now. $D But really, UberX and Lyft driving makes more sense viscerally. Taxis earn decent money but have lots of expenses. I see potential indeed. Ha
neobaba1289 12y ago
ITs interesting to see how busy a taxi is in New York even at 3.30 in the morning..
wfunction 12y ago
Anyone know if there is similar data available (for any city) that actually includes real-world routes, rather than just endpoints?
mcot2 12y ago
First of all... this is really great. Really good job. On the ipad a few things are wonky with the layout, you may want to test on there and fix the few UI issues. It would be cool to see $/hr precalculted as well. It may be better to make the right side a table with each row being a ride and then totals at the bottom too.

259 points by lalwanivikas 12y ago

I was making a heatmap for taxi data : published for first 5 days for july http://akuchlous.github.io/NYC_CAB_ANALYTICS/ http://akuchlous.github.io/NYC_CAB_ANALYTICS/ maybe can help Uber / Taxi drivers figure out where to get most taxifare pickups are! hosting on github.io pushing to github.io is awesome. make maps, save and push!

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- antsar 12y ago
  Perhaps the link was edited since your comment, but the links "July 1" through "July 6" return taxi heatmaps, as promised.

bernardom 12y ago

That's super interesting. I wonder why my guy wandered really slowly up Riverside Ave for like 30 minutes instead of going inland to find a fare. Looks like it's really slow between 11am and 3pm, and constant driving otherwise.

maxmcd 12y ago
The route information between trips is just a guess. So he could have really just stopped for dinner or something.
- basseq 12y ago
  I was wondering the same thing, but as they just average the location from the last dropoff to the next pickup, it's almost definite that the driver "went to lunch" in the interim. I saw this trend in the two taxis I looked at.
- oh_sigh 12y ago
  Taxi drivers don't usually stop for dinner when on shift. The closest they will do is run into a bodega, or stop on the corner and have a streetfood vendor hand them something into the cab.
  - thrownaway2424 12y ago
    I've seen halal carts where the taxis line up down the block and a guy takes their order on the south end of the block and they pick it up at the north end, just like a drive-thru burger joint.
warfangle 12y ago
Only has data for begin/end points of the trips. They're just using google directions to move between the sampled data points - they don't have minute by minute gps location of the cab.

amwelles 12y ago

I was surprised by the amount of fares that just went a few blocks. Looks like it should have been pretty walkable in a lot of those cases.

chrisseaton 12y ago
Perhaps they're disabled.
- forinti 12y ago
  Or have small children.
blaincate 12y ago
https://github.com/akuchlous/NYC_CAB_ANALYTICS/blob/gh-pages/NYC_TAXI_STATS/taxiRideMiles.png https://github.com/akuchlous/NYC_CAB_ANALYTICS/blob/gh-pages... data from chriswong : 22% rides are less 1 mile long
- _delirium 12y ago
  It'd be interesting if comparable data could be gotten for different cities. Wonder what the curves would look like for e.g., Boston, SF, London, Athens, Frankfurt.
- simplemind 12y ago
  Small nit, but guessing this is crow's flight distance which doesn't equal path distance. Regardless, this still isn't surprising. Short rides happen all the time.
  - blaincate 12y ago
    :-) this data is equal path as measured by odometer : I was lazy and did not use longitude/latitude for distance. The data itself has miles travelled. though a bit surprising : 45% of rides are single person rides. But then I wonder : what's surprising : is it low or is it high?

ryanmarsh 12y ago

I was surprised at how inefficient some of the drivers' behavior was. I thought after dropping off a fare they would all immediately head to an area they knew of that might have a high likelihood of generating fares. Instead many of them seem to just wander around aimlessly looking for the next fare. edit: spelling / grammar

fasouto 12y ago
From the page: Empty Taxis also follow the "best route" between a dropoff and the next pickup. Just as with the trips, this is just an effective way to move the marker around, but doesn't reflect the reality of where the taxi traveled.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
thrownaway2424 12y ago
It's also the case that taxi drivers need to eat, use the toilet, do their shopping, see the sights, etc. They aren't robots, and they don't necessarily have to dash to the next customer in a mad scramble for survival. Imagine if somebody made a visualization of your workday and put it out in public. Would your manager say "he seems to just wander around aimlessly instead of efficiently moving from one piece of code to the next. I thought after compiling one project, they would all immediately head to the next one."
- Mandelbug 12y ago
  The analogy is ok, but mostly fails because as a developer, we are not paid commission for each line of code written. Whereas taxi drivers have a very strong profit motive to act efficiently and quickly. I think your examples of why they would deviate from this believed behavior is pretty solid on its own.

maxmcd 12y ago

The taxi data just has startpoint and endpoint correct? So the route in between each trip is just a guess? Edit: Whoops, from the about page: > The raw data include only start and end locations for each trip. These points were run through Google's Directions API to create the routes shown in this visualization. Of course, these are Google's best choice, not necessarily the one the taxi took.

peteretep 12y ago
This explains some very slow drifts in the middle

kingnight 12y ago

I just followed a taxi that had a 12% tip rate. I thought with the new automated payment systems [1] they were supposedly getting 25% now... edit: I should have read about the * before I posted, but it's interesting to show then how much are cash/charge transactions by the discrepancy. [1] http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/05/14/how-3-simple-buttons-raised-tipping-by-144-million-in-nyc-cabs/ http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/05/14/how-3-simple-but...

maxmcd 12y ago
From a brief look at the data it looks like cash tips might be counted as 0%. So that 12% average might be originally closer to 25%, but brought down by the nulled out cash tips.

sethbannon 12y ago

Seems like this data could be used to build an app that suggests where a taxi driver should go at any given time to maximize their chances of getting a fare. Uber & Lyft already do this for their drivers, but I'm not aware of any app that does this for NYC yellow cabs.

bjryan 12y ago
Do they really? I just asked my Uber driver yesterday and he said that Uber does not provide him anything like that. I was quite surprised.
- dcre 12y ago
  An UberX driver said the same to me and I was surprised as well, but after thinking about it, it started to make more sense. What could Uber really tell them beforehand that they wouldn't already know, or learn very quickly from driving around? The driver thought Uber didn't provide the information because they want to be able to charge surge pricing, but that cannot be right. Uber doesn't want to charge surge prices unless they absolutely have to because they reduce the number of rides people take. Considering how much money Uber invests in giving away free rides and temporarily reducing prices to increase ridership, they clearly see a lot of value per ride, especially for travelers who are more likely to be at an event, try Uber for the first time, and then bring that demand home to their own cities. Surge pricing only makes sense in situations where drivers need additional incentive to go out in the first place.
- ameister14 12y ago
  They use the data for pricing I believe.
- joshfraser 12y ago
  I thought they built it but scrapped it after discovering the predictions weren't very good.
oh_sigh 12y ago
Most taxi drivers already know the right time/areas to go to get hailed, and to get the kind of hails they want(IE not to JFK or LGA, the bronx, most of queens/BK). Even though it is just tribal knowledge, I'd be really surprised if it wasn't largely accurate.

scrumper 12y ago

What's happening when I see a green blob which then turns red a few seconds later? The cab hasn't moved, but the passenger count and fare tally have both gone up. The cab then moves at a normal pace from that location to the next fare, so I don't think it's missing GPS data. Edit: just saw another comment saying the points were calculated through a Google API, so maybe it's just gremlins in that.

andrewrice 12y ago

Hitting "next" on Chrome 35 (Win 8) doesn't do anything for me. Any ideas?

mike 12y ago
I was seeing the same a few minutes ago (also in Chrome) but it's working for me now so it's worth giving it another try.

marceldegraaf 12y ago

This doesn't seem to work on OS/X Mavericks, Chrome 36.0.1985.103 beta. When I click on "Begin", nothing happens (also no Javascript errors).

dthakur 12y ago
I'm getting a 503 after it finishes loading the initial assets.
jackgolding 12y ago
Doesn't work on Chrome Android (Nexus 7) too (latest, whatever that is)

freshyill 12y ago

Does not work in Safari. Come on people, if you're using some non-standard or cutting-edge feature, at least use Modernizr to detect it and tell users instead of just having a completely non-functional "begin" button.

yock 12y ago

I watched a few different cabs and they all seemed to generate around $600 in a 24 hour period. Am I the only person who thinks this is astonishingly low?

seanmccann 12y ago
That's about $50/hr (before medallion or car costs). I wouldn't call it astonishingly low.
- yock 12y ago
  It's actually half of that, $25/hr.
  - seanmccann 12y ago
    They're not working 24hr straight. They can only work 12 hours.
jliptzin 12y ago
astonishingly low? I thought that was pretty high
- joering2 12y ago
  yes, and then there is this. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9900E0D6153BF932A15753C1A9679D8B63 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9900E0D6153BF... The demand for taxis is so high that a driver bluntly told me to give him my cell phone and setup GPS route, otherwise hes not going. And that was a good 2-burrow trip for $40. Bottom line; they don't need you -- you need them.
- pcurve 12y ago
  It's a decent change. but... - Most people do 12 hour shift. Not 24 hours. - Most drivers lease their cabs at $100/day - Fuel bill adds up to $15-$35 depending on car. - There are other fees. I think you're doing well if you net $200 in a shift on average. I think it's an optimistic figure.

xpan 12y ago

I see a taxi route on: Sunday, June 29th 1913...

zymhan 12y ago
Me too, both of the taxis I watched showed 1913. This is some weird Y2K stuff.

rorydh 12y ago

You shouldn't serve your assets (/js, /css) off of heroku. They aren't loading because of the request volume.

ch4s3 12y ago
I think Chris was exceeding his Mapbox limits, and that was causing problems.

zatkin 12y ago

Today I learned that Heroku is awful at keeping up with Hacker News + Reddit traffic.

wclax04 12y ago
Well it doesn't autoscale, if thats what you mean.

blaincate 12y ago

it hit bloomberg news http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-14/let-me-out-here-one-taxi-24-hours-of-data.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-14/let-me-out-here-one...

Vik1ng 12y ago

OpenStreetMap attribution...

chippy 12y ago
Removed at this commit. https://github.com/chriswhong/taxitracker/commit/8565b71ae74c17442354176441fc055df66dad1f https://github.com/chriswhong/taxitracker/commit/8565b71ae74... I'm sure the developer would appreciate an issue or a pull request.

CSDude 12y ago

To see some quick action: `for(var i = 0; i < 50; i++) $(".faster").trigger("click") ` it gets interesting to watch at that speed.

WoodenChair 12y ago

One interesting observation is that the mean fare is ~ $10. That's the same as 4 subway rides (each one with unlimited transfers and can take you from one end of the city to the other). You need to be pretty rich to be riding a taxi regularly nowadays. Taxi fares have gone up at a far greater rate than subway fares.

sparkman55 12y ago
Of course, you can also share a taxi... it may be an indulgence to hop on a taxi alone as part of your daily commute, but it becomes much more convenient, private, and cost-effective when in a pair or small group. These taxi data do not seem to capture taxi capacity factor / number of seats filled.

keypusher 12y ago

They certainly drive a lot faster when they have a fare.

mercurialshark 12y ago

Wow, I totally understand Uber's valuation now. $D But really, UberX and Lyft driving makes more sense viscerally. Taxis earn decent money but have lots of expenses. I see potential indeed. Ha

neobaba1289 12y ago

ITs interesting to see how busy a taxi is in New York even at 3.30 in the morning..

wfunction 12y ago

Anyone know if there is similar data available (for any city) that actually includes real-world routes, rather than just endpoints?

mcot2 12y ago

First of all... this is really great. Really good job. On the ipad a few things are wonky with the layout, you may want to test on there and fix the few UI issues. It would be cool to see $/hr precalculted as well. It may be better to make the right side a table with each row being a ride and then totals at the bottom too.