Visualising Bike Share (#geomob 21 October 2010)

UCL CENTRE FOR ADVANCED SPATIAL ANALYSIS
Visualising Bike Share
From Boris Bikes in
London to Bike Share
across the World
Oliver O’Brien
Photo CC-NC-By-SA Adam Bowie on Flickr

Contents
Intro to bike share
Around the world
Visualising
Analysing trends
Other community efforts
Photo CC-By Charlotte Gilhooly on Flickr

What is a Bike Share?
A scheme allowing bikes to be hired from (and returned to) certain locations
City or campus based
Typical use is for short durations
Generally fully automated (in theory)
Require an account linked to a credit card
Photo CC-NC-By-ND Terry Freedman on Flickr

Terminology
Docks– The things which hold onto the bikes and release them
Stations– groups of docks
Spaces– docks which are empty
Photo CC-By Les Hutchins on Flickr

The Bikes
Normally “odd” looking, “lively” colours
Eye catching amongst street furniture
For sponsor branding
To discourage theft
Custom designed with non-standard parts, to prevent part theft.
Photos CC-By tsuacctnt and CC-NC-By-ND Monica Vidal on Flickr

Worldwide Distribution of Bike Shares
From bike-sharing.blogspot.com.

Current Locations for my Visualisation

Rejected Locations 

To Be Added
Any others which have websites with location data for stations and counts for both bikes and spaces
Not Nextbike schemes in Eastern Europe (no spaces)
But they do have bike IDs for up to 5 bikes at each dock
Not various large schemes in China (no website)
Not Velib (as requested by operator)

Melbourne – Helmets
Scheme started in June 2010, slow to grow
By law, helmets must be worn (or AU$150 fine)
Helmets are not supplied with the scheme
Can now buy AU$5 helmet from two vending machines or a supermarket chain
Return to a supermarket for AU$3 cash-back
Also launched in the middle of winter
Source and image from bike-sharing.blogspot.com

Brussels – Where’s My Villo?
Campaign group
Aiming to improve:
Reliability
Distribution
Service level transparency
Tracking performance measures
Interested in comparing with other cities
Source and images from wheremyvillo.be

Denver – Conspiracy
“Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are ‘converting Denver into a United Nations community.’“Dan Maes said Denver's B-Cycle bike-sharing program was promoted by a group that puts the environment above citizen rights.”
article in the Denver Post
Source denverpost.com, photo CC-By-NC Trace Altman on Flickr

Let’s Visualise Them!
'id:"([0-9]+?)".*?name:"(.+?)".*?lat:"(.+?)".*?long:"(.+?)".*?nbBikes:"([0-9]+?)".*?nbEmptyDocks:"([0-9]+?)".*?installed:"(.+?)".*?locked:"(.+?)".*?temporary:"(.+?)".*?'
Obtain the data from the operators’ websites
Some provide XML/JSON/KML
Lots of Regex parsing
Velib-based systems require two stages
Store it for analysis
Stick it on a map
OpenLayers has some nice vector styling for points
OpenStreetMap-based background
Charts of historical trends via the Google Chart API

http://oobrien.com/vis/bikes/
Background map CC-By-SA OpenStreetMap contributors

Animation over 48 hours
All in Javascript
Using SVG (or VML in Internet Explorer)
The animation is extremely slow in I.E.
Not great in Firefox
Excellent in Chrome/Safari
http://oobrien.com/vis/bikes/timeline.php?city=london

N Europe:
1. London
2. Paris
3. Dublin
4. Brussels
Spain:
1. Barcelona
2. Girona
3. Valencia
4. Seville
America:
1. Wash. DC
2. Montreal
3. Minneapolis
4. Denver
1. Vienna
2. Milan
3. Toyama, JP
4. Melbourne

Bike/Dock Ratio
A key component in the optimisation of a bike hire scheme
For the users, having too many bikes is very bad
Frustrating if you can’t drop off your bike while the clock is ticking.
But more bikes mean more visibility for the scheme and promotion for the sponsors

Bike/Dock Ratio
No of bikes per 100 docks
Based on max availabilityat around 5am (“no” usage)
Averaged over a few weeks
Background map CC-By-SA OpenStreetMap contributors
Preliminary/unreviewed data

Peak Usage % (Weekday)
Max % of bikes being used
Data from last Wednesday
Not directly measurable
Assumes that usage dropped to zero overnight
Simple analysis, not considering the effect of weather conditions, public holidays or special events
Photos CC-NC-By-ND D1v1d on Flickr

Peak Usage % (Weekend)
Max % of bikes being used
Data from last Saturday
Weekend usage much higher than weekday usage for the U.S. cities, lower for Europe
Photos CC-NC-By DDOT DC on Flickr

Bike-o-Metercasa.ucl.ac.uk/bom
Tweet-o-Meter for bikes
Steven Gray (@frogo)
Using Google Gauges
See the real life Tweet-o-Meters at the new British Library “Growing Knowledge” exhibition
Should be easy to hack to show the Bike-o-Meters instead 

Weekday Use – 1. Europe ex-Spain

Weekday Use – 2. Spain

Weekday Use – 3. Rest of World

Weekend Use – 1. Europe ex-Spain

Weekend Use – 2. Spain

Weekend Use – 3. Rest of World

More Analysis
London
Graph shows number of bikes available to hire
Effect of rain
Using the CASA weather station
Effect of the tube strikes

More Analysis!Clustering
Geodemographics of a city area based on usage patterns of stations within it?
Could combine with existing demographic data to predict likely usage patterns of new stations
Clustering output courtesy of James Cheshire

Even More Analysis!Redistribution Effectiveness
Distribution
Which cities have the most effective redistributions?
When does the redistribution occur?
Does it actually make things worse?

Redistribution Effectiveness

Even More Analysis Possible?
Shapes and sizes of cities and their schemes
How convenient is the scheme for the intended users?
Coverage in residential versus commercial areas
Dock station densities
How far away from your destination to you need to go to find a docking station?
Flows
Would require “bike-level” information rather than “station-level” as at present

Also in the Community
Adrian Short (@adrianshort)
first “Boris Bikes” API for London
http://borisapi.heroku.com/
Andrew Larcombe (@andrewl)
Where Are The Bikes API - A universal PHP API for extracting data for bike share schemes
Currently includes over 60 schemes
http://github.com/andrewl/watb/

Aidan Slingsby (City Uni)
www.gicentre.org/tfl_bikes/
Includes “seeing ahead” for the next four hours
Tom Taylor
Cycle Hire Explorer
Includes total usage counts
cyclehire.tomtaylor.co.uk/
Lots of cycle hire apps for iPhone/Android
Screenshot of Aidan Slingsby’s TFL Bikes graphs

Screenshots of some of the apps on the iPhone (iOS4) for the London Cycle Hire scheme.
Clockwise from top left: Cycle Hire Live, iLondonCycle, London Cycle, BixouLite, Blue Lanes, Apple App Store

Thanks!
Email: o.obrien [at] ucl.ac.uk
Blog: oliverobrien.co.uk
Twitter: @oobr
Photo CC-NC-By KurtisGarbutt on Flickr

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Visualising Bike Share (#geomob 21 October 2010)

by Oliver O'Brien

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Visualising Bike Share (#geomob 21 October 2010) Presentation Transcript