Kai Goerg, Clayton Yan, Mikaela Gordon, Nop Lertsumitkul
Course Project as part of DS4200 S22: Information Visualization, taught by Prof. Ab Mosca, Data Visualization @ Khoury, Northeastern University.
The public transportation system in a city such as Boston is vital for its citizens. By understanding the movement of people in Boston, specifically ridership on the T, we can better design our transportation systems and allocate funding to the lines that need it most. We have created a visualization to help understand the current state of the MBTA's train system (the T), how it serves the Boston community, and what we can do to make it more efficient and reliable for those it serves. Our visualization is meant to be used by MBTA employees in order to retrive relevant information for station the stations of interest and to report the data in a meaningful way.
MBTA Rapid Transit Map: Zoom and pan around the map to select stations!
Our visualization consists of four visualizations, one interactive and selectable map and a pie chart, bar chart, and table that change based on the selection. The map shows all of the rapid transit MBTA Stops, color-coded by their associated line. By zooming in and panning around, you can explore the map. Clicking on a station will highlight it in yellow and cause the other visualizations to update. The pie chart shows the ridership of the chosen stations (combined if more than one station is selected) broken down by the time of day. The percentage of rides for each time of day is shown in order to help MBTA workers figure out the busiest time of day for a station/a group of stations. The bar chart shows the total ridership over the years in our dataset broken out by line. It shows that overall, the blue line for example has much less ridership than the red line. This bar chart changes with the selected stations as well, with the line color of the selected stations being highlighted. For example, if Ruggles is selected the orange bar will be highlighted, and if Ruggles and Harvard are both chosen, both the orange and the red bar will be highlighted. Lastly, we have a table that summarizes the data in our dataset by station. When a station is selected, it will be added to the table and its aggregated ons, offs, and average flow will be displayed. If multiple stations are selected, multiple rows in the table will appear.
The link to our presentation slides can be found here: Presentation Slides
The link to our paper created in Overleaf can be found here: Overleaf Document