Bicycle flows in Saint Petersburg:
data visualization
data visualization
Project year
2017
Team
Myself
Project role
Data science & viz
Made for
Citizens, transportation department
Challenge
The main problem of useful stats is they are quite hard to understand in table form. But that's how government shows it and many people pass it throught the har-to-percept filter, never seeing it. Bicycle flow data in Saint Petersburg wasgoing the same way, but then I decided that more people need to see it and understand it.
So I just cleaned the rows and put the data on the map to see for myself and to show my fellow citizens. What I and other people saw is that even now, with only a few bike lanes, there's already a noticable bicycle flow at some locations in the city.
So I just cleaned the rows and put the data on the map to see for myself and to show my fellow citizens. What I and other people saw is that even now, with only a few bike lanes, there's already a noticable bicycle flow at some locations in the city.
Interactive visualization of bicycle flows in Saint Petersburg city center (May 2017 data)
Size of each circle correlates with the volume of bicycle flow in each point. Circles in the same location show two separate flow counts on weekday/weekend (where applicable). You can zoom in to particular point.
Workflow
I saw and downloaded the data from city transportation department as Excel table, cleaned and analyzed it. Then I visualized it on the map of Saint Petersburg as circles of different sizes for easier perception of data. Sizes correlate to bike flow volumes per hour - the bigger the circle is, the bigger the volume of flow it represents, and vice versa.
While setting up the visualizaton, I stumbled upon some distortions in correlation of sizes and volumes when using default carto.com widgets, so I had to customize everything on CSS (thanks to carto.com for having that option) so that circles are proportionate to volumes in the original data table. After that it's what you see is what you get scenario, so people don't have to think too much to understand what the infographic is about.
Hovering over circles you see pop-ups showing names of locations, day of the week, cyclist count. You can also see car count for comparison to bikes, to get the idea of how many bikers there are. The amount is not at all small, as it turns out!
While setting up the visualizaton, I stumbled upon some distortions in correlation of sizes and volumes when using default carto.com widgets, so I had to customize everything on CSS (thanks to carto.com for having that option) so that circles are proportionate to volumes in the original data table. After that it's what you see is what you get scenario, so people don't have to think too much to understand what the infographic is about.
Hovering over circles you see pop-ups showing names of locations, day of the week, cyclist count. You can also see car count for comparison to bikes, to get the idea of how many bikers there are. The amount is not at all small, as it turns out!
Outcome
With this map all citizens, including me, had the chance to see that cycling is building up in Saint Petersburg and we need to demand and promote more infrastructure. One location shows cycling flow as 10% of car flow, which is great news and a strong argument for cycling as menas of transportation in the city.
Citizens and adviser to the vice-governor of Saint Petersburg appreciated my visualization and it was put on the website of transportation department. For me, this shows a demand of citizen participation in everyday life of a city.
Citizens and adviser to the vice-governor of Saint Petersburg appreciated my visualization and it was put on the website of transportation department. For me, this shows a demand of citizen participation in everyday life of a city.
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