Tag: mass transit

Understanding the Boston Subway System

Today’s post is the graduate work of Michael Barry and Brian Card of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The two looked at the available public data of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA)—the T to those that know—to better understand the Boston area subway system. Here the subway system refers to the heavy rail lines, i.e. the Blue, Orange, and Red lines.

T stations
T stations

In short, the piece has a lot to look at that is worth looking at. This particular screenshot is an analysis of the stations across all times on average weekdays and weekends. You can see how in this particular selection, the size of the station markers pulse depending upon the time of day and the number of turnstile entries. Meanwhile the charts to the right show you the density through time of said entries and then compares the average number of turnstiles entries per day. Text beneath the system map to the left provides a short analysis of the data, highlighting work vs. home stations.

Credit for the piece goes to Michael Barry and Brian Card.

New Transit Map for Springfield

Springfield from the Simpsons, of course. Happy Friday, and have fun visiting the Ethnictown station. The article comes from Atlantic Cities.

Springfield's transit map
Springfield’s transit map

Credit for the piece goes to the designers of the Simpsons.

Cancelling the Cincinnati Streetcar Project

So Cincinnati was going to have a streetcar. Now it won’t because the recently elected mayor, John Cranley, campaigned on killing the streetcar. I won’t get into the whys and the why nots mostly because I’m not from Cincinnati and others can do it better. Suffice it to say that costs and budget battles played a part. Yesterday the city council opted to pause the project. This will likely suspend federal grant payments, meaning contractors don’t get paid, which means the city faces lawsuits for being in breach of contract, which potentially means the city spends almost as much money cancelling the project as they would completing it.

Ordinarily I would post something from a local newspaper or media outlet covering the story. But today I have the pleasure of sharing some work that my former professor made. His infographic explores the fiscal details of the streetcar project and how much Cincinnati owes if they opt to cancel it in the end.

Funding the Cincinnati Streetcar project
Funding the Cincinnati Streetcar project

Credit for the piece goes to Giacomo Ciminello. You can download the original here. And you can visit his site here.