About This Visualization
This interactive Plotly visualization shows hourly Capital Bikeshare trips for 3 different Sunday through Saturday weeks: July 17-23, 2016; September 11-17, 2016; and January 22-28, 2017. There are several patterns that emerge:
- In all three of the weeks, on Monday through Friday, we see peaks at 8 am and 5 pm -- at typical morning and evening commuting hours. For the most part, the evening commute peak is higher than the morning commute peak. Perhaps this is because people are less concerned about getting sweaty after work, or because more bikes are available downtown at the end of the day (frequently in the mornings, all docks in residential areas are empty). It's also possible that there are the same number of commuters in the evening but a higher number of tourists riding at that time.
- The January 22-28 week, unsurprisingly, has the fewest trips per hour at almost all dates and times. The cold weather deters people from riding bikes.
- Some variation is likely a result of weather. For example, on Monday, July 18, 2016 and January 23, 2017, it was raining, and trips were relatively low during those days. On Wednesday, September 14, the high temperature was extremely high for September at 95 degrees F; the evening peak on that day was somewhat lower than the evening commute peak on other weekdays that week.
References
You can find a link to the Python code I used to make the Plotly visualization here. The data I used for this visualization is the Q3 2016 and Q1 2017 data from Capital Bikeshare.