Driving NYC
March 1, 2018
Prior to 2009, it would be very difficult for the public to gain a deeper understanding of the taxi industry. This dramatically changed when the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission began releasing data on the trips completed by the iconic yellow medallion taxis, which led to mesmerizing visualizations such as “NYC Taxis: A Day in the Life” by Chris Whong. The dataset has since been expanded to include information from trips completed by Boro taxis. As the information is at the trip level, the datasets are often massive. Enter Google’s BigQuery, where we can find the datasets hosted in entirety, readily available to the public.
The amount of detail excites me, and in my research I found that it was the subject of Tableau’s Iron Viz 2016. Drawing upon what these amazing Tableau experts have created, I have come up with several ideas that I find interesting and am keen to explore.
- A summary of the year, where we explore the number of trips completed, number of passengers driven, total fares spent, total tips collected and total distance travelled.
- Exploration of trends - trips completed broken down by month, day and hour. The reader should also be able to view if the trips were completed by yellow or green cabs.
- A visualization similar to “A Day in the Life”, but where we explore the trips completed and various metrics by the hour.
- Analyze the difference between yellow and green taxi drivers, such as fares, distance traveled and tipping rate.
If you are interested in how we performed our data exploration and cleansing, you can find that here. To delve into the analysis and insights, you can follow the links listed below.