Here’s another visualization of the data used in the previous post; I made the lines a lot finer, so the noise is less visible. It’s easier than ever to see the Silver Line.
Update 2011-11-12 8:21 -0800: I just posted a visualization I like better.
The Internet has been abuzz the past week regarding transit speed maps. It seems to have been spurred by a post on Bostongraphy, which was inspired by many of the amazing visualizations produced by Eric Fischer, especially this one.
If any of this blog’s readers will be attending OSCON July 25-29th in Portland, I suggest you check out the session being led by my codeveloper, Chris Smith, leader and founder of the Transit Appliance project, citizen activist and blogger extraordinaire.
It seems that everyone who analyzes historical NextBus data has a different way of archiving their data. There are lots of ways one can use GIS to analyze this data, from creating movies showing the pulse of the transit system, to analyzing on-time performance, to finding bottlenecks.
Note 2012-06-15: this page is now quite outdated. As a part of the Transit Appliance Project, I’ve been evaluating what transit agencies have real-time data; here’s a (non-exhaustive) list, focused primarily on U.