Map Taxi

Even in the inner parts of Brooklyn and Queens (on the map to the right of Manhattan) there is a lot of activity. New York differentiates between yellows, which mainly service Manhattan, and greens, which service the outskirts of the city. Taylor investigates many facets of New Yorkers' lives, from the amount of travel they make to the big Wall Street bank to the amount of travel they take from different places to the airports on different dates.

Here, for example, is a funny map that shows where to go for the New York City nightlife: Tailor created this map by looking at the areas where a disproportionately large proportion of taxi pick-ups take place later in the day - identified as 22:00 to 5:00. Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick in Brooklyn, Jackson Heights and Astoria in Queens and the Lower East Side in Manhattan are as you can expected hotspots.

Figure of the hourly volume of taxi trips through New York City

Among the biggest and most interesting records I've come across so far are the NYC taxi journey records from the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Reaching back to 2009, it contains the detail of every taxi ride taken in New York City since then, a combined volume of over a billion trips.

The map above, which aggregates these figures over a period of 6 years (2009-2015), shows the volumes of taxi pick-ups in the city during an Average Working Day. There are some unexpected samples on the map. Apparently I've misjudged the city's popular transport and daytime night life, as the highest taxi pick-up rate in Brooklyn/Queens is around 10pm.

This map shows an ups and downs of the daily commuting hours in the early hours of the day and in the afternoons, but it is mainly drove by those who come from outside New York. It is also interesting to see how different the pattern is for the collection of taxis at the two JFK and LaGuardia airport. The number of JFK taxi journeys at 6 a.m. is many times higher than those from LaGuardia.

At 10 a.m. their position has changed, with all taxi journeys from LaGuardia and very few from JFK. The JFK operates as many inland services as LaGuardia, but also many more internationally. If there is a New York theorem, I would like to know about it.

Many great taxi dates from New York City have been worked on, but these three are my favourites. Visit our blogs for some cryptographic related visualization of your datas.