

An interactive exploration of Boston's subway system - mbtaviz
http://mbtaviz.github.io/

======
tibbon
I wish the MBTA was more transparent with this type of data and visualization.
If they themselves charted things like this for the public, and then made
commitments to improve (or at least not get worse) based on metrics that the
community agrees are important, then I think that would be a significant move
forward. The GM of the MBTA right now just doesn't seem to really care about
addressing these issues in a clear and accountable way (ie. fire the people
who cause systemic issues).

There are some absurdly obvious ways to improve the T. One study was done in
NYC which showed that making the busses free would actually save them money,
as the gas/time spent idling (and delayed) actually cost them more than fares.
I wouldn't go this far, but I'd say that if there are 50 people in line to get
on a bus, that they shouldn't charge a fare to just get things on-time. As-is,
I see bus drivers hold up things all the time for one person counting their
nickles to get on the bus; that is simply inefficient. -
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/06/fares](http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/06/fares)

Other places like Park St could be massively improved. Have one side of the
platform (outer side), be the side that people get on the trains from, and the
center area be the place that people get off the train. This would streamline
foot traffic in the station. Make some stairways one-way to additionally
streamline foot traffic.

For some reason, Boston never planned for bypass capability, for trains to be
able to get around stations, run express or in parallel. NYC did it, and it
helps a great deal with construction, disabled trains, express trains, etc...
Not all the the T is 100+ years old, and for newer lines/stations such
certainly could have been done.

I could probably sit here all day and think of basic improvements to help with
things like this, but it takes the T forever to implement anything. How many
years did it take to get the signs on the Red/Green lines operational for
tracking train positions (a trivial problem in my mind, from an electrical and
implementation side. These days, I'd just use iBeacons...)

And, you might have missed at the bottom of the page... here's a realtime
version: [https://mbta.meteor.com/](https://mbta.meteor.com/)

~~~
bane
> For some reason, Boston never planned for bypass capability, for trains to
> be able to get around stations, run express or in parallel. NYC did it, and
> it helps a great deal with construction, disabled trains, express trains,
> etc... Not all the the T is 100+ years old, and for newer lines/stations
> such certainly could have been done.

I used/use the D.C. metro system since I was a kid and this has always been an
issue with the system. As it gets older, the system gets more unreliable (and
constant budget issues from having to span 3 territories continue to defer
basic maintenance) it's getting worse and worse. During the summer you're
lucky to get 5 continuous days of trouble-free service. Even worse, issues on
unrelated lines spill over onto working lines and the entire system grinds to
a halt. Even worse, the ride is pretty bad, it's as bumpy as the NYC system,
which you wouldn't expect with it being half a century newer. But it's the
maintenance that's at fault for all that.

But NYC is unusual in that it has such redundancy built into it, I don't think
even other large systems of similar vintage (London, Paris) have such a robust
system. Doing so these days is likely so expensive it'll just never happen
elsewhere. Even the newest line being built for the D.C. system is single
tracked.

That being said, NYC still has issues, probably stemming from it being
basically _ancient_ (so does London and Paris). It's a noisy, uncomfortable
ride, with stations seemingly randomly closed and a service schedule that's
pretty opaque once until you've used it for a long time.

Recently, I was in London, and almost everyday there was some kind of outage
on the Tube. It's fortunate that stations are close enough, and the bus system
so good, that you can work your way around it without too much fuss (and the
TfL did a remarkably good job getting employees out and about to redirect
people). It's just part of being an old system, the maintenance becomes pretty
heavy.

I worry about the gleaming newer systems in Asia. Huge, complex, mostly built
within the last 30-40 years...mostly single tracked like everywhere else.
What's going to happen when these systems are more than 100 years old like the
MTA or the Tube?

~~~
tkmcc
There actually is a secondary system to the Paris Métro that runs faster and
makes fewer stops called the Réseau Express Régional:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RER)

I found this part of the Wikipedia article especially interesting:

> Used for leisure journeys, the RER has had a major social impact. By
> bringing far-flung suburbs within easy reach of central Paris, the network
> has aided the reintegration of the traditionally insular capital with its
> periphery.

~~~
lmm
The RER is a bunch of separate lines; of course when you have two lines
covering similar routes one can (to a certain extent) relieve the other. What
NY has is different: 4-track lines everywhere, allowing them to do maintenance
on one track pair while keeping the other running.

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ErikRogneby
This is an incredibly beautiful visualization and analysis. The details are
well thought out and easily discoverable. Example: mousing over one of the
lines and seeing the train position on the left map. An inspiration. Thank
you!

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chrisBob
One of the most significant issues in the Boston Subway system will not show
up on a chart like this one. Right now, one of the busiest stations in the T
system is shutdown with a planned closure of _over two years_.

Do you commute from the north part of the city to the west part of the city?
Plan an extra hour per day for the next 30 months or so.

~~~
didgeoridoo
To clarify: it used to be possible to transfer from the Blue Line (serving the
airport and parts of the north shore) to the Green Line (serving much of the
inner metro west) at a single stop — Government Center, which is now closed
for renovations.

For the next couple of years, getting from the airport or north shore to metro
west is a Blue > Orange > Green transfer, which is definitely much more of a
hassle. It would have been nice for them to leave a corridor open between the
Green & Blue trains at Gov't Center, but then you'd have the liability of
people walking around inside a construction zone.

I've never been happier that I work in Watertown.

Edit: the blue line does not serve Charlestown. Brain fart.

~~~
omegaworks
It's one of the really nice things about the Chicago Loop system - lines
running to the city's inner core don't intersect at single points of failure
in this way.

I wish that Boston's RGBOSi system did this. it would make life so much easier
getting from one line to another.

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Eduardo3rd
I just moved to Boston in May and this data almost perfectly matches up with
my experience riding the T to and from the office each day. I really enjoyed
the way this information was presented as well - great job!

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nichochar
Beautiful data visualization, very well done, thanks for making it

~~~
danielweber
I thought it was just a nice graph (nice enough for me to upvote, which I
rarely ever do), but mousing over it makes it even more awesome.

 _EDIT_ OP, where did you get the data?

~~~
mbtaviz
Most of the data is collected from the MBTA's real time data feeds that list
the current positions of all of the trains. The capacity data (who's entering
and exiting the stations) is collected at the turnstiles and is not part of
the MBTA's public API, we were able to get this from the MBTA through their
developer relations program
[http://www.mbta.com/rider_tools/developers/](http://www.mbta.com/rider_tools/developers/).

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crashandburn4
I'm in the UK and the time on the chart seems to be displayed in UTC (which
isn't even the timezone I'm in right now). The time shown starts at 10:15am
when it should be starting at 5:15am according to the legend:

>Service starts at 5AM on Mondaymorning. Each line represents thepath of one
train. >Time continuesdownward, so steeper lines indicateslower trains.

Has anyone else noticed this issue? (Arch Linux, Chrome: 35.0.1916.114)

~~~
mbtaviz
Hi there, yeah that looks like a bug good catch. We'll take a look at this and
see if it can be fixed.

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tsunamifury
UC Berkeley grad students did the same type of visualization 6 years ago with
BART if anyone is interested. Older tech back then so be warned, its in Flash.

[http://barthood.news21.com/system/](http://barthood.news21.com/system/)

~~~
mbtaviz
Hadn't seen this before but it's interesting, their 'number of weekday riders'
section is similar to the way we displayed station entrances over time. Thanks
for the link!

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el_tonno
Or you could watch the system as a whole, on a real map:

[http://tracker.geops.de/?z=14&s=1&lat=42.3529&lon=-71.0458](http://tracker.geops.de/?z=14&s=1&lat=42.3529&lon=-71.0458)

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spb
Source code? [https://github.com/mbtaviz](https://github.com/mbtaviz) only
seems to have minified/built dists.

~~~
mbtaviz
We are still in the process of deciding how/where to open source the project,
stay tuned.

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danso
I just have to ask the OP...since one of the inspirations for this
interactive's elegant design is Edward Tufte, did you take inspiration from
his version of Harper's annotated hospital bill? Because that was the first
thing I thought of when seeing the beautifully-done annotations alongside the
dense subway arrival time data.

The chart I'm talking about is in Tufte's Envisioning Information, and is one
of my favorite examples in all of his books:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpxpK-1CIAAl2yH.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BpxpK-1CIAAl2yH.png:large)

~~~
mbtaviz
There are lots of influences from Tufte, the image you link was one of them
for sure. We tried to incorporate other ideas like fully integrated text,
numbers, and graphics and showing comparisons and causality. Bret Victor's
work was also a big influence. If you are interested in what the design and
implementation looks like and are in the Boston area there's a meet up this
Thursday where we talk about building this: [http://www.meetup.com/Data-
Visualization-in-MetroWest-Boston...](http://www.meetup.com/Data-
Visualization-in-MetroWest-Boston/events/183029372/)

~~~
burial
Any chance you can record it and upload it for us who can't get there? Thanks.

~~~
mbtaviz
We weren't able to record the talk, but there are handouts that walkthrough
the design and implantation process available here:
[http://mbtaviz.github.io/handout.pdf](http://mbtaviz.github.io/handout.pdf).
If you have more questions feel free to contact
[https://twitter.com/msb5014](https://twitter.com/msb5014).

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jcromartie
Somebody's been reading Tufte.

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aashishkoirala
Amazing.

