Tableau CitiBike Station Traffic Dashboard
→ Stations located near the main city center generally see higher levels of traffic, compared to those located closer to the outskirts of the city.
→ Grove Street Path and Hoboken Terminal both experience a much higher level of traffic than all other stations in the area on a consistent basis (includes both Hoboken Stations: River St./Hudson Pl. and Hudson St./Hudson Pl.).
CitiBike traffic heavily fluctuates throughout the month:
Peaking at 4,149 total rides on Wednesday, May 22nd -and only 1,225 total on its slowest day, Sunday, May 5th.
+ Despite the given day of month and the overall traffic recorded, the top stations remain consistent in receiving higher levels of traffic.
→ Weekends produced the longest rides; Saturday and Sunday's had the longest average trip duration significantly over rides were recorded during the week.
+ Overall, Wednesday's had the shortest average ride duration of all days.
+ On average, ride duration over the weekends were nearly 5 minutes longer than rides recorded during the week.
For the entire month of May, CitiBike riders averaged a cumulative trip duration of 11 minutes.
+ The longest duration recorded was seen on Sunday, May 26th, where the daily trip duration averaged to 21 minutes.
Stations located further from the city center see longer trip durations more frequently than those in more congested areas of the city. Travel times to common destinations tend to increase the further away from the the city center that a rider hops on a CitiBike.
While both the Grove and Hoboken stations remain consistently busy, they both also produce much shorter ride times.
As these stations are located in the heart of the city, it takes the rider a shorter time to get to their destination. Shorter rides throughout the day, allows for more readily available bikes and riders in these areas, potentially further explaining the commonality of these stations.
CitiBikes seem to more often serve purpose as utility (getting from point A - to point B), rather than personal leisure (biking through the park), based on the discovered trends. Shorter rides generally indicate that there is an intended destination for the rider, assuming these bikes are mainly used as intentional transportation. With the average daily ride not exceeding 21 minutes for the month of May 2024, we can conclude that most riders use NYC CitiBikes for utility or as intentional transportation, rather than personal leisure or exercise.
Despite the initial assumption that CitiBike rides would be busier on weekends (given many work 9-5 jobs during the week) the data actually shows otherwise. While bike rides may not be as commonly taken to and from corporate 9-5 jobs within the city, this can still explain our previous conclusion that most CitiBiker's trips are for utility purposes (going to and from work for many in the service industry/retail/others working weekends, running errands, i.e. shorter rides)
OUTLIER: Jackson Square Station's average trip duration for May 31st (25 hours), raises reasonable questions to the validity of our calculations or data source.
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