London in Motion – Travel Patterns From 3.1 Million Oyster Users & 16 Million Daily Transactions

This visualization in the video above builds upon the thesis research of Jay Gordon. It was sponsored by the MIT Transit Research Group and Transport for London.

From the YouTube Description:

This visualization merges all 16 million daily transactions made on London’s Oyster card with vehicle-location data from the city’s 8,500 buses to infer the travel histories of that day’s 3.1 million Oyster users. After inferring the times and locations of each bus boarding and alighting, bus and rail transactions are combined to reconstruct each cardholder’s daily travel history.

Each pixel represents an approximately 100-square-meter section of Greater London, and the brightness of each of the three RGB color components indicates the number of riders in one of three categories. Green indicates the number of passengers in the transit system, whether on a bus or in one of several rail modes. Blue indicates the presence of riders prior to their first transaction of the day or after their last: it is assumed that the location of a rider’s first or last transaction approximates their place of residence. Red indicates cardholders who are between transit trips, whether transferring, engaging in activities, or traveling outside the transit system.

By matching Oyster transaction records to data from the iBus vehicle-location system, buses are shown to traverse the street network at their observed speeds, and their brightness reflects the number of passengers on board. Rail customers tap their cards when entering or exiting stations, but their waiting times and choices of line and transfer location are not known (in this version). Rail passengers are therefore shown traveling in straight lines at constant speeds, interpolated between their entry and exit taps.

Found via Reddit.

Olympics Brings Influx Of Foreign Advertising To London Transport

One of the odder aspects of the Olympic games has been the influx of foreign brands being advertised in languages other than English, especially on public transportation. The picture above comes from reddit user Monkeychimp, but is but one example of the phenomenon. Have you seen any others? Tell me about them below:

Is There Any Doubt We Are In Drought?

We are in drought

What: WE ARE IN DROUGHT

By: (If you know please let me know)

When: April, 2012

Where: London, UK

Why: Well given that it’s election day I thought we could all do with some cheering up. This ironic drought photo, was making the rounds last week. However, I thought I’d post it here in the off chance you haven’t already seen it. I first saw it on this Reddit thread, but I gather it’s been featured in many other places as well. Really sums up the last two months of London weather.