By Hanyang Dong and Jieru Xu
Hubway is a public bike sharing system in the Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Town of Brookline area. People could easily grab a bike in the Hubway docking station and get around in the city, then return it to any docking station.
With the development of past six years, Hubway has become an essential part of our transportation network since its launch in 2011. It’s fun, efficient and affordable – not to mention healthy and beneficial to the environment – reductions to vehicle emissions and fuel consumption, reduced congestion. It is a perfect tool for visitors and regular commuters and just costs a little. But the most special quality of public bicycles is the idea of sharing.
As we searched for the data in the official website of Hubway, it has every month’s trip data for readers, which includes trip-time, start station, end station, the gender of users and so on, providing a detailed data set for understanding how do people use Hubway this year. To help you get a quick overview of how people in Boston area use Hubway in 2017 – where do people take their Hubway to and from, When do people tend to take Hubway bicycles during the day, User Types and Sex Ratio, and Ages of Hubway users, we put together the infographics below and some text.
Where do people take their Hubway to and from?
Among 129 Hubway stations in Boston, we found the top 5 busiest stations. There are more than 432300 Hubway trips in total, and more than a quarter trips are started or ended on those stations, which are located in Rowes Wharf at Atlantic Ave, South Station – 700 Atlantic Ave , Murphy Skating Rink – 1880 Day Blvd, South Station – 700 Atlantic Ave, and Beacon St at Arlington St. They are all in the downtown of Boston, where local people usually work and tourists tend to visit.
by Tableau
URL: https://public.tableau.com/profile/donghanyang#!/vizhome/hubway_1/Dashboard1
source: thehubway.com
When do people tend to take Hubway bicycles during the day?
From January to September this year, total times of using Hubway were gradually increasing until August, whereas trips in September decreased by 51% compared to August. Also, people tend to take much more Hubway bicycles in the afternoon, between noon and 6 p.m. during the day.
by Tableau
URL: https://public.tableau.com/profile/donghanyang#!/vizhome/hubway_1/Dashboard2
source: thehubway.com
Hubway’s User Types and Sex Ratio
There are two user types of Hubway bicycles, one is called customer, which accounts for 22% of total users and the other is “Subscriber”, amounting to 78%. We want to analyze the gender of Hubway users but failed to recognize the gender of customers as they did not share their information. Analytical results of subscribers’ trips data showed that 76% were male and 24% were female.
by Infogram, Pictochart and Microsoft Word
source: thehubway.com
Ages of Hubway users
Among over 432,000 trips of Hubway in Boston area, we found 338,000 trips can be used, excluding those that had no age information. People in the age of 20 to 30 has accounted to 41%, followed by age group 30 to 40, accounting for 29%. Then, the percentage of the 40s and 50s is 13%. Age group 50 to 60 accounts for 11%. Interestingly, there were more people who are older than 60 years old(5%) than those who are under 20 years old(1%).
by Infogram
source: thehubway.com