This past weekend, I had the misfortune of running into the crazy crazy rain that we got Saturday night AND all day Sunday. All I wanted was a cab to take me home from the path on Saturday night and another to bring me to the path on Sunday (I’m not really a fan of shuffling through the rain). Getting a cab seemed to be impossible and it made me wonder where all of the cabs are that I always see driving around on sunny days when nobody wants them! I thought this visualization was a great testament to my horrible weather weekend.

This video shows the trip data for 10,000 taxi rides over the course of 24 hours. “Geographic location data for the origin and destination of each ride is combined with waypoint data collected from the Google Maps API in order to generate a geographically accurate representation of the trip. We used data from taxi rides originating or ending in the neighborhoods of Lincoln center or Bryant Park. The visualization recreates a ‘breathing’ map of Manhattan based on the migration of vehicles across the city over a period of 24 hours, displaying periods of intensity, density and decreased activity.”

Look at all of those cabs! New York is always buzzing with cab activity and I find it fascinating to see the accumulation of them around Times Square, totally expected. I also like that you can see a steady increase as the day progresses with more people wanting to take cabs at night to get home from their various adventures. There is a strong contrast between that time and 4am for example, when fewer people are out. I love the aesthetic of this visualization as well because you have the red, yellow and orange dots on a background acting as the lights on a cab helping the driver see through the dark night. I could have done without the music, but it does add a little something to the video. I’m sure none of those people in Manhattan had trouble finding cabs!