A Brief Analysis of Mobi’s Public Dataset

Andrew Luyt 2022-01-17

Summary

This notebook is a quick analysis of the public dataset of Mobi, a bike-sharing company in Vancouver, Canada. The data cover one year from August 1, 2020 to July 31, 2021. Three aspects will be covered:

Traffic flow

To visualize how bicycle traffic flows around the Mobi system, this animation finds all the trips taken from each bike station and shows the “average trip” as an arrow. The longer the arrow, the stronger the tendency for riders to travel in that direction. A very short arrow means riders are traveling in all directions with no clear pattern. Brighter colours mean more traffic.

An interesting pattern is that most traffic flows towards downtown, on average. A notable exception is the group of stations on the eastern side of Stanley Park which are often used to start a tour around the seawall.

Which stations are busiest?

We’ll examine the traffic at all stations hourly, considering two types of riders: those who hold 365 passes (365 Standard, 365 Corporate, etc) and are likely commuters, and those on 24-hour passes who are more likely to be casual users or tourists. First, holders of 365 passes:

Traffic is concentrated downtown and has pulses of activity around 8am and 4pm, corresponding to rush hour. There is also an interesting pulse of late-night activity near Second Beach on the western side of Stanley Park that might merit further investigation at another time.

Next, 24-hour pass holders:

Traffic for these riders starts later in the day and is concentrated in stations around Stanley Park and the Vancouver seawall. The station at the Stanley Park information booth is in particularly high demand. All of these observations support the idea that 24-hour passes are often purchased by people seeking recreation.

Seasonal variation in bike use

Finally we’ll plot the number of rides taken each day over one year, colouring by membership.

We see a clear distinction between two types of riders: those who ride all through the year, and those who prefer the warmer months. People who purchase 24 Hour or 30 Day passes have a very strong preference to do so in the summer months, whereas the various types of 365 riders seemingly commute with their bikes year-round.