Ride to Work

Intention

There can be no contest about the fact that bike riding and more specifically, bike sharing is the most sustainable and healthy commute option known. For it to be truly beneficial however, the practice needs to ubiquitous, commonplace and have the ability to be more than a hobby. The intention of this project is to understand that despite the impressive number of bike shares available in Pittsburgh, is commuting to work via bikes or bike share programs truly viable? As green as this mode of transport is, is it truly possible to be able to work downtown and be able to bike there? 

Dataset

With the Healthy Bikes data in the foreground, the supporting data was in many ways more important to set the context for the Bike network.

1. The most important one was the geographical bikepgh data which set the ground for the type and lengths of bike lanes in Pittsburgh. The kind of lanes available are bike lanes, protected bike lanes, trails, bike routes, shared lane markings, cautionary bike routes, and bridge data. Part of the data cleaning process was to eliminate the point data of the bridges. 

https://data.wprdc.org/dataset/shape-files-for-bikepgh-s-pittsburgh-bike-map

2. The second important data set was that of Port Authority Transit Routes. The reason for picking this set was because the choosing and investing of routes for public transport is by taking into account the use and need of public transport keeping in mind peak hours. These routes primarily serve professionals, students and essentially those who, for various reasons, do not use the car to commute.

https://data.wprdc.org/dataset/port

Analysis

Provide a summary of your initial exploration of the dataset: station use, activity over time, days-of-week, etc. 
There are four preliminary types of bus services available in Port Authority: Local, Express, Key Corridor and Rapid. At 1138 miles, the Local Bus Network is the most commonplace bus network in Pittsburgh. 

The bike routes available are much fewer than the 2149 miles of transit lengths of public transport in Pittsburgh. While 'On-Street routes' have done comparatively well, it must be noted that the dataset was such that On-Street routes seemed to include every other subset including 'Trails'. The other observation of importance is the need to capitalize on the 'Cautionary Route' which are high-use routes that have safety concerns.    

A cartographic analysis seems like the appropriate representation for an understanding of context and distances. The biggest reason for this was that the entire presumption of biking for commute is the preference to bike longer distances. It is understood that the bike networks are not distances but displacement values of bike pick-ups and drop offs. Hence all 0 mile distances have been understood to be  loops and clearly don't show. However, the travel networks are surprising in that they show preference for travel over much longer distances than would be expected. Given that the average travel duration 1.03 hours, these results are encouraging. The map itself is a three layered analysis where darker shades show longer distances and vice versa. 

Conclusions

The East Busway is the pride of the the East Liberty Transit Oriented Development. Clearly, a lot of research was done to optimize its route. Form personal experience we know that its one of the most efficient ways to travel in Pittsburgh. An accompanying bike lane seems to be the appropriate add-on for the commute, reducing the travel time substantially, as well as being a truly green way to commute to work. The preliminary result of a study of this magnitude would be to direct bikeway development along the high density bus routes.