Bay Area Bike Share announces data challenge

Bay Area Bike Share made over 600 megabytes of bike share usage data from 150,000 bike trips available for their Open Data Challenge. Data and design nerds are invited to submit their presentations that visualize this information in ways that reveal new and interesting trends.

Bay Area Bike Share data challenge

The data is available now for you to work on, but the official kick-off takes place Tuesday, April 1 from 7pm to 10pm at a hack-a-thon at project partner Stamen Design on Mission at 16th in San Francisco. RSVP is required and space is limited. As of this writing, all available spots are taken, but you can add your name to a wait list.

To learn how to sign up for the challenge and to see the prize list, visit the official data challenge web page. The challenge ends on April 25, so work fast!

The Data

The data download file includes CSV data including station data, trip data, bike balancing data, and even weather information from the BABS system launch on August 29, 2013 to February 28, 2014.

When Hubway in Boston announced their data challenge in 2012, 67 entries were submitted.

The Divvy bike share system in Chicago recently announced winners for their 2014 data visualization challenge, which had 99 entries using 2013 data.

Some things I personally would like to see include information showing how much BABS is used to link transit trips. The obvious one for me would be seeing how many BABS bikes get pulled from kiosks shortly after a train or bus arrival nearby. I’d also like to see night and weekend use vs daytime and commute hour trips.

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