Will snow be the biggest influence factor on the use range of Citibike in winter?

Background

Citibike in New York City provides great convenience for urban mobility and becomes one of the major choices for people to travel. However, relative to cars, use of bikes is more likely to be affected by the local weather. For example, my life experience tells me that the problem of snow in winter will probably reduce the use of bicycles in that area. Then, is that really the case in New York City?

Method

I intend to answer this question with two sets of data from December 2016. The first set of data is from Citibike trip data, which contains the usage time, start station location and end station location of each Citibike in December 2016. Since we considered snow cover as a condition that prevented Citibike from entering the area, I chose to map the end station locations of these trips. The second set of data is from 311 service request. I collected all the snow complaints at that time, assuming that the local snow might be so serious that it affected people’s lives, and made them into maps.

Mapping Results

Conclusion

The facts do not agree with my hypothesis. According to the graphs, Citibike’s end station locations are very concentrated in Manhattan and the surrounding parts of Brooklyn and Queens. I think this may be related to the location and density of Citibike’s stations. In addition, even if we only compare the places with sufficient Citibike data, we also find that the sites receiving snow complaints are distributed irregularly in these areas, and there is no phenomenon that people using Citibikes were trying to avoid these areas.

Summary and Reflection

In reality, the distribution of Citibike base stations largely determines the range of people’s travel. Therefore, apart from the frequency of use, people’s alighting places are artificially fixed. On the other hand, for high-frequency roads, snow shoveling should be carried out more efficiently to ensure traffic safety. The areas with serious snow problems may be more residential areas with low utilization rate. Therefore, I can not discuss the impact of snow on bicycle use from Citibike’s alighting route.

Improvement Plan

On the basis of today’s data analysis, I think there are several points that can be improved. First of all, I should change Citibike to private transportation, which means that their freedom of travel will be greatly improved. Secondly, with the increase of period interval, I can consider increasing the data from one month to one winter or even several consecutive years. Finally, consider using Heatmap to present more details could help to improve the accuracy of the output.