Spotlight:New YorkHoliday Issue

December2015

Urban Mobility InsightsWe live in a world that moves – transit systems, delivery vehicles, on-demand fleets, etc. This movement is generating unprecedented volumes of data, creating an Internet of Moving Things.

What can this data show us? To find out, we used our space-time engine – Urban Engines’ system to map and analyze movement data generated from the IoMT – which provides comprehensive insights for transit agencies, logistics companies, and other organizations to understand and optimize performance.

Dataset: This analysis uses open data from the New York Taxi and Limo Commission containing trip records from all trips completed in yellow and green taxis in NYC in 2014 and 2013

Each trip record includes: pick-up and drop-off dates and times, pick-up and drop-off locations, trip distances, itemized fares, rate types, payment types, and driver-reported passenger counts.

In this third issue of Urban Mobility Insights, we analyzed open data from New York City taxicab trips in 2014 and 2013 to glean insight into New Yorkers’ behavior during the holiday season.

According to the New York City Taxi and Limo Commission, about 485,000 taxi trips are made each day for a total of over 350 million trips in the two-year data set we examined. With Thanksgiving and Christmas rapidly approaching, we narrowed our focus to trips made in November and December to see what – if anything – changes during the holiday seasons, to discover where Black Friday shoppers live and their favorite stores, and to find out if passengers are naughty or nice.

Urban Mobility Insights | November 20152

Fewer rides on Thanksgiving and Christmas During the 2013 and 2014 holiday seasons, the patterns of the number of taxi rides remained similar – more rides on Fridays and Saturdays, then dropping each Sunday…and stark drops on Thanksgiving and Christmas, presumably when everyone’s home eating turkey instead.

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Figure 2:Even larger holiday declines in 2014Rides drop 35% on Thanksgiving and 55% on Christmas

Figure 1:Significantly fewer rides on holidays in 2013Rides drop 30% on Thanksgiving and nearly 50% on Christmas

Figure 3:Fewer trips paid by credit card on holidaysSharp declines in 2013 on Thanksgiving and Christmas

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Figure 4:Fewer trips paid by credit card on holidaysSharp declines in 2014 on Thanksgiving and Christmas

Interestingly, the decline in trips on these holidays is much higher for passengers who pay by credit card versus cash. What happened to these passengers? Are these regular commuters taking the day off? Did they max out their credit limits with holiday shopping? Or did they flee the City for greener – and warmer – pastures?

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Urban Mobility Insights | November 20153

Figure 6:In 2014, Upper East Side residents commonly traveled to Midtown in the early hours of Black Friday.

Each circle represents trips starting in that neighborhood between midnight-8 a.m. on Black Friday 2014. Larger circles mean more trips originate there. The trip destination is color-coded, showing the top origin-destination pairs between neighborhoods.

Figure 5:In 2013, the most common origin-destination was Midtown to Midtown in the early hours of Black Friday

Each circle represents trips starting in that neighborhood between midnight-8 a.m. on Black Friday 2013. Larger circles mean more trips originate there. The trip destination is color-coded, showing the top origin-destination pairs between neighborhoods.

Upper East Side and Midtown are most popular destinations Major shopping meccas Midtown and the Upper East Side are typically the two most popular destinations for taxi trips, and we saw similar patterns on Black Friday. By pairing up trip origins and destinations – the neighborhood in which a taxi ride started paired with its destination – we found that the most common origin-destination pairs included Midtown-Midtown (meaning people took taxis from somewhere in Midtown to somewhere else in Midtown), Upper East Side-Midtown, and Upper East Side-Upper East Side.

In the early morning hours of Black Friday, between midnight and 8 a.m., most riders travel between Midtown, Central Park, and the Upper East and West Sides, with Midtown and the Upper East Side being the two most popular destinations.

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Urban Mobility Insights | November 20154

Figure 8:Areas with the highest number of trips during 8 a.m. -6 p.m. on Black Friday compared to prior Friday

This chart compares areas from which taxi trips originated during 8 a.m.-6 p.m. on Black Friday and the previous Friday. On Black Friday, the areas marked with the circles showed significantly higher number of trips — around Macy’s Herald Square and several locations on Fifth Avenue.

Figure 7:Areas with the highest number of trips during midnight-8 a.m. on Black Friday

Each hexagon represents a 100-meter grid of trips ending at that location between midnight-8 a.m. on November 29, 2013. Compared to the prior Friday, the marked area had an unusually high number of trips ending at that location on Black Friday.

Specifically, in 2013, Herald Square in Midtown (Macy’s) had more trips in the wee morning hours compared to the prior Friday. Even with Macy’s opening its doors to deal seekers a day early for the first time ever, at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving Day, it looks like 500+ shoppers took taxis to the store from midnight-8 a.m. on Black Friday. That’s hardcore.

We looked at trips for the rest of the day (8 a.m.-6 p.m.) in 2013 to see the locations from which people were hailing taxis. After a day of shopping and battling the crowds, were people more likely to grab a cab home? Sure enough, compared to the previous Friday, we saw significantly more trips than usual starting near Macy’s Herald Square and on several locations along Fifth Avenue. These clusters are highlighted in Figure 8.

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November 22, 2013 November 29, 2013 (Black Friday)

Urban Mobility Insights | November 20155

Happy Holidays from Urban Engines May your days be merry and bright, and may all your holiday traffic be light

Contact us at:https://www.urbanengines.com/mobility/contact

175 S. San Antonio Rd. Suite 100 Los Altos, CA 94022

650.397.1618partner@urbanengines.com

About Urban EnginesUrban Engines improves urban mobility — making it easier to get where you’re going — by using information from the billions of trips that people and vehicles make each day. Our mapping, visualization, reporting, and analytics platform creates actionable insights — for companies, cities, and commuters — from the increasing amounts of movement data generated by the Internet of Moving Things.

Figure 9:More people share taxis Thanksgiving weekend Each circle represents a day and hour when the average number of passengers was higher than normal

And, passengers share the holiday spirit with their drivers, too. On Christmas, we saw a small but statistically significant increase in tips. On average, tips were higher by 3-5% on Christmas Day in 2013 and 2014.

In the next issue of Urban Mobility Insights, we’ll continue our look at New York and explore other interesting trends like, what industry has the highest tippers? Do changes in the stock market affect taxi drivers? What can taxi data uncover about New Year’s resolutions?

Gathering with friends and family...in taxis Looking at the average number of passengers, more people share cabs on Thanksgiving weekend – particularly in the early evening, perhaps going to or from their feasting time, or after a long day of shopping with multiple bags to carry home.