A Map of Delays
Visualizing delays on Toronto’s streetcar network
A Map of Delays
Visualizing delays on Toronto’s streetcar network
The size of symbols is proportional to the duration in minutes of each incident. Red circles represent delay (delay in minutes to the transportation schedule), while yellow ones represent gap (gap in minutes between the preceding streetcar and the delayed one).
The visualization aims to provide an overview of the effects of delays over the network, giving information about the duration and the location of incidents, the direction of the delayed streetcars, the reported cause as well as additional statistics. Interactive commands allow the selection of specific routes and their comparison, as well as to filter the data based on different variables (hour of incident, month of the year and reported cause).
The size of symbols is proportional to the duration in minutes of each incident. Red circles represent delay (delay in minutes to the transportation schedule), while yellow ones represent gap (gap in minutes between the preceding streetcar and the delayed one).
The visualization aims to provide an overview of the effects of delays over the network, giving information about the duration and the location of incidents, the direction of the delayed streetcars, the reported cause as well as additional statistics. Interactive commands allow the selection of specific routes and their comparison, as well as to filter the data based on different variables (hour of incident, month of the year and reported cause).
Hovering on circles triggers a tooltip which adds a further layer of information to the map. Besides information and data about the selected area, the tooltip offers a unique “compass” diagram for each specific location. This depicts both quantitative (number of delays and durations), qualitative (delays versus gaps) and spatial (directions) information.
Toronto’s Open Data Portal provides datasets about delay events on the city’s public transportation network (TTC).
After some early trials with a topographic approach, I decided to simplify the visualization towards a more schematic direction, using the official TTC network map image as a blueprint.
Some sketches depicting the visual concepts used to design the map and represent incidents at each location. Circles symbolizing delays and gaps are not drawn centered on the location’s coordinates, but are translated of a value equal to their radius (half the duration in minutes) according to the specific direction for each incident, thus allowing the visualization of both spatial and quantitative values wihtin the same diagram.
A Map of Delays
Year: 2018
Project type: academic – Information Design 4 course, MDes program, York University
Specs: interactive map-based visualization developed using the Processing programming language
Data: TTC streetcar delays
Code: coming soon!