MetroViz: Visual Analysis of Public Transportation Data

Understanding the quality and usage of public transportation resources is important for schedule optimization and resource allocation. Ridership and adherence are two main dimensions for evaluating the quality of service [1, 5]. Using Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL), Automatic Passenger Count (APC), and Global Positioning System (GPS) data, ridership data and adherence data of public transportation can be collected. In this paper, we discuss the development of a visualization tool for exploring public transportation data. We present the map view and the route view to help users locate stops in the context of geography and routes information. To convey ridership and adherence information over years, we present a calendar view inspired by the calendar we use in our daily life. The calendar provides an overview of the data, and users can interactively select specific days to explore the trip details in the trip and stop components of the calendar view. In the usability testing, four researchers from the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology (CATT), and six Computer Science PhD students from the University of Maryland took part in a study in which they used our tool to explore the bus transit data of Blacksburg, Virginia. The participants were able to use our tool to explore bus stops, bus routes, ridership and adherence data of bus trips.