A Tool to Show the Effects of Transit Closures

Dan Vanderkam writes a post to explain how Sidewalk Labs worked with the New York-based advocacy group Transportation Alternatives to create an interactive tool to illustrate how the looming shutdown of the L Train in New York will affect residents and commuters.

The tool is a map demo we’re calling the NYC Transit Explorer. It’s built on top of a transit router that uses the latest GTFS feeds for all MTA bus and subway lines, as well as the Staten Island ferry, to determine travel times and routes throughout the five boroughs. Traditional navigation routers direct people from Point A to Point B (call it one-to-one); our router adds the ability to show people how long it would take to get anywhere in the city via transit from a given origin (one-to-many).

After explaining the tool, Vanderkam then walks through step-by-step examples to show how the L Train closure will affect transit trips between Brooklyn and Manhattan—in terms of general accessibility and along specific routes. The post concludes with a call to action developers and civic hackers for help improving the tool.