What Can Taxi Data Tell Us About NYC Streets?

New York City has GPS data from tens of thousands of taxis and is beginning to mine that information to improve its streets. We talked to some transportation experts for their ideas on how to use it.

1 minute read

April 8, 2010, 10:00 AM PDT

By Tim Halbur


Sam Schwartz, former commissioner at the NY DOT, had this interesting idea:

"One possible use of the taxi data is to identify clusters of origins and destinations where it can be demonstrated that walking travel times are competitive or can be made competitive to taxi travel times. Then the city can try to make those walking trips more inviting with street designs, lighting, policing, changing signal timing to speed the walking trip, etc. Next, the city should publicize the competitiveness of walking for these trips."

Many more ideas over at Streetsblog.

Thanks to Noah Kazis

Wednesday, April 7, 2010 in Streetsblog

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

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