cabitracker.com User Guide

[dgohlke]

Home Page:

• The homepage shows a map with pie-chart pins. The red represents available bikes, the grey represents available docks. All red means a full station, all grey means an empty station.
• Clicking a station’s pin will display more information about that station.

Status Page:

• Clicking on “Graphs & Reports” from the homepage leads to this page.
• The left chart shows approximate number of bikes in use (red line) compared to a previous day (yellow line).
• The right chart shows current number of outages (full or empty stations) (red line) compared to a previous date (yellow line).
• The charts always show a scrolling 16-hour window, 8 hours before and 8 hours after page-load.
• Hover over one of the lines on the chart to display the value and the time of the point.
• By default, the yellow line is the same day the previous week. This was done assuming Monday patterns are similar to Mondays, Tuesday to Tuesdays, etc. The drop-down enables one to compare today with a different day, which is useful if last week was a holiday or inclement weather.
• The table below the charts displays current outages (empty/full stations).
• The table is sort-able, just click on one of the column headings.
• If you change the drop-down to a different day, it will re-write the URL for easy copy & pasting.
• The “Terminal” text is hyper-linked to more information about that specific Station.
• PARAMETERS: You can pass any date to the page. Just add “?date=2011-01-15” to the URL, for example: http://www.cabitracker.com/status.php?date=01/15/2012 The date can be virtually any format of date (MM/DD/YY, YYYY-MM-DD, etc.).

Status History Page:

• The Status History page shows similar data to the Status page, but for complete days, Morning -> Night, Left -> Right along with additional charts.
• There are two calendar date-pickers and a Submit button. The date on the left is for the yellow and the one on the right is for the red, as the color boxes indicate. The calendar only allows dates for which the system has data. (starting 4/15 for DC, 7/28 for Boston, etc)
• Chart 1: Bikes in Use (approx.): the approximate number of bicycles in use throughout the day, as compared to the other date. This approximate assumes all bicycles are docked at some point throughout the day, usually in the early morning hours. If bicycles are introduced to or removed from service, it will skew this value.
• Chart 2: Outages: the number of full & empty stations throughout the day, as compared to the other date
• Chart 3: Bike Count Over Time: the approximate number of bikes in the system for each day in the date-range. This approximation assumes all bicycles are docked at some point throughout the day, usually in the early morning hours.
• Chart 4: Dock Count Over Time: the number of docks in the system for each day in the date-range.
• Chart 5: Station Count Over Time: the number of stations in the system for each day in the date-range.
• Chart 6: Peak Daily Rentals: the maximum approximate number of bicycles in use at one time for each day in the date-range. See my note about approximating this value in Chart 1. Notice the spikes on 4th of July (~407 rentals at one time) and 8/23 (earthquake day) (~387 rentals at one time).
• Hover over one of the lines on the chart to display the value and the time of the point.
• PARAMETERS: You can pass dates into this page. d1 for the red date and d2 for the yellow date, for example: http://www.cabitracker.com/status_history.php?d1=2011-08-23&d2=2011-08-22 (8/23 was the day we had an earthquake, notice the afternoon spike).

Outage History Page:

• The Outage History page shows past outages.
• The calendar date-picker is used to select start and end date-range.
• The table shows instances of full and empty stations (outages) for the selected date-range.
• The table is sort-able, just click on one of the column headings.
• The terminal number links to the Station Outage page.
• At the bottom of the page, there is a download link. This will download a .CSV copy of whatever data is being displayed above.
• PARAMETERS: You can pass dates into this page using the s and e parameters where s is the start date and e is the end date. For example: http://www.cabitracker.com/outage_history.php?s=2011-12-01&e=2012-01-18
• If you pass invalid parameters, it will ignore one or both of them and default to one week.

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[dgohlke]

…continued from previous post…

Station Outage Page:

• The Station Outage page can be accessed from clicking on the Terminal number of a station from the Status page or from the Outage History page.
• This page has a station specific navigation (2nd line).
• The calendar pickers only allows dates for which the system has data for the given station. (e.g. N Highland St & Wilson Blvd (#31022) was installed on 11/22, so it doesn’t allow date selection before that)
• This page is similar to the Outage History page, but it lists outages only for the given station.
• The table is sort-able, just click on one of the column headings.
• At the bottom of the page, there is a download link. This will download a .CSV copy of whatever data is being displayed above.
• PARAMETERS: You MUST pass in a station ID, as “id” which corresponds to the ID in the XML file. Optional parameters are s for start date, e for end date. For example, http://www.cabitracker.com/station_outage.php?id=86&s=2011-12-16&e=2012-01-16 will show outages for station 86 between 12/16 and 1/16.

Bike/Dock Availability (Station) Page:

• The Bike/Dock Availability page (aka Station page) shows the average number of bikes and docks at a given station for a given time period.
• The page has a calendar based date pair picker. This is the range of dates for which to average available bikes and docks. Only valid dates for the station are shown.
• There are two additional date-options, check-boxes for weekdays and weekends. If you un-check weekends and click Submit, you’ll see average data for weekdays only. If you un-check weekdays, vice versa. This is useful when trying to identify “commuter stations” by allowing you to ignore what happens to the station on the weekends.
• There are two additional check-boxes, for bikes and docks. Whichever ones are checked will be display on the chart. If both are checked, you have the option to stack the two lines using the button. Click the button again to un-stack the lines. These two check-boxes and the stack button operate on the data instantly.
• PARAMETERS: You MUST pass in a station ID, as “id” which corresponds to the ID in the XML file. Optional parameters are as follows:
  • s for start date
  • e for end date
  • we, as true or false, for whether to include weekends
  • wd, as true or false, for whether to include weekdays
  • For example, http://www.cabitracker.com/station.php?id=86&s=2011-12-16&e=2012-01-16&we=false&wd=true will show bikes/docks for station 86 between 12/16 and 1/16, showing weekdays, but not weekends. (This view shows that the station at 19th & L St NW (#31224) is a “commuter station”).

[jokecamp]

This is really impressive. Is this what the actual capital bikeshare support team uses or is this just for users?

[Riley Casey]

Thats a bookmark in the browser.

[Author]

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