The TfL cycle hire scheme has more than 12,000 bikes and 800+ docking stations across London. On average around 30,000 bicycle journeys a day are made using Transport for London’s Santander Cycles scheme – although on busy summer days the number of journeys can exceed 50,000 hires a day.
Every one of those journeys leaves behind a small trail of data and London Cycle Hire turns that data into a mesmerizing animated portrait of movement across the capital. The new interactive map replays any day’s TfL cycle hire journeys as moving traces flowing through London’s streets. As the clock advances you can watch thousands of individual rides emerge from docking stations, weave across the city, and disappear again at their destinations.
The project uses TfL’s open cycle hire journey records using BikePoint station data to recreate each trip. Route data has been estimated from Mapbox Directions or Google Routes, and journeys follow realistic street-level cycling paths. Stations on the map pulse whenever bikes depart or arrive and dynamically grow or shrink as the number of available bicycles changes throughout the day.
The visualization works particularly well because it preserves the real timing and duration of every ride. Journeys do not simply appear instantly on the map; they travel at the speed implied by the recorded trip data. Fast cross-town commutes, leisurely park rides and dense rush-hour flows all emerge naturally from the animation.
Also See
- bikemap.nyc – an animated visualization of Citi Bike journeys in New York.
- Bike Share Map – a live map of bike availability at docking stations in 400+ cities around the world
- Bike Visualization – an interactive platform covering 17 bike share systems worldwide.
