I would love to buy a wall print like this.
The process of making it was quite simple. I zeroed a 2d array of integers, then took all the pickup/dropoff points and incremented the nearest cell. The pixel values are based on the logarithm of the counts, since otherwise everything outside midtown would be pretty much black.
There are some artifacts, like the thin vertical line down the east river. I think that was because of how the data was rounded, i.e. the number of unique longitude values that map to a certain image column.
I wrote this myself with a few hundred lines of C++, though I'm sure there's GIS software out there that will do all this for you with a few clicks.
Also did you overlay it onto a map? How did you get the angled effect if it's just a grid?
I assume it is because there is a fixed fare to/from JFK so drivers have little incentive to start/stop the meter at the exact pickup/dropoff location.
> Also did you overlay it onto a map?
No. If taxis did not pick up or drop off people on some street, that street does not appear. For example there is an area downtown where there are streets but they have had security barriers since 9/11 thus no taxis.
> How did you get the angled effect if it's just a grid?
None of NYCs grids are exactly north/south/east/west aligned.
there is not much distortion (world appears flat) which makes it quite clever hack to plot on the grid!