The London Tube Heartbeat | Hacker News Reader

The London Tube Heartbeat

tubeheartbeat.com

114 pointsColinWright16 comments

This is amazing, just spend 30 minute pouring over it and have barely scratched the surface.

I was surprised by the number of exits late at night at Heathrow T5, I guess it's all staff arriving for nightshifts, as there aren't many turning up to get planes at that time (last flight is 2240, meaning the latest you can enter security is 2205, meaning that you need to be off the tube at 2200 at the latest, and I doubt many risk cutting it that close)

I think you have misread that.

All three Heathrow stations have many entries in the late evening, which will be people arriving on flights. They don't have many exits.

You're right, I guess I was thinking "entry into airport"!

Excellent work!

This detail probably doesn't matter for this nice visualization, but ... do you have details on how this data is attributed to specific lines? For example, District and Circle have such an overlap, and the changes in Circle appear proportional to changes in District. I personally have intended to take a Circle train but because District overlaps and is headed where I need to go, I'll just take whatever comes along next.

A more extreme example: At stations like Amersham there's no separate gateline for National Rail versus tube, and the tickets are interoperable towards London.

Many of Amersham's morning commuters board the (faster) National Rail service, even though (unusually for the tube) the Metropolitan line has express and semi-stopping services at peak times to catch up some of the difference.

Some may choose to take the slightly slower to the city with a city, rather than being dumped at Marylebone station (not passing go), which has pretty poor tube connections (or is a walk outside to Baker Street to catch a standing only tube)

Only way to work it out would be specific data (like axel weights), which may be whats generating the data sets.

Like it - really nice visualisation.

A few suggestions that might be nice:

- show entry + exit down to 5min and maybe even 1 min intervals if that data is available.

- make it so I can filter lines I am interested in (e.g clicking on the colour bars at the top to toggle on/off) - in zone 1 its pretty hard to see what is going on without zooming riiiiight the way in, but then you miss the "bigger picture".

I watched a fun show on CBBC last night where they looked at Slimemoulds and a prof was showing how they could use Slimemoulds to generate an approximation of the tube network for Tokyo. They place food on population centres on a scaled map and release the Slimemould in the centre and bingo, it grows a nutrient distribution network that maps onto the rail network! A search engine query (I use Qwant) will get you to the work.

Very nicely done! Was just checking a few stations where I commute, and compared the intuitions picked up about horrible / acceptable times, and line choices. Seems to match up to my experience, which makes the data-diving even more interesting. Also since those parts match, I can now look at other stations with a different eye, and based on the data have a feel for travelling there/through... Good stuff!

The journey planner site also has usage timeline chart, but not nearly as well presented as this. I despise the tube rush hours, I won't get on before 9:15am, and not before 6:30pm. I will happily watch over-crowded trains go by, and will get off a train the moment it starts crowding. I don't care what my boss wants. This information is useful for adjusting habits as time goes by and things change.

At the top it says the latest dataset is of 2015. So maybe the title shouls also include that.

Good thing it's not the Thameslink Heartbeat, otherwise it'd be flatlining right now.

Is anyone aware of similar sites for other cities? Would be interested to see Tokyo.

Loved the website, brilliant presentation for data

It will be interesting to compare the data now compared with next year when crossrail is open. I suspect Oxford Circus will reduce

Looks like an organism!

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