[eu-gene] the BARTcar project call for riders

[alexkillough]

The BART Car Project - Welcome
http://bartcar.net/

What is it?

The BART Car Project is an attempt to create abstractions from social 
interaction in a public transit system based on information gathered by 
the commuters within the system. Using simple information available to 
all commuters, the project attempts to find commonalities in the 
seemingly disjointed paths each commuter takes in the system.

The Process

BART is the Bay Area Rapid-Transit system, a multi-county regional rail 
system in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. This project takes 
place in the BART system. Every passenger car in the BART system has a 
unique identifier number, which is clearly displayed and readable by 
the passengers. Passengers will record this number, and enter it on 
this website. When they enter the number, they will also record where 
and when they were traveling in the system. The car number then becomes 
a record of where (and when) that person was in the train system. This 
data is the core of the information this project hopes to attain.

Goals

The goal of the project is to create visual abstractions from the data 
gathered. This may be something as simple as a one-to-one mapping of 
where commuters have been in the system, displayed on the system map. A 
more complex version would be creating a hub-and-spoke visualization 
which represents relations between commuters, based on the information 
gathered. These visualizations will be created using the Processing 
programming language. Once there is enough information in the database, 
I will begin work on these visualizations.

Other uses for the data

In addition to the desired visualizations, various numerical statistics 
will be mined from the data. Visitors to this site will be able to see 
information such as how many riders made an entry that day, what the 
most recent rides were, and which cars are most frequently occupied. 
Visitors also have the ability to enter notes about the ride and make 
comments about the conditions of the cars. This information in itself 
should create an interesting picture of the overall impression of the 
transit system.

Current progress

This site became public in December 2005. As of right now, anyone can 
enter data on this site as an anonymous visitor or sign up for a user 
name which will be displayed with their ride information when other 
visitors view the data. If you wish to help add information to the 
database, see the “How-To” section at the left for detailed 
information. I am also looking for volunteers who ride BART frequently 
and would be willing to record and enter information often. If you 
would like to become a volunteer, please e-mail me (contact info on 
website).