There are a kajillion taxi rides happening in New York at any given moment. Thankfully, the NYC open data site shares the data for those rides, including pickup/drop-off locations, fare, tip, cash/credit, duration.
I was interested in the terrain of generosity. Based on where you were picked up or dropped off, how likely were you to tip well? Or poorly?
In this map that distills several million rides, blue circles represent how big the tips eventually were for people being picked up in that location. Red circles represent the destination view: how they tipped when they were dropped off at that location.
Here’s a way of thinking about it…
And here’s the map…
Also, the cash vs credit divide is starkly socio-economic, as it turns out. Those with access to credit tend to be wealthier, while poorer riders are tethered almost exclusively to cash. It’s an interesting proxy because it doesn’t just show you where people of varied economic statuses live (that’s easy), it shows you where they go.
Here’s the map…
I wrote about this in more detail here.
If you’d like to explore the data more open-endedly, check out this app by Jinnan Zhang.
Happy Riding! John Nelson