Biking NYC

A set of data visualizations exploring how safe it is to bike in New York City.

  • Data Visualization
Bubble chart of weekday bicycle counts at 10 Manhattan locations from 2005 to 2015

Role: Information Designer

Tools: Illustrator, RAWGraphs

Course

Information Design

Katherine Dillon, Instructor

The project is a set of data visualizations aiming to answer the question: how safe is it to bike in NYC? These visualizations were made using publicly available data sets about biking in New York City, revealing information on Bicycle Counts, Bike Lane Amounts, Biking Distribution, and Injury and Fatality Counts throughout the past decade.

The New York City Department of Transportation and the New York City Department of Planning are the sources of the data sets.

Charts showing annual bike trips growing in NYC and how many adults ride regularly
Annual bike trips and how many New Yorkers ride regularly

Biking in the City

The design of the visualizations was intentionally crafted to balance complexity and simplicity. The bicycle count graph, for example, is detailed to emphasize the widespread adoption of biking in the city, while a simpler pictorial graph gives a quick and direct snapshot of biking’s prevalence in the city. These choices were made to ensure accessibility for a broad audience, allowing for both in-depth analysis and immediate understanding.

Bubble charts of biking injuries and fatalities per borough in 2022
Injuries and fatalities by borough, 2022
Bar charts comparing injuries and fatalities by road user type in 2022
Injuries and fatalities by road user, 2022
Charts showing that injuries and fatalities have fallen relative to bike trips since 2012
Injuries and fatalities compared with bike trips since 2012
Statistics on how rare fatal and injury-causing bike rides were in 2021
How rare an injury or fatality is per ride, 2021

Safety

To represent biking safety, I used a layered approach with the injury and fatality data. The visualizations are designed to be clear and not overwhelming, highlighting that although risks exist, the percentage of cyclists involved in total traffic accidents is relatively small. This design choice aims to provide clarity around the safety aspect without diminishing the importance of the data.

Pie chart: 42 percent of NYC bike lane miles are protected
Share of NYC bike lane miles that are protected

The Future of Biking

Finally, the project concludes with a design focus on the future of biking. The bike lane count visualizations are presented in a way that signals the positive growth of biking infrastructure, subtly reinforcing the city's commitment to improving biking conditions.