When working on a mapping project, I wanted to use some data that I could only find in a .vtpk format. I was using Python for my project, and I didn’t see a Python library that would allow me to access the data in this file, so I ended up writing a library myself. This post will be about this file format and a link to the library on github....

I gave an introductory talk at my work about how to get started with GIS in Python. You can see that some of the examples of maps shown are from my earlier posts. For a full-screen version of the presentation, click here

In 2022, an entire line of the Boston subway system was shut down for about a month for track repairs and related work. The shutdown took place from August 20th through September 18th during the time when students (a significant part of the Boston population) typically move in. The entirety of the Orange line and a portion of the Green line were affected by the shutdown. The Orange line is a heavy rail subway line separated from traffic along its entire extent, and is typically the second busiest line in the city’s subway system....

The Boston area bike share system (BSS), originally “Hubway,” now “Bluebikes”, has been in existence since 2011, and there have been a number of interesting visualizations and data explorations about it. In this post I wanted to look at the effects of weather on the system utilization. I am aware of one other attempt to understand the effect of weather on ridership; however, here rather than focusing on predicting station utilization, I try to get a better understanding of the factors that affect overall system ridership....