Biking Project

BCU Labs is building data-driven tools to support evidence-based transportation advocacy and safer cycling infrastructure in Greater Boston. A large volume of open transportation data already exists — including bike-share ridership records, municipal bike counts, and crash databases — but these datasets remain fragmented, inconsistently formatted, and difficult to use for longitudinal analysis or public-facing tools. This project aims to bridge that gap by creating a unified, analysis-ready transportation data infrastructure that consolidates these disparate sources into a centralized master database. Student teams will develop automated pipelines to ingest and standardize monthly Bluebikes ridership data, reconcile unstable station identifiers and location metadata, and integrate external bike count and crash datasets from city and state agencies. With a stable and continuously updated data foundation, students will enable new interactive visualization and analysis layers on BCU’s existing Bicycle Stress Map — including ridership trends, safety-risk overlays, and infrastructure gap indicators. In doing so, the project will support data-driven trend analysis, safety assessment, and transportation planning insights, while making complex transportation data more transparent, accessible, and actionable for community members, planners, and policymakers.