Transportation Planning

Project Overview

This project is a hypothetical situation about public train transportation in New York City. As members of the transportation planning authority, we have identified a significant bottleneck at New York City's Grand Central Station due to a high volume of interstate train routes. Our goal is to gather and structure relevant data, through the application of GIS methods, which can assist planners and decision-makers in developing effective solutions to alleviate this congestion.

This project involves data spacialization, identifying surrounding stations, evaluation of the total population served by each train station, defining unserved areas, and more. The deliverables will include both static and interactive maps, as well as charts, designed to highlight crucial findings and insights. To achieve this, we’ll be required to employ several GIS procedures we learned throughout the course, such as buffering, clipping, proximity analysis, overlays, and visualization techniques to present meaningful maps.

This project will involve the integration of multiple datasets, leading to the creation of insightful, data-driven solutions.

Dataset Overview

We’ll be utilizing two main datasets for this project. The first dataset is a CSV file that details Amtrak train stations across the US. For effective spatial analysis, this data must be properly spacialized and loaded into GeoPandas.

The second dataset is a GeoJSON file, which provides the spatial polygons for each New York City neighborhood, as well as various socioeconomic factors such as total population, median age, and so on.