Caltrain Launches Data Visualization Challenge

By Dan Lieberman, @LiebermanTweets Calling all graphic designers, statisticians and transit nerds! The Caltrain Data Visualization Challenge is upon us! Caltrain has launched a contest to see who can take Caltrain’s data and lay it in a way that effectively tells a story instead of being just numbers on a spreadsheet. This is your chance to inventively chart out anything from ridership forecasts and conceptual schedules to an extrapolation of how many times you can hit the snooze button and still catch the perfect train. This data is being generated through the Caltrain Business Plan, which is looking at how transportation throughout the San Francisco Bay Area will change from now to 2040 and how Caltrian will meet these future job and resident influx patterns. In 20 years, the Bay Area’s population is expected to grow by more than 40% from where it was in 2010, adding an additional 2.4 million residents and 1.3 million jobs. Making sure the influx of people and jobs is met with appropriate transportation and infrastructure investments is key to unlocking the potential of the region. As you can imagine, this results in a great deal of data. For the first time, Caltrain is releasing this newly packaged data. If you’re interested, you can pull the data from Caltrain2040.org/data and lay it out however you wish. The contest is open to all, with submissions due by June 15, 2019. Caltrain staff will be hosting an informational YouTube live chat on May 29. Prizes include the honor of having your work featured on the Caltrain Business Plan website and in the final report, which is presented to the Board of Directors, along with a Caltrain T-shirt, water bottle and a behind-the-scenes tour of the Caltrain maintenance facility in San Jose. We look forward to seeing your talent and creativity can help tell a story that our riders want to hear.