Concept - NathanNeelis/frontend-data GitHub Wiki

Intro

The cities become busier and busier every year. In the centrum areas of the cities is hardly room for cars from every visitor. This is the reason most city centers can be reached with public transport. But public transport can be very expensive if you travel with multiple persons, especially for long distances. But parking your car near the city center can be very expensive as well. The solution for this is the P+R parking areas. Often there is a special offer when you park your car in a P+R and travel the last bit into the city center with public transport. This saves you a high parking bill and the time of searching for a viable parking spot near the city.

But there is another group, these are the people that want to travel by train, but cannot park their car at the train station. Take for example Amsterdam Central station, it's nearly impossible to park your car near and if you are able to find a parking garage, you probably pay a high amount. The P+R parking areas are also a solution for this group, park your car for a reasonable or sometimes even free, depending on what city, and travel to the train station with other public transport.

Research questions

Main research question: Which city uses the Park and Ride parking areas the most to keep cars from their city center?

Assumption: My guess would be that Amsterdam would be using the P+R facilities the most because of the environmental zone (milieuzone).

Sub question 1: Are all Randstad cities providing P+R parking areas?

Assumption: I assume that all Randstad cities have P+R parking areas because it's such a good option to get people to leave their car and don't overcrowd the city center with vehicles.

Sub question 2: What about cities outside of the Randstad?

Assumption: I assume that some of the bigger cities outside of the Randstad will have P+R parking places, also for their train stations. I think it also depends on how much parking space there is at the train stations itself and if the city centers try to ward off cars.

Sub question 3: Is there a difference in rate for the Randstad cites and outside?

Assumption: I think the P+R services are more often paid than free in the Randstad and often more free than paid outside of the Randstad. But I also think that although it probably is paid inside the Randstad, there are more special offers or arrangements with public transport.

Sub question 4: How long does it take to reach your destination from the P+R?

Assumption: I'm interested to find out which is the best P+R near a city to reach the train station, but also I'm interested if the rate is higher because of its better location.

Which data do I need?

NPR open dataset: parking data v2
This dataset is a pack of URL's to specific datasets about each parking area.
I filtered this dataset on all parking areas that had "P+R" in their name.
These were 405 results from which I fetched the data and saved it into a Github Gist.
The interesting variables in these specific datasets are:

• Description - Name of the parking area
• Accespoint address city - city of the parking area
• Operator name - Also name of the city, in case the accespoint data is invalid
• Specifications capacity - Amount of parking spaces
• Rates - there is information about the rates of the facilities, but it's hard to get

Concept main research question & sub question 1

To give insight into the main research question and the first subquestion I made two different sketches, a violin plot and a radar chart.
I decided to go with the radar-chart because I think it a better overview of the 3 different layers of data that I want to communicate.

Violin plot sketch

The below sketch visualizes the amount of paid and free P+R parking areas in 9 of the Randstad cities.
It was already dark, so I just noticed I used both green and blue colors in the free section. This should all have been green!
The data is has been made up just to show an idea of visualization without gathering all data just yet.

Radar chart

The below sketch visualizes the total amount and the amount divided between paid and free P+R parking areas in 9 of the Randstad cities.
The data is has been made up just to show an idea of visualization without gathering all data just yet.

Concept sub question 2

To answer subquestion 2 about the difference in rates for each P+R I figures a (connected) scatter plot would be a decent visualization. I however made the sketch below connected, but I am not sure yet if that aids the purpose of showing the different rates. I might just go with a normal scatter plot.

Concept sub question 3 & 4

To show the difference in time to reach their destination I thought a bullet chart would suffice. Adding and comparing makes it quick, easy to see which the best P+R parking area of their destination is. However, I didn't add the rate value yet, something to think about later.