Devin Zhang, Eugenio Zuccarelli and Fernanda Ferreira
Audience – We imagine our data story as a slice of life article about the MIT at Mass Ave Blue Bikes station intended for the MIT community. It’s easy to look over things around campus, and this article will point out to readers that this specific station is the most used in the entire Blue Bikes system.
Summary – Total trip data show that the MIT at Mass Ave is a cut above the rest of the Blue Bike stations, representing 4.7% of total station visits. We want to tell this story because looking at the data more closely, and especially moving from the data to interviewing MIT students and Patrick Kelsey at Blue Bike, allowed us to explore what exactly drives this station’s popularity.
All of our trip data came from Blue Bikes and sifting through this data we saw that not only is the MIT at Mass Ave Station the most popular in the system by a relatively large margin, but we were able to explore why that is. The Blue Bikes data includes information on start and end stations, as well as the time and day of the trip. With that we were able to show that many of the trips to and from the MIT at Mass Ave Station are to Blue Bike docks within the MIT campus or relatively close to it. We also explored how the use of the Blue Bike rides that involved this station changed over the course of a week and a month during 2019. This demonstrated that the highest peak of Blue Bike rides from MIT at Mass Ave occurred in September, after the start of classes when students are fully back on campus but not yet drowning in work. We then spoke to MIT students that use Blue Bikes to confirm that a lot of the rides they take are short and focused on getting around campus, such as from dorms to class. Lastly, we talked to Patrick Kelsey, the marketing manager at Blue Bikes, to get his take on the station’s popularity. In talking to Kelsey, we learned that MIT employees and students make up a substantial portion of Blue Bike annual members and that MIT provides a hefty subsidy for the annual membership. All in all, by looking at both the data and by speaking to students and Patrick Kelsey we were able to describe what drives the popularity of the MIT at Mass Ave Station, which is the large MIT user base and the type of trips (short and around campus) that start and end at this station.
There are 325 Blue Bikes stations in the greater Boston area, forming a sea of docks across Somerville, Cambridge, Boston, Brookline and, more recently, Everett. These stations represent start and end points for the over 3,500 bikes in the ride sharing system, which arrived in Boston in 2011 with a modest 61 stations and 610 bikes. Throughout 2019, these 3,500 bikes were taken on over 2.5 million trips. 4.7 percent of those trips started or ended here at MIT, at the Mass Ave station.
On the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Amherst Street, the station is snug against MIT Hillel and has docks for 27 bikes. Last year, 118,047 bikes visited the MIT at Mass Ave station, making it the most popular station in the ride sharing system. Central Square, which came in second, saw almost 16,000 fewer trips.
The popularity of the MIT at Mass Ave station came as a surprise for some MIT students. “I know it’s a busy station,” said Kevin Lin, a master’s student in Business Analytics. “But I did not expect it to be the most used,” he added. Pierre-Henri Ramirez, also a master’s student in Business Analytics, thought the most popular station would be the one on the corner of Main St and Ames, which saw 85,425 trips in 2019, earning it the fourth place in terms of total trips.
For other students, particularly those who routinely dock their bikes at the MIT at Mass Ave station, the data was less surprising. Desiree Waugh, a master’s student at Sloan, for instance, often leaves her bike at this station because it usually has docks available.
According to Patrick Kelsey, the marketing manager for Blue Bikes, the popularity of this station is driven primarily by one factor: the number of MIT users in the bike ride sharing system. “MIT makes up a substantial part of our riders,” said Kelsey. Blue Bikes has about 23,000 annual members and 3,500 of those are part of the MIT community. This, says Kelsey, is largely due to the incentives MIT provides that make it financially easy for the MIT community to use Blue Bikes. MIT subsidizes annual memberships for employees and students, dropping the price from $99 to $35. Harvard University, on the other hand, only offers the annual membership with a $29 discount; Harvard affiliates end up paying $70 dollars for the annual membership, twice what the MIT community pays.
With such a heavily discounted membership, it’s unsurprising that MIT uses these bikes to get around campus.
Data looking at to and from trips from the MIT at Mass Ave Station show that a lot of the trips involve stations either on MIT’s campus or in the nearby vicinity. The two maps on the left show trips to (top) and from (bottom) this station to other Blue Bike stations in Boston and Cambridge. Each point represents a single station and the larger the point, the more trips there were between that dock and the MIT at Mass Ave station, which is represented in red.
Many MIT students use the Blue Bikes system for short trips, such as riding from their dorm to class and back. Desiree Waugh, for instance, uses Blue Bikes to commute from Tang Hall to MIT on a weekly basis.
With so many MIT students using Blue Bikes to get around campus, it’s unsurprising that seven of the top 10 stations are not only in Cambridge, but also close to campus. The eighth Cambridge station is in Harvard Square, which also sees a good number of ride flux with the MIT at Mass Ave station.
Only two Boston stations are amongst the top ten–South Station and North Station in fifth and sixth, respectively –, and though both saw total station visits in the 80,000s, the community that uses them is mostly independent from the MIT community.
MIT students may turn to Blue Bikes to get them to class on time, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t taking advantage of the system during the weekends. Hourly trip data for the MIT at Mass Ave Station over the course of a single week shows that while the highest numbers of trips are reached during the weekdays, especially during peak rush-hour, weekend stats for this dock aren’t too shabby. Classes may not be happening, but MIT students still go to lab, to the library, to see friends and also use the system to complete errands. Anis Ben Said, a master’s student at Sloan, for instance, said he uses Blue Bikes when getting groceries during the weekend.
With the MIT community representing such a large slice of total Blue Bikes members and having such an outsized effect on trips to and from the MIT at Mass Ave Station, it’s not surprising that during 2019, the station saw its highest numbers of visits during September, particular in the two weeks after classes start.
Over 2019, total trips to and from the MIT and Mass Ave station waxed and waned with the weather. After an inexplicable peak in October, the total number of visits begins a steep decline, broken only by a short peak as classes end in December. Once students are back in January, the numbers begin to inch up, but they really hit their stride once the weather starts getting warmer.
With so many users, so many visits, at first it seems strange that the MIT at Mass Ave Station isn’t part of Blue Bikes valet service, which can expand the number of docks and bikes at specific stations during peak hours. Two Cambridge stations have the valet service and both are on the MIT campus: Kendall St and the Ames St at Main St station. But Kelsey had an explanation for this. “There’s bidirectional demand at this station,” he said. This means that bikes are always arriving and leaving this station, decreasing the chance that it run out of either bikes or available docks. This means that the MIT at Mass Ave Blue Bike is not only popular, it’s also considerate.