Last month, WMATA’s PlanItMetro blog released another batch of detailed ridership data. We used it to visualize how many people enter each Metro station over the course of a normal weekday.
Entrances at Red Line stations throughout the day. All graphics by the authors.
For each Metro line, we made an animated gif that cycles through fifteen minute intervals from 4:30am to midnight. Each dot on the line represents the average number of riders who entered that station during that time interval on weekdays in October 2015.
Blue Line.
Orange Line.
Since a lot of people use Metro to commute, many riders enter suburban stations in Virginia and Maryland in the morning. This pattern reverses during the evening rush hour when most riders board trains at downtown stations.
Yellow Line.
Green Line.
Not all stations follow this trend, though. For example, Ballston has strong ridership during both rush hours since the neighborhood is home to offices and residential buildings alike.
Silver Line.
What do you notice in these graphs?