Pace Bike Share and Library Circulation Data now available in NorfolkOpenData
Check out bike share and library lending activity
NORFOLK, VA – Wonder where shared bicycles are used most often in the City of Norfolk, or what kinds of library materials see the most use? Now you can find out with new data sets in NorfolkOpenData!
The Pace bicycle-sharing program launched in Norfolk last spring with 250 bikes for public use. Now, data collected from rides from April to December 2018 is included in the NorfolkOpenData portal. The data shows records of more than 46,000 trips from the program’s first year, and more than 12,100 users.
“We had our first Pace bike at the airport this week,” said Paul Filion from the city’s Transit Department. “We’ve had some out at the Oceanfront.”
The data is provided to the city by Zagster, the company that runs the Pace bike program. Because trip data is tracked by users’ cell phones, rather than a device on the bicycle, it can result in anomalies, such as the appearance that a bike trip started or ended in the water. On the other hand, Filion said, it can be very useful: “We found some bikes in Chesapeake in someone’s back yard.”
Norfolk’s Public Library system circulates more than just books. Its lending library includes CDs and movies, music scores, mobile hotspots, audio and e-books – even “microscopes, telescopes and ukuleles” said librarian Cathy Thomann. Circulation information for these resources as well as active users is now available through NorfolkOpenData.
Thomann said this data helps library staff see “what’s moving and what’s not moving, and what do we need to spend our money on.”
Active users data shows information about individuals with accounts that have been used in the last year. For example, it shows information about the number of people who hold adult or juvenile library cards or those who have only internet access. It also shows users by library branch. It does not contain personal identifiable information about library users.
We’ve been building our inventory of datasets for a year now! We started in March 2018 with four datasets including the Norfolk Cares Call Center, employee salaries, electronic permits, and STORM data -- incidents resulting from inclement weather, such as flooded streets, damaged trees, disabled vehicles, and damaged utilities. It also included links to Crime Mapping, which allows residents to search by address to find incidents, and to restaurant inspections.
This portal centralized the location for city data, offering access anytime and free of charge, with no formal request for the information that resides there. It followed Norfolk’s collaboration with What Works Cities, an initiative of Bloomberg Philanthropies, to develop its Open Data policy and program.
Since launching, the portal has expanded to 26 datasets. Popular datasets on the portal include police arrests, active warrants and incident reports, along with Norfolk Cares Call Center information.
We have logged more than 21,000 visitors to the portal including from every U.S. state and countries across the globe. These visitors have viewed datasets 52,000 times. We have trained 440 employees to be data champions.
We remain just as dedicated now as when we started to providing data that’s useful to everyone. This portal offers data sets that can be sorted, filtered, and customized – create and save your own searches to keep tabs on your neighborhood. Need help? View one of the easy to use tutorials on the NorfolkOpenData portal.
As always, we are available to demonstrate the power of NorfolkOpenData to your organization. If you would like to request Open Data training for your neighborhood or civic group, please contact us 664-4007 or email
opendata@norfolk.gov.
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