• Jan 7 9:00pm
  The final prediction points and submission form have been released. Click here to submit.
  
  The ground truth data from the initial test is on the datasets page.

Leaderboard

• User
  Time
  Score
• rmxu 1st
  Jan 07 1:26 p.m.
  0.0039185
• metalbubble
  Dec 24 11:38 a.m.
  0.0037053
• garthee
  Jan 07 3:36 p.m.
  0.0036396
• matted
  Dec 10 12:59 p.m.
  0.0033168
• zhaozl
  Jan 08 10:14 a.m.
  0.0032179
• Mike
  Dec 10 7:46 a.m.
  0.0030621
• cypresspoint
  Dec 22 7:39 p.m.
  0.0028512
• ajinkya@smart.mit.edu
  Jan 11 12:34 p.m.
  0.0027945
• mgymrek
  Dec 11 10:20 p.m.
  0.0026554

The City of Boston is interested in gaining new insights into how people use all modes of transportation travel in and around the downtown Boston area. A critical imperative of Boston's Complete Streets Policy is to move all modes of transportation more efficiently and to use real-time data to facilitate better trip-planning between modes of transportation. With urban congestion on the rise, city planners are looking for ways to improve transportation such as providing people with more options to get from one place to another (walking, biking, driving, or using public transit) and by reducing and more efficiently routing vehicles in the city.

This MIT Big Data Challenge will focus primarily on one mode of public transportation: Taxi Cabs. By better understanding patterns in taxi ridership, we hope to provide new insights for city planners, such as:

• How to get more cabs where they are needed, when they are needed?
• What are the ideal locations for cab stands?
• When and where should the City add or remove cab stands?
• How many cabs should be waiting around a specific location at a specific time of day?
• Are there viable alternatives to taking a cab?
• Are there easy ways to 'link trips' between cabs and other forms of transportation?
• How does taxi ridership patterns differ on weekdays vs. weekends? Seasonally? During different types of events?
• Where should you go at 1am to catch a cab downtown?
• Do Bruins fans take more cabs than Celtics fans? Does the result of the game impact transportation patterns?

Here the goal is to predict the number of taxi trips originating at different times of day from different locations around city. A total of $5000 will be awarded (a $4000 winner and a $1000 runner-up).

Visualization Challenge: Here the goal is to produce the most compelling visualization (static, animated or interactive) of taxi activity in Boston. A total of $5000 will be awarded (a $4000 winner and a $1000 runner-up).

Submissions will be judged by a distinguished panel of visualization experts!